Guys please help me place myself?

[nauttism]

Hello, gentlefolks @QuantNet! So, I am from India. Here is what my profile looks like:

Edu:
GRE: 331
CFA L1 cleared
Have a diploma in AI and ML with a 3.1/4 from a decent school.
Have a Bachelors in Computer Science from a 1.5 tier college with a 2.8/4 GPA - with not so great math scores.

Work:
0) Worked in an online ads company as a DevOps in the core ML pipeline team.
1) Worked as a research assistant in the Human Language lab of a decent school - got 3 international conf publications - in NLP and Reinforcement learning.
2) Worked in a well known Quant Edu firm where I was involved in Quant literature + ML research (backtesting & paper trading )- also mentored over 10+ global participants in their Fin ML projects.
3) Now working in an Indian hedge fund part-time where I am working on Indian commodities quant strats
4) Also working full time with a Canadian fin ML startup which belongs to a prominent quant educator.

Have an overall 5+ year work experience. I am sure about extremely good referrals (even by global standards)

Now, as you can guess I have a fucked up GPA. It's giving me a bad trip as it's crippled my chances of even thinking about any of the top schools sadly.
Where do you guys suggest I realistically place myself in terms of the program I might be able to get into?

Thanks & Regards.

 

[nauttism]

Funnily the last 5 years have been about compensating for my brilliant bachelors' performance! Reminds us of something

Also, would request you to suggest whatever you can to help me better my chances however I can. Planning to apply in 2021 between Jul & Aug.

Thanks!

 

[Younge]

I have a similar GPA, and it excruciated me much...

 

[capn_cook]

Following this, I am halfway thru your journey I guess. Similar backgrounds and experience.

 

[WZhang]

I asked alot of my friends. CFA is not going to help and also do you have the pre-reqs satisified such as lInear algebra,probability and calculus. I managed to satisfied all their pre-reqs with A- or A but my GPA is not the highest. But my situation was beyond my control and I didnt had the best enviroment and there was a noticeable decline in my GPA after my situation happened.

 

[binomial-torrent]

how do you deal with the GPA problem? retake classes?

 

[Michsund]

Best way to make up gpa is taking new harder classes. For me this was taking the Baruch pre-mfe classes and doing well on them.

 

[binomial-torrent]

Best way to make up gpa is taking new harder classes. For me this was taking the Baruch pre-mfe classes and doing well on them.

if the bad classes are in CS though not math...does Baruch pre-MFE offer that? I also want to apply to MS CS programs with ML specialization, but with a bad CS gpa...go figure

 

[Michsund]

if the bad classes are in CS though not math...does Baruch pre-MFE offer that? I also want to apply to MS CS programs with ML specialization, but with a bad CS gpa...go figure

Well then the quantnet course helps but in my opinion is not good enough to make up gpa. What courses did you do bad in. ML has a lot of statistics and linear algebra and I believe those classes you will need to show your good at.

 

[binomial-torrent]

Well then the quantnet course helps but in my opinion is not good enough to make up gpa. What courses did you do bad in. ML has a lot of statistics and linear algebra and I believe those classes you will need to show your good at.

did well in stats, probability, linalg, calc, etc. the math classes are not the problem, the CS classes like intro programming, OOP, data structures, algorithms. it was more due to lack of interest than lack of ability which is no excuse at this point obviously but it does mean I’m confident that I can do well in harder retake classes

 

[nauttism]

did well in stats, probability, linalg, calc, etc. the math classes are not the problem, the CS classes like intro programming, OOP, data structures, algorithms. it was more due to lack of interest than lack of ability which is no excuse at this point obviously but it does mean I’m confident that I can do well in harder retake classes

Lol. Same story. 5 years back I just wanted to be an android developer. Didn't give two hoots about "the beauty of math" <-- although I did it well in my AI diploma. But it wasn't as rigorous.

 

[Michsund]

did well in stats, probability, linalg, calc, etc. the math classes are not the problem, the CS classes like intro programming, OOP, data structures, algorithms. it was more due to lack of interest than lack of ability which is no excuse at this point obviously but it does mean I’m confident that I can do well in harder retake classes

Add it to your sop and talk about how you improved in the harder classes as you developed more of an interest in the subject.