Do American students have an advantage when applying?

[Dipesh Mehta]

Hi,

I was wondering if American students have an advantage when applying to MFE/MFin/Quantitative Finance programs. It seems like most students come from abroad. For instance, at MIT, 80% of the students are from outside of the US. Let me know!

 

[MRoss]

Yes. You don't have to score as high in the verbal section

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Yes. You don't have to score as high in the verbal section

And written?

 

[CandyOates]

It's easier for American companies to employ Americans than non-Americans from a visa perspective, so all things equal they may take the American over the non-American to improve employment statistics.

 

[MRoss]

What Candy said.

To expound a bit on my statement. The reason for Americans not requiring a high verbal score is because said candidate will have a fine time at any bank without knowing how to use the word deacetylation in a sentence. However, when the admission committee has to sift through 1000 applications; throwing out the foreign applications with low verbal scores is a no brainer since they are obviously not natural English speakers and apparently they did not receive a solid English education.

And written?

Writing skills are not nearly as important as being able to carry a normal conversation; or even more importantly, being able to respond to interview questions properly.

 

[Ian Kaplan]

Hi,

I was wondering if American students have an advantage when applying to MFE/MFin/Quantitative Finance programs. It seems like most students come from abroad. For instance, at MIT, 80% of the students are from outside of the US. Let me know!

I think that many university graduate programs are concerned that they will appear to only be educating foreign students. Since state universities are funded to educate state residents (via state funding) and US citizens (through federal funding) this becomes problematic for programs that have a large percentage of foreign students. Many graduate programs have a lower bar for US students as a result. However, there are more graduate programs than there are qualified US students. Many programs would not survive without foreign students. So they are walking a fine line.