I would like to apply for european programs next year but I am not sure I qualify for top programs such as oxford or lse. Hence, I would like to make an application for places like ETH,Vienna, EPFL or maybe ICL, warwick. How hard is it to get into such programs? I am an econ student coming from top university of turkey. My gpa is around 3.60 and took classes like diff equations,linear algebra,stats,econometrics and aced all of them (A or A-). However, my programming skills are weak and I dont have much internship experience. I only had 2 months data science internship at a fintech startup and I basicly analyzed data using python and through python I applied regression models and some basic KNN analysis to stock and index data. Moreover, I exposed to algorithmic trading technics and saw how they are used (mainly mean reversion and pairs trading). Finally, I think I might got advanced letters from profs graduated from oxford or columbia, if it matters.
competition for tier2 programs in europe
- Thread starter kobebry
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I would say ICL and oxford are the top programs and not LSE , at least if you want to be a quant and plan to apply to financial math / computational finance msc, and given your grades you have good chances for ICL but between LSE fin math and ICL math & finance I wouldn't hesitate in term of outcomes and where banks and hedge funds recruit it's ICL and Oxford then the rest ( for quant roles I mean). In case you can't get Oxford and Imperial, ETH has a solid reputation in London and all europe and I would prefer it over LSE for quant programs and roles
I did not think my profile would be enough to get accepted by ICL you literally made my day thank you. Hope I can take 2 Java courses from my university and maybe might have a shot for oxbridge. What do you think about the Warwick by the way? Do I have a chance?
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I know the Zurich program quite well but have some mixed impressions of it. Some of the faculty is top notch. However the students have the option to design large parts of the program themselves. You’ll find graduates with high GPA that loaded up heavily on softer Finance classes for example. I personally have a close look at the classes they pick but generally prefer graduates from the Master of Mathematics or Applied Mathematics at ETH since they tend to have a stronger theoretical foundation. A program that wasn’t mentioned here yet and which is also very strong is the Master of Applied Mathematics in Delft - similar to the ETH programs.
So, considering my economics background my chance is not much for zurich although I have the desired programming skills?
