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Baruch MFE Baruch pre-MFE program Q&A (ask previous students)

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Hi, prospective candidates!

my name is Will Gu. I'm a former Baruch pre-MFE student and current Baruch MFE first-year student. Together with my fellow classmates, Yu Wen, Allen Chen, and Xiaobo He, I will be introducing you to the pre-MFE program at Baruch college.

Baruch offers three on campus pre-MFE classes covering various mathematical topics including probability/statistics, advanced calculus, numerical linear algebra, etc., in addition to applications in quant finance. I personally went through the process and benefited a lot from it in MFE programs applications and interviews. I joined the MFE program here at Baruch College along with 10+ fellow classmates from various background after successful completion of the pre-MFE program. In my opinion, it is the one of the best you can find in the field.

Our core faculties including our program director Professor Dan Stefanica will be your instructors of the pre-MFE seminars. Additional information and upcoming info session schedule can be found in Dan's posts in this forum.

https://www.quantnet.com/threads/the-2015-2016-pre-mfe-program-at-baruch-college.20919/

Please leave your comments and questions below or send me an in-site message if you are interested. I will respond ASAP.
 
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Hi everyone!

My name is Yu (Adam) Wen. I am a current Baruch MFE student. I will be glad to answer any questions you have about the Baruch Pre-MFE Program.

About myself: I hold a Master’s Degree in accounting with honors from Baruch College, where I earned a Bachelor’s Degree with a major in accounting and a minor in mathematics, also with honors. I was a teaching assistant and tutor for undergraduate students at Baruch College.

I took Advance Calculus, Probability Theory of Pre-MFE Program, and got the C++ certificate online. I found they are very useful to me and learned knowledge (related to math, finance, and programming), which is pre-required by Baruch MFE.

Feel free to leave any questions about Baruch Pre-MFE. We will respond ASAP.
 
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Hi everyone,

My name is Allen Chen. I am in my first year of the Baruch MFE Program. I took the Baruch Pre-MFE Program from Oct 2014 to Mar 2015 (part-time), and found it quite useful for my application for the MFE Program. The Pre-MFE seminars cover Advanced Calculus, Numerical Linear Algebra, and Probability Theory as well as their financial applications. In addition to that, Baruch offers an online C++ certificate program which is great certification of programming for those who are interested in financial engineering.

For those of you who might consider a career in quantitative finance, this program works as a perfect bridge between wherever you are right now and your exciting future. The instructors will certainly engage you with their industrial experience and direct you to the right track of expanding your skill set to meet the requirement of this field. If you somehow already have experience with quantitative finance, this is still a good refresher to recap what you have learned, and highlight the key points that you should master in preparation for your application to the MFE Program.

It is worth mentioning that, year by year, an increasing number of students admitted to the MFE Program come from the Pre-MFE Program, not only because they have better connection to the faculty, but also because they indeed have a higher chance of doing better than those who do not take the advantage of this program.

If you are interested in this program and have any questions, please feel free to post your questions here. I will be happy to answer your questions.

Good luck!
 
Hi, everyone! My name is Xiaobo He and I am current first-year MFE student at Baruch college. I took all the three courses of Pre-MFE program at Baruch College, and also the online c++ course from QuantNet.

In my personal experience, I find that the Pre-MFE program is very helpful. First of all, it refreshes the important knowledge you have learned in calculus, probability theory, and linear algebra, and extends intensively to applications in financial industry. For someone like me with little finance-related exposure, it is a nature bridge to connect from what you learned in the college to what you will learn and use in MFE program and future quantitative career. Moreover, all the instructors are faculties from Baruch MFE program, then you have good chance to feel the style of this program.

The familiarity with math knowledge pre-required by Baruch MFE is the key to get into any decent programs in quantitative finance. It is also the ground zero for future job-seeking in Wall Street. The refreshment from PreMFE program gives the students more chance to solve the questions when you apply for a MFE program, and eventually pass the increasingly difficult interviews.

Please feel free to drop a post if you have any question about the Pre-MFE program at Baruch College. We will be more than happy to answer the questions.

Best for everyone!
 
Hi everyone!

