"MFE program profile evaluation" master thread

Hey Joy

thats nothing offensive, thats just pure GRE- mania, the mania for words. I dont mean it.
I am a greenhorn and not a savant by any means.

Please reply. to the post...
 
A few colleges that I am interested in :
UIUC , Columbia, Claremont Graduate University, Imperial College London, Manchester Business School, LSE , Oxford, Vanderbilt, Univ of Toronto, Univ of Waterloo, Warwick, Boston, CMU ( comp. finance), Georgia Tech, Georgia State Univ (Risk mgmt.), Univ of Michigan - Ann Arbor.
Please group these universities and do include significant others.
Also include any idea about the placement information concerning these universities.

how much are you paying for doing this work?

Connor,

I think this guy owes you money.
 
We should have a "Buy me a beer" button on Connor profile so people can get him a beer for all the help that he's done.
Seriously, asking people to do the work in that manner would be a big turn off to senior members who may otherwise help out.
 
Need help

@Andy and others - I am totally new to the world of quantitative finance. All I have is knowledge about computers and Math. I am not able to see if I really have any chances of getting into colleges that I found on some rankings. I don't know for sure if I fit into some university situated 20th in the rankings or so.

Tell me the use in applying to all ambi colleges and sitting at home without any admits. I didn't find a better forum than this to ask for help.

Andy, the thread is all about profile evaluations and hence I posted my queries. I now find myself offending you guys. I didnt mean to do so. All I want is some advise on colleges so that I could see through that i pursue a quant finance course starting in 2011.
 
This thread is designed to do just that - to help people better prepare for admission.
Keep in mind that with 27 pages and hundred of profiles, it's often hard to get attention of people who may otherwise help you.

People would like to see that you have done your research and not asking people to find info that can be easily obtained online.

Nobody will get offended with whatever you posted. They will just ignore your plea for help and that's the last thing you want, specially as you said "I didn't find a better forum than this to ask for help".

We have MFE faculty/staff, hiring managers reading this site daily and in this American culture, a "please/thank you" will go a long way.

Here are some starting points
Program Review | Quant Network
QuantNetwork Wiki
Quant Network Program Selector | Quant Network
 
Please evaluate my profile.

All:

Please tell me if I am competitive in applying to the following, since I've been preparing for this for a long time.

Age: 23

Target Schools:
NYU, NYU-Poly, Princeton, Baruch, Columbia, Fordham, Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkeley, and Cornell.

Programs: MSFE or M.Fin where applicable.

Profile:

Majors: Mathematics and Economics
GPA in Majors: 4.0 in the United States after I transferred here from a top university in Brazil 2 years ago. I'm in a big, but relatively unknown, state school here in the US.
GPA Overall: 3.8. Graduating Magna cum Laude.
GPA in Brazil for Economics (my only major there): 2.8-3.0 - Grading is different back there.
GRE: 800Q/600V
However, in order to boost my application, due to my GPA in Brazil, I'll be taking the GRE Mathematics Subject Exam. If practice exams are a good measure on how I'll do on the exam, I'll be above the 90% Percentile.

I've taken all Mathematics classes, obviously. My grades are good. I've mostly been a math major since arriving in the US, and have aced all my courses, including ODEs, PDEs, Analysis, and Real Analysis.

I've taken a programming course in C++, I know how to program in C# and I'm currently working on a Risk management software for Forex Trading (I will not specify the name here, since I don't think it is appropriate). I've also created, marketed and then sold a Forex automated trading strategy (algo trading software, but only the strategy and the software to use it on), and I later sold my company to a Japanese-American investor.

Letters of Recommendation:
Great letters of recommendation, two from my professors, one from the undergraduate mathematics department director, and one from a hedge-fund manager.

I have 6 months of experience working as an arbitrage analyst in a hedge-fund. I did mostly risk-arbitrage and corporate structure arbitrage, but I did look at some convertibles during the period. I was let go due to the financial crisis, and the fund losing over half of its NAV, since I was only an intern.

