Are these schools realistic ?

[ludoo]

Hi QuantNet people !

Here's my profile :

GPA : 3.74/4.3, Math major from okay canadian school (completed in 4.5 years instead of 3 due to personnal reasons. Lowish grades during first & second year classes, turned a 2.8 around by litteraly scoring perfect grades on all upper level courses for two years straight)

GRE : 170 Q-160 V
Putnam : 25/120 (I don't know if that's worth mentionning)

Professional/academic experience : 3 internships, two at insurance company with data analysis & statistical analysis in R and Python, one at pension fund, less quant focused by still got good exposure to stochastic based processes and Matlab. Research project on stochastic processes with a prof at my university.

Other programming experience : Top 10/500 at national competition using Python ML and image recognition to analyze financial statements. Contributions to GitHub repos for exploratory analysis of Bayesian models, and TensorFlow (C++).

EC : Math & Music tutor, finance manager for student cafe.

Here's where it gets tricky : even if I aced all upper level courses, I have a D in probability, C in stochastic calculus and B+ grades for all the prerequisites (I have a good explanation for these, but alas). I got A+ in as many advanced classes as I could to make up for them (Advanced Calc, Random walks & graphs, graduate level probability), but it's still a big stain. This is the list of schools I plan on applying to :

Reaches : Chicago, CMU. Targets : NCSU, Minnesota MFM, GIT

I'd be glad to hear what you guys think my chances are.

Thanks !

 

[MikeLawrence]

I'd broaden the search and not worry to much about the singular grades. If you did as you said you did and aced everything after then the story you can tell with your profile is pretty clear.

I'd apply to other top schools as well, Berkeley, Baruch, if you'd want to attend them. Your profile is still quite strong.