I am Luca Quaglia and I am currently enrolled as a first year student in the Master of Financial Engineering Program at Baruch College, NY.

As my fellow classmates, I took the pre-MFE courses (Advanced Calculus, Numerical Linear Algebra and Probability Theory, all courses are geared towards financial applications) and I took the online C++ course. Those courses are an excellent entry point to the field of Financial Engineering and are a great way to review essential knowledge and to pick up new concepts along the way. The teachers are engaging and very dedicated. And they happily dispense useful pieces of advice during their classes.

Together with my classmates, I will be happy to reply to your queries about the pre-MFE program! So do not hesitate to ask :)

All the best,
Luca
 
Hi everyone!

My name is Chris Zhang. I am a current Baruch MFE student. I will be glad to answer any questions you have about the Baruch Pre-MFE Program.

About myself: I hold a Master’s Degree in accounting, and Bachelor Degree in Finance from Penn State. I worked in KPMG M&A advisory group after graduation. I wanted to change my career path, so I started taking Pre-MFE seminars at Baruch. I have achieved distinctions in all Pre-MFE seminars.

The pre-MFE seminars totally changed my life. I have learned so much from those 4 seminars. You definitely get a big bang for the buck!! And there is also a huge correlation between success in pre-MFE and Baruch MFE admission. So if you are interested in applying for the MFE, you should definitely take Pre-MFE.

Feel free to leave any questions about Baruch Pre-MFE or lifestyle at Baruch MFE! I will respond ASAP!
 
Hi everyone,

My name is Yueyi Chen and I finished all Pre-MFE 4 courses with distinctions.

I found all 4 courses (include this online C++ webinar) extremely helpful for students who want to apply Baruch-MFE Program or students who has no financial engineering background. The contents of the courses are very useful in terms of quantitative interviews and many of those contents are still being asked in today's job interviews. We had great opportunities to discuss problems in class with professors as well as with people from various background.

I didn't have strong math and programming background because I was studying accounting in my previous life. I was not a strong candidate to apply Baruch MFE Program directly without taking pre-mfe classes. However, through the four courses, I built relative consolidate financial math and programming foundation. Moreover, I got the chance to interact with Baruch MFE Director, Prof. Dan Stefanica, and some other professors. These knowledge and the interaction with professors contribute a lot to my final admission to Baruch MFE Program.

I'm happy to answer any Pre-MFE related questions with my classmates above :)

Good luck.
 
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From reading the above:
Why not incorporate the pre with the main course? For example the pre program is not open to internationals at present so this would seem to impair outcomes for such students
Or of course offer all of the pre course online not just the c++?
 
From reading the above:
Why not incorporate the pre with the main course? For example the pre program is not open to internationals at present so this would seem to impair outcomes for such students
Or of course offer all of the pre course online not just the c++?

this
 
From reading the above:
Why not incorporate the pre with the main course? For example the pre program is not open to internationals at present so this would seem to impair outcomes for such students
Or of course offer all of the pre course online not just the c++?
Hi @sdplatt and @zyz ,

Thank you for posting questions here. Unfortunately, this question is somewhat related to Baruch MFE course system, how Baruch MFE arrange its classes and how Baruch MFE cooperate with quantnet. This is something complicated that I and any of my classmates are not able to answer as students.

However, I do know some of my classmates who were internationals when they took pre-mfe seminar. @dstefan Prof. Dan Stefanica, Baruch MFE Director, might be able to answer your question. HTH. Thanks.
 
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From reading the above:
Why not incorporate the pre with the main course? For example the pre program is not open to internationals at present so this would seem to impair outcomes for such students
Or of course offer all of the pre course online not just the c++?
Hi @sdplatt and @zyz

Again, thank you for posting questions here.

In my opinion, what we learned in Pre-MFE are pre-requisite for getting into Baruch MFE Program. Students don't have to take Pre-MFE to get those math skills. However, Pre-MFE courses will help you to refresh or learn knowledge that we need for MFE program in an efficient and effective way. Since those math skills are pre-requisite, it is saving time for MFE students.

As Danielle said, there were some international students took Pre-MFE courses. In addition, only the C++ course is online. All other three Pre-MFE courses are not.