Extra courses, seminars and workshops in the area:

1) Mathematics and Finance: From Theory to Practice - Brazilian institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (2006 and one day in 2007). Organized by Marco Avellaneda (Courant Institute), Bruno Dupire (Bloomberg and Courant Institute) and Jorge Zubelli.
Speakers included Bruno Dupire and Peter Carr. They spoke on Volatility Modeling and the link between Sovereign CDS and Currency Options, respectively. These are the talks I remember the best, though. Jim Gatheral from Baruch did speak one year, I can't remember which, and I don't think I saw it.

2) Brazilian Mercantile Exchange Institute - It is a learning institute backed by the Brazilian Mercantile Exchange, as the name says.
a) Derivatives Pricing Training
A 144-hour (48 meetings) course, with three exams, where I learned how to price derivatives from simple index futures to credit default swaps.
b) Risk Management
A 171-hour course, three exams as well. We learned everything around the VaR framework, and had an incredible amount of classes on position mapping, from variable to fixed income. This includes looking at volatility surfaces, spread over treasuries and modeling of default risk, and so on.


Other:
Coming from Brazil, I have the unique opportunity to give insight into the Brazilian markets to future employers. And seeing that Brazil is one of the economic powers of the 21st century, and given my background in both economics and mathematics, I'm in a prime position to analyze and understand markets that may be out of reach for other applicants.

Furthermore, I'm fluent in 3 languages: English, Portuguese, and Spanish. And I can communicate in Italian, Russian and French as well, however, I wouldn't be able to read an academic paper on any of these, since I only have conversational practice (things like ordering food, giving directions, small-talk).

Last but not least, I'm incredibly motivated, and I have in my bookshelf: Neftci's Financial Engineering and An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, Jarrow's Modeling Fixed-Income Securities and Interest Rate Options, Joshi's The Concepts and Practice of Mathematical Finance, Paul WIlmott's Introduction to Quantitative Finance and Hull's book, even though the last one I only used for the first course from the BME. All of these I have studied prior to coming to the US, either before my internship or during it. I also have several books on measurement in economics, econometrics, probability and statistics, mathematics, but I don't think these are relevant.

Please let me know if I will be able to secure at least some admits this season. I'm extremely worried about being rejected all across the board, since there is nothing I want more than to learn more about financial engineering, and getting into a great school.
 
@esahione - I think you have a great chance, a very impressive profile. Just make sure you take the time to do a great job on your statement of purpose.

@arvind - I think about MFE programs like this: if its on the QuantNet rankings then it is going to be a good program with a good chance of leading to a job (US only of course). There have been a number of MFE programs started up recently by universities wanting to cash in on the quant-craze, so you have to be careful.

But another factor to take into account when looking at these programs is personal fit. Go to the program and university websites and read, get a feel for the university. I was doing this about a year ago when I was looking at PhD programs and was amazed at how I felt about a certain program based on the information given on their websites and the general tone that information was presented in. Location is also important; at the least you will be spending 1-2 years at a certain university in a certain city, make sure you will enjoy it (and depending on the city, it may be where you get a job).

---------- Post added at 01:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:32 PM ----------

We should have a "Buy me a beer" button on Connor profile so people can get him a beer for all the help that he's done.

I like it :D

But at the end of the day I'm just giving my opinion ;)
 
@esahione - I think you have a great chance, a very impressive profile. Just make sure you take the time to do a great job on your statement of purpose.

Thank you very much for your input Connor. May I ask what is expected in the statement of purpose?

I was thinking about writing about the reasons behind my choice to leave Brazil and pursue my education here in the US, why I'm interested in quantitative finance and how I got interested in it, and the reasons why the specific program I'm applying to interests me.

I'm sure my profile, and my statement of purpose will together be screaming the fact that I love the finance, especially quantitative finance (my dad used to be a trader at a bank that was bought by BNP Paribas in Brazil, and he took me to his work to see what he did. Ever since then I knew what I wanted to do). But other than that, I'm not sure what I should say.

Should I address some possible concerns from my profile?

For instance, in Brazil I got several bad grades due to lack of interest in the particular course (courses outside my major, social sciences for instance). I get extremely bored, extremely fast if the class is not something I enjoy or something that does not challenge my intellect. In fact, I thrive under difficult classes and I suck at easy courses.
 
In your case I don't think you need to worry about explaining your bad grades in Brazil, your more recent grades make up for that.

