Chances of getting into top MFE schools

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1/27/25
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Hi,

Just wanted to get some perspective on my chances of admission from current quants, people in MFE programs and other aspiring applicants.

My profile is as follows:

Undergrad: Top 10 public university in the US
Major: Mathematics, OR concentration
GPA: 3.42
Coursework: All the expected math courses plus some machine learning & economics. Caveat here is that COVID created some challenges which made me move back to my home country and continue my education remotely for a year, family lost main source of income, lost immediate family members etc - led me to take a bunch of serious classes as P/F, dropped my grades significantly. Taking 2 recs from professors who kinda know me and I did well in their classes, but don't expect anything stellar. No research experience.

Work ex:
  • 3 internships (Financial Analyst Intern at a small inv. mgmt. firm in India, IBSA at an elite boutique in India and a Strategy & Anayltics internship at a Fortune 500 after graduating in the US)
  • Been working full-time for 2 years as an analyst at a big investment management/advisory firm primarily within the institutional investment consulting space (illiquid alternatives), contributed a lot to the company and boss will write a good rec likely.
  • 3ish months of volunteer work
Extracurriculars: These probably don't matter at all but I'll mention them for the sake of completeness of my profile - did a bunch of music gigs (guitarist), picked up woodworking post college.

Goal is to break into quant finance ideally as a quant trader but open to research roles as well (ik top firms generally recruit undergrads for trader roles but I haven't been successful in landing a gig, was generally denied after 2-3 rounds).

Schools I'm applying to:
  1. Columbia MFE
  2. Stanford ICME MCF
  3. NYU GSAS Mathematics in Finance
  4. CMU MSCF
  5. UChicago FinMath
  6. Imperial Math & Finance
  7. Berkeley MFE
I think all of these are reach given my background and how competitive these programs are, but value any inputs people might have on my chances / ways to improve my profile.

Thank you!
 
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