Hi everyone, this post is going to be a bit long so please bare with me. Any advice is highly appreciated!
I'm a second year undergraduate student studying in Honours Financial Mathematics BSc in Canada but my undergrad path has been extremely rough. I won't get into any details but there was a lot of family/financial issues that came up right when I turned 18 which lead to my grades in first year being atrocious (received an F in 3 classes and all D's for the rest). After dropping out of university and taking a year to patch up those life issues, I've thankfully been able return to my program and crammed my previously failed courses along with my Fall 2019 term for my second year. I'm still in the midst of finals at the moment, but I'm expecting a lot of B's and a few C's (granted I haven't done any math for over a year prior to coming back school). I'm heading in to next term expecting to fully be back on my "study grind" and finally with a normal schedule, I'm expecting my grades to be around high B's to mid A's.
Anyways, I was wondering how important the first two years of university are to be considered as a potential candidate for any of the Top 25 financial engineering programs. How would they perceive the full year that I was absent from school? I know its too early to come to any conclusions but does coursework carry a considerable amount of weight on whether or not you are accepted into a master's program? My current undergraduate program is extremely math/compsci intensive and I'm unable to take arts electives. Every term(semester) from now on for the next 2.5 years will consist of 4 math/stats and 1 compsci. The math and compsci that I've completed so far are calc 1, 2, multivariable calc, ODE's, linear algebra, intro into analysis, probability, mathematical stats, proofs, financial math, intro into programming, and data structures 1. The rest of my undergrad will consist of courses like real analysis, stochastic calc and processes, advanced algorithms, computational methods in finance, etc. If I were able to receive a minimum 3.6 GPA in both third and fourth year, would it offset the fact that the first half of my undergrad is basically a 1.5 GPA. Reference letters are not a concern right now as I'll be a teaching assistant next term and will have the opportunity to establish a lot of good relationships with the faculty.
If these masters programs require that the 4 year cumulative gpa be strong, I'm royally screwed. If I'm miraculously accepted into a masters program of my choice, how sufficient will a BSc in financial mathematics be in terms of concepts and academic rigour?
Also, how do these programs compare: financial engineering masters, quantitative finance masters, masters of mathematical finance.
I'm a second year undergraduate student studying in Honours Financial Mathematics BSc in Canada but my undergrad path has been extremely rough. I won't get into any details but there was a lot of family/financial issues that came up right when I turned 18 which lead to my grades in first year being atrocious (received an F in 3 classes and all D's for the rest). After dropping out of university and taking a year to patch up those life issues, I've thankfully been able return to my program and crammed my previously failed courses along with my Fall 2019 term for my second year. I'm still in the midst of finals at the moment, but I'm expecting a lot of B's and a few C's (granted I haven't done any math for over a year prior to coming back school). I'm heading in to next term expecting to fully be back on my "study grind" and finally with a normal schedule, I'm expecting my grades to be around high B's to mid A's.
Anyways, I was wondering how important the first two years of university are to be considered as a potential candidate for any of the Top 25 financial engineering programs. How would they perceive the full year that I was absent from school? I know its too early to come to any conclusions but does coursework carry a considerable amount of weight on whether or not you are accepted into a master's program? My current undergraduate program is extremely math/compsci intensive and I'm unable to take arts electives. Every term(semester) from now on for the next 2.5 years will consist of 4 math/stats and 1 compsci. The math and compsci that I've completed so far are calc 1, 2, multivariable calc, ODE's, linear algebra, intro into analysis, probability, mathematical stats, proofs, financial math, intro into programming, and data structures 1. The rest of my undergrad will consist of courses like real analysis, stochastic calc and processes, advanced algorithms, computational methods in finance, etc. If I were able to receive a minimum 3.6 GPA in both third and fourth year, would it offset the fact that the first half of my undergrad is basically a 1.5 GPA. Reference letters are not a concern right now as I'll be a teaching assistant next term and will have the opportunity to establish a lot of good relationships with the faculty.
If these masters programs require that the 4 year cumulative gpa be strong, I'm royally screwed. If I'm miraculously accepted into a masters program of my choice, how sufficient will a BSc in financial mathematics be in terms of concepts and academic rigour?
Also, how do these programs compare: financial engineering masters, quantitative finance masters, masters of mathematical finance.