I hope that helps. Feel free to ask any more questions.
 
From reading the above:
Why not incorporate the pre with the main course? For example the pre program is not open to internationals at present so this would seem to impair outcomes for such students
Or of course offer all of the pre course online not just the c++?

To answer your question, Pre-MFE definitely takes international students. There are actually many international students in my class.

Even though you have very strong math skills, Pre-MFE courses are still invaluable.
In AC class, a lot of material on Option topics are covered! This is very common quant interview topics. In pre-MFE seminars, you are setting the ground for job interviews actually.
I can still remember seeing the derivation of Black Scholes by Professor Rados. We were shown the derivation in many different ways. Let me put it that way, the amount of knowledge you learn in pre-MFE courses are much more in depth than my entire undergrad fin curriculum.

At the end of the day, we are not just learning math in MFE program. We are learning the most cutting-edge Math/Stat/Programming that can be applied to Finance.
 
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Hi everyone,

My name is Yueyi Chen and I finished all Pre-MFE 4 courses with distinctions.

I found all 4 courses (include this online C++ webinar) extremely helpful for students who want to apply Baruch-MFE Program or students who has no financial engineering background. The contents of the courses are very useful in terms of quantitative interviews and many of those contents are still being asked in today's job interviews. We had great opportunities to discuss problems in class with professors as well as with people from various background.

I didn't have strong math and programming background because I was studying accounting in my previous life. I was not a strong candidate to apply Baruch MFE Program directly without taking pre-mfe classes. However, through the four courses, I built relative consolidate financial math and programming foundation. Moreover, I got the chance to interact with Baruch MFE Director, Prof. Dan Stefanica, and some other professors. These knowledge and the interaction with professors contribute a lot to my final admission to Baruch MFE Program.

I'm happy to answer any Pre-MFE related questions with my classmates above :)

Good luck.
Hello, I'm from India . It is mentioned in the college website that they don't sponsor F1 visa for international students. Is there any other possibility to join the pre MFE course? Like can I take the course by having a visitor visa also?
 
Hello, I'm from India . It is mentioned in the college website that they don't sponsor F1 visa for international students. Is there any other possibility to join the pre MFE course? Like can I take the course by having a visitor visa also?

You can only take the Pre-MFE seminars if you are physically in New York when they take place. We do not offer visa support for taking the seminars.
 
You can take the Pre-MFE seminars if you are physically in New York when they take place.
 
does it make any difference to Baruch MFE admission office if you are taking(not finished) pre-MFE courses? I am thinking of applying Baruch MFE this November(1st round), it seems all three on-site courses ends up in December.
 
does it make any difference to Baruch MFE admission office if you are taking(not finished) pre-MFE courses? I am thinking of applying Baruch MFE this November(1st round), it seems all three on-site courses ends up in December.

If you submit your application and are in the process of taking Pre-MFE seminars, we will wait until you complete the seminars and then evaluate the application.

This also happens to students applying in Round 3 or 4 and taking Pre-MFE seminars in the Spring.
 
Hi! I'm interested in applying to the Baruch MFE for Fall 2020, so I would love any recommendations you have for my process!

Here are some questions I have:
1. Is it possible to take all three seminars at the same time? Schedule wise. I'm international, so I need to figure out if it would be possible to do it while visiting.
2. How long would it take to complete all three seminars if its possible to take them at the same time?
3. I consider the tuition pricey (when all of them are added up), is there any scholarship or is it possible to make them consider this courses when applying for scholarship for the MFE?
4. Is the C++ course really necessary? (Like, should I avoid spending that money)
5. I noticed that very few people took the Python course, is it not really necessary for my development in the MFE? (Like, should I avoid spending that money)
6. I noticed there is a small amount of people graduating from this amazing program, is it because it's really hard to complete, is it really hard to getting accepted in the first place?
7. After taking this courses, did you heard about cheaper ones elsewhere?
8. For people who already graduated from this program, is it enough to get a really good job, even when having no professional experience in Finance?
9. I would love to hear anything you could recommend or share about this program!

Thank you for this forum!
 
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