Grades vs Skill

Projects give you actual experience And portfolio, I haven’t tried it asking AI with the part “industry standard project” probably would look good as well.

Professors write terrible code and I wouldn’t even hire them as juniors. That said, you need the grades to get past the dark souls boss known as HR

Practical projects beat perfect grades. I focused on Python automation early and it opened doors.

Grades don't matter at all unless you want to ride out the recession in grad school. There are only two scenarios where someone's grades would impress me, the first is if they end up with a perfect GPA in a hard major like mathematics or physics or if they aced an exam for a STEM course that had like a thousand people in it and I got to see what percentile that translates to. If you're looking at marks then only the very top performers are impressive, the ones that got perfect in everything and made it look easy. In the real world the most interesting people tend to be the ones who performed the best in school or the ones who performed the worst, and there are sometimes people that fit into both categories. Software is all about practice, and if you failed or nearly failed multiple courses because you spent all your time programming when you were supposed to be studying then that's probably a much more valuable use of your time.

Grades help you get noticed especially at the start but SKILLS help you stay and grow.
In the long run, companies care more about what you can do than what you scored.
Projects, internships and real practice show this clearly.
For me the most important skill to build early is problem-solving.
When you learn how to think, debug and improve step by step, every new subject becomes easier. Its like learning to ride a cycle. Marks are the training wheels... similarly skill is what keeps you moving forward on your own

College and classes dont meaningfully prepare you for the world of business programming.

It doesnt teach how to collaborate on a codebase of hundreds of thousands of lines. It doesnt teach planning and architecture. And it doesnt teach the communication skills you need to communicate with leadership, PMs, stakeholders, etc.

Yes true, grades show effort but skills show results. I try coding small projects now so I can explain solutions later and be ready for real jobs.

Both. You need 8 gpa and above that skills matter. At 8 you can sit at interview of 99% companies. Below that, depends on luck

Innovative curiosity.