Can we novices hope to find a niche to test our new-found teeth on some real programming? Or are we doomed to a life of Comp. Sci. 101 excercises until we get us a nice computer job?

You see, the poster isn't talking about systems analysis and design, finding out what the user wants and implementing it. He's simply asking about where can he find non-examples.. full applications to write.

You see, you wrote code for something w/o a spec. The basis of a GPA calculator is really simple. Do a few multiply's, a few adds, and a divide, and you have a gpa. Designing an interface on top of it, checking inputs and what not into an application is more of a challenge. What you ran into, was creating a simple application, and not passing user acceptance testing. :\