Chances of admission in CMU MSCF/Columbia MSFE

[Naveen Tanwani]

Hi Folks,

I am planning to apply for MSCF/MSFE programs in either CMU or Columbia. I know these are the best universities for MS in finance courses and lots of applicants apply for these. I have around 10 years of IT experience, all in IT divisions of Financial companies. I am a CFA charter holder, not sure if that helps in admission. I have done BS in Computer Science in India from an average university. I don't have a GPA yet as our university doesn't provide GPA in transcript. I have to probably get the GPA valuation done from some US agency. My GRE scores are Quant: 168, Verbal: 150 and AWA: 3.5. Do you think I hold a chance of admission in these courses?

 

[Finance Applicant]

Your verbal score is way below the CMU average... get that up man

 

[Jedison]

Your verbal score is pretty low, but what's more concerning is that it's a sign that your personal statement may be weak. I don't think the score itself will hurt you that badly but you really need to put up a strong statement to compensate.

 

[Jedison]

Perhaps not even to compensate... Your statement is a huge part of your ap! If your english a writing skills aren't that good it will be difficult to put a strong essay together.

 

[Naveen Tanwani]

Thanks for the advice. I will focus on writing a strong statement of purpose or essays. I will also try gre again to improve verbal score. The advantage I have for writing a good essay is that there is no time limit, which was there for verbal test.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Using Tracker and filter by CMU MSCF with status Admit, you can see members who got in with verbal in the 15x range, as low as 151 so one number is not make-or-break. Your biggest competitors are those from your country and same tier universities who have much higher score
https://www.quantnet.com/tracker/?filters[program_id]=5&filters[result]=qnt_field_result_accepted&page=6

 

[Naveen Tanwani]

Andy, thanks for the information. Do you think having CFA charter is going to help any way in admission process?

 

[Math Andrew]

I had 151 in the verbal section and am a MSCF graduate.

 

[utkarsh dalmia]

@Naveen, I think the verbal score isn't all that important. Firstly, it can be compensated if you have a decent TOEFL score, say 110+. Secondly, these programs will take you only after an interview (which helps them assess your english skills). There are a lot of people in the tracker with lower 150s in the verbal section who get into top programs. Point is you might want to work on other aspects of your application rather than studying for the english section of the GRE.

 

[Finance Applicant]

@Naveen, I think the verbal score isn't all that important. Firstly, it can be compensated if you have a decent TOEFL score, say 110+. Secondly, these programs will take you only after an interview (which helps them assess your english skills). There are a lot of people in the tracker with lower 150s in the verbal section who get into top programs. Point is you might want to work on other aspects of your application rather than studying for the english section of the GRE.

but the verbal score only takes a month or so of solid studying to improve

 

[Jedison]

I didn't really spend much time studying for the verbal section as I am a native English speaker. However, it seemed that if I had spent few weeks just drilling through word banks many of the questions would have been quite easy. But I tend to agree with the other comments on here. The verbal section isn't that important in and of itself as long as you are confident in the other aspects of your application and your conversational english. While I can only really speak for Columbia and Cornell, it seemed that the interviews were there to weed out weak english speakers. Columbia's was purely fit questions and I did fairly mediocre on Cornell's technical questions (interviewing with Dr. Averbukh was extremely stressful), but I think they just want to see that you are likable and can think logically in a high stress situation even if you don't know all the answers.

 

[ygmwy]

Think about your competitors from IIT, and other top universities. You may be good, but you have to somehow convince them that you should be chosen over this competition. That should be your focus. Compare, compare, compare.

 

[utkarsh dalmia]

but the verbal score only takes a month or so of solid studying to improve

Not disputing that. Just saying one can show good command over the language by some other means (TOEFL, interview, etc) as well.

 

[Finance Applicant]

Not disputing that. Just saying one can show good command over the language by some other means (TOEFL, interview, etc) as well.

Not saying the verbal score is "that" important. But when your around 7 points below the average and the rest of your profile is decent, why not spend a month to improve that score while also strengthening other parts of your app? It's something that is easily improved in my opinion. Cause of course there's going to be that person with a similar application as you but a much higher verbal score....

 

[Naveen Tanwani]

Thanks all for the information and advice.

 

[l_l_c_p]

Can anyone tell me their application status of NYU(both universities) because I don't see many people who have heard from them till date . Does anyone have any idea when will they get back to the hopeful applicants