"MFE program profile evaluation" master thread

[ravikantbhatt]

hi friends... i need some urgent piece of Advice
I am done with my GRE(new pattern) and my score range is 1250-1400(quant 750-800 verbal 500-600)
My toefl score is 101(IbT)
I have done My b.tech from NIT Calicut(2010) in civil engineering and my gpa is 5.85/10.
i am currently a cfa level 2 candidate and have have an internship experience in a micro-economics firm of 3 months.
Apart from that i have a full time work experience of 7 months as a business analyst .
i have decent proficiency in SAS ,VBA and excel.
I went through the syllabus of MFE courses and MSF courses,which helped me to realize that MFE is more into trading part and has programming where as MSF being an MS course on finance will take me to the details and technicality of the subject along with the detailing of the maths behind it,which makes it more desirable to me as i am more into Investment banking,equity research and stuff.
kindly advice on which university i should apply based on what i have ,and being an international student the money involved too is a constraint to me...ie i can not shell out more than 60000$.......and hence need a school good in terms of acads brand name and employment................
kindly please come forward and give ur suggestions
they are very important to my cause

 

[bansalmohit]

i would advice you to wait for your exact quant score as 750- 800 is a very wide range. Your gpa