Also: everyone should be required to fail a couple classes sometime in their life. It's not nearly as bad as you'd imagine. (Hint: after high school, nobody cares about your grades anymore.)
At least for prestigious schools (like Harvard), this is completely true, even outside engineering disciplines.
A friend of mine who went to Columbia got a D on one of her language classes. At Columbia, a D isn't even a passing grade - you don't receive credit for the course, and have to retake it.
That didn't stop her from receiving the highly-competitive Fulbright scholarship[0] to study at the graduate level in that very language.
If she had done badly in three or four of those language classes, that'd have been a problem. But students almost always overestimate the importance of a single course grade as opposed to a pattern of grades. (And even the latter can be accounted for otherwise, though it is admittedly an uphill battle).
I wholeheartedly agree that everyone should fail a class or two at some point in their lives. It teaches you a very good lesson: don't sweat the small stuff, even when that small stuff seems like really big stuff.
If he really wanted the exam to be rescheduled, the dumbest thing he could do is either break his own arm or pull the fire alarm somehow, or throw some stink bombs everywhere in the classroom. Those along probably will only cause suspension and minor criminal charge at worst. Though he'd be very careful with fire alarm...Now he probably can't get back to Harvard, after several years of stressful preparation to get into Harvard...
And for most jobs out there grades do matter, especially if you plan to go to graduate school.
For all we know, they might have just talked to everyone that had used Tor that day. They might not have had any solid evidence about him until he confessed.
Not even a little bit. What, you think a hiring manager is going to try to track down your college transcript?
Edit: here's now little grades matter as a developer: I have a GED and five college credits (two of which were archery) and I've been happily employed as a developer for the last six years.
He said "most jobs out there" not "developer jobs." Pretty much every job outside software, as well as every grad school application, will ask you to submit your college transcript.
This is actually not true, especially when applying to Google and a lot of tech, Wall Street, and other blue chip companies - or of course to grad school, law school, or med school.
Which is no reason to call in a bomb threat.
For any job, it is much more important to have some sort of positive personal connection. (Worked with someone there before, a professor recommends you as talented, an internship).
Which is why people pay big bucks to go to Harvard/MIT/Yale? Correct? The objective is rubbing elbows with the elite and making connections. Presumably I can get a similar education elsewhere for less money.
True for software developers nowadays, but some other disciplines like maybe scoring an accounting job at Charles Schwab I bet still checks that GPA.
Ya know what I want HN to do for a poll? GPA at school! Mine is awful, couldn't pay attention.
(I bet my GPA is worse ;)