I was thinking about writing about the reasons behind my choice to leave Brazil and pursue my education here in the US, why I'm interested in quantitative finance and how I got interested in it, and the reasons why the specific program I'm applying to interests me.

I think this is exactly what you should be aiming for. You want to show interest and commitment to quantitative finance and explain why that specific program is a good fit for you and why you are a good fit for that program.

---------- Post added at 05:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 PM ----------

@arvind - A few more UK universities to consider:

Birkbeck University of London
University of York
 
@Connor- Thank you man. Thats a great deal of info you have given me regarding universities. and if you don't mind which university you are in or graduated from ?
 
@Connor - how are placements for Quant finance at Univ of Edinburgh and the UK in general compared to the US.
 
I did a masters in finance, there is a masters in financial mathematics here but its in conjunction with another local university so not very highly regarded.

Job-wise isn't hard to say because I've only had 1 phone interview here (I believe it is related to my needing a work visa) but from my friends the jobs are very competitive right now.

I believe bigbadwolf is in the UK as well and can probably better answer this question, but in my opinion its basically the same as in the US: for the best opportunities you need to go to a university close to the financial centers (London in this case) or go to a big name (Oxbridge)

Everyone that I know from my program that has a job had relevant work experience/internships in finance (ibanking, banking, investment, etc)

That being said, when I decided to come here I was more interested in the experience of living in another country as opposed to maximizing job prospects. I also hadn't found quant finance yet ;)
 
It’s my first time posting here, and I’d really appreciate some feedback on my profile. This is a great community by the way. Thanks in advance!
I have been working in New York for just over two years as an analyst/trader at a small (<300mm) fixed income hedge fund investing in distressed debt and structured products. The reason I am considering MFE programs (both full-time and part-time if available) is because I’m very interested in the material, and much prefer classroom structure over self-study. It might also help with my day-to-day work with structured products (i.e. RMBS, CMBS, ABS)

Age: 23
Target Schools: NYU, UCB, Princeton, Stanford, CMU, Columbia
Education: Triple major in Math, Computer Science, and Economics at top 3 liberal arts school. Graduated with honors and a 3.6 GPA. CFA Level 3 Candidate
Math courses taken: Multivariable Calculus, Probability, Statistics, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra, Real Analysis
Programming: have in written programs several years ago in Java, C, C++, C#, and Matlab. In the last two years, I have only occasionally needed to do some programming in VBA; everything else was modeled in excel or using third-party tools.
GRE: N/A (taking it this month)
<o:p> </o:p>
Can you please give me feedback as to what my chances are at these schools? Thanks.
 
Please evaluate

Hi

I am Aditya Shankar. I am a mechanical engineering grad from BITS Pilani. I have a gpa of 7.7/10 and scored 1560 (Q-800+V-760, AWA-4.0)
I am around the top 30 of my class of 130. I am interning at India Private equity/venture capital association (A non profit research body for VC in India). I am currently working on valuations in the Indian context.

My question (apart from evaluation of my chances) is this:

1. corporate finance seems to be a not so important aspect of FE/computational/mathematical finance curriculums in the US.

2. I am not interested in just an MS Finance but at in MSMF/FE/MSCF (Curriculum Master of Finance Program) this is a typical curriculum for MS finance.

basically i am worried about building my profile around valuations where other people are throwing around stuff like option pricing, derivative trading, etc.

I have decent experience in a lot of technical analysis as i myself trade a lot and modelled the sharpe markowitz portfolio model as a part of my college project in VB. I have all the required pre requisites.

I have a project in fluid flow modelling using Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (lots of probability and calculus)

Only problem: is my current internship helping me??
im planning to apply to CMU, NYU, Umich, UIUC, Oxford, Purdue, Gatech, columbia.

Thanks for your help
Aditya
 
Only problem: is my current internship helping me??

Short answer: Yes. Any experience is going to be better than no experience and your internship sounds fairly relevant in finance. So you should stand out from an applicant with no experience but obviously won't be as good as someone with 5 years of full-time experience. And at the end of the day you really can't do anything about it so.

1. That's because corporate finance generally isn't very quantitative.
2. That is a personal choice based on your interests. But some MFin programs have some quant electives, Imperial comes to mind, so I wouldn't discount all MFin programs.

Some applicants may have some experience with real-world option pricing and derivatives trading but probably not many. Though some would have done some of this on their own through self-study/books, which you could also do.

Your GRE score is good, no problem there. You say you meet the prerequisites but the prereqs are a minimum to be accepted into the program, and you will be competing against applicants with degrees in math. So to better evaluate your chances we need more details on the courses you have taken.
 
Hi

I am Aditya Shankar. I am a mechanical engineering grad from BITS Pilani. I have a gpa of 7.7/10 and scored 1560 (Q-800+V-760, AWA-4.0)
I am around the top 30 of my class of 130. I am interning at India Private equity/venture capital association (A non profit research body for VC in India). I am currently working on valuations in the Indian context.

My question (apart from evaluation of my chances) is this:

1. corporate finance seems to be a not so important aspect of FE/computational/mathematical finance curriculums in the US.

2. I am not interested in just an MS Finance but at in MSMF/FE/MSCF ( Curriculum Master of Finance Program) this is a typical curriculum for MS finance.

basically i am worried about building my profile around valuations where other people are throwing around stuff like option pricing, derivative trading, etc.

I have decent experience in a lot of technical analysis as i myself trade a lot and modelled the sharpe markowitz portfolio model as a part of my college project in VB.

I have completed the following at the undergraduate level

1. Linear algebra
2. Partial differential equations
3. Optimization
4. Security analysis and portfolio management (an elective not prerequisite)
5. C/C++-- 2 semesters
6. Probability and statistics-(1 semester)
7. Principles of economics
8. Numerical analysis

my average gpa in the above would be 8/10
I have a project in fluid flow modelling using Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (lots of probability and calculus)

Only problem: is my current internship helping me??
im planning to apply to CMU, NYU, Umich, UIUC, Oxford, Purdue, Gatech, columbia.

Thanks for your help
Aditya
 
I would suggest forget about what a program is called for a moment and focus on what they teach.
Just because Baruch, UCB, UCLA, Columbia all have an MFE program does not mean they will teach the same material.
Just go to each program's website and see what core courses appeal to your goal. This is also why you can't reuse your LoR from one MFE program to another.
 
Hi, I made a post last week inquiring about my chances of getting into some of the top MFE programs. I guess just to add some questions on top of that:

1) Should I be worried that a 3.6 GPA might hurt my chances of getting in?
2) Will it be easier to get into a part-time program at NYU or Columbia (MAFN) than their full-time program?
3) If anyone here has done part time with either school, I'd like to know how doable it is to take two classes each semester for three years.

Thanks!

It’s my first time posting here, and I’d really appreciate some feedback on my profile. This is a great community by the way. Thanks in advance!
I have been working in New York for just over two years as an analyst/trader at a small (<300mm) fixed income hedge fund investing in distressed debt and structured products. The reason I am considering MFE programs (both full-time and part-time if available) is because I’m very interested in the material, and much prefer classroom structure over self-study. It might also help with my day-to-day work with structured products (i.e. RMBS, CMBS, ABS)

Age: 23
Target Schools: NYU, UCB, Princeton, Stanford, CMU, Columbia
Education: Triple major in Math, Computer Science, and Economics at top 3 liberal arts school. Graduated with honors and a 3.6 GPA. CFA Level 3 Candidate
Math courses taken: Multivariable Calculus, Probability, Statistics, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra, Real Analysis
Programming: have in written programs several years ago in Java, C, C++, C#, and Matlab. In the last two years, I have only occasionally needed to do some programming in VBA; everything else was modeled in excel or using third-party tools.
GRE: N/A (taking it this month)
<o:p> </o:p>
Can you please give me feedback as to what my chances are at these schools? Thanks.
 
1) Should I be worried that a 3.6 GPA might hurt my chances of getting in?
2) Will it be easier to get into a part-time program at NYU or Columbia (MAFN) than their full-time program?
3) If anyone here has done part time with either school, I'd like to know how doable it is to take two classes each semester for three years.

1. Since you can't do anything about it now, I wouldn't worry. Focus on doing well on the GRE.

2. I don't know for sure regarding these programs, but in general part-time programs are considered easier to get in. But at NYU for example, part-time students cannot use the career counseling or job placement assistance. So while I think it would benefit you to keep your current job, you would be on your own to get a job after completing the part-time MFE.
 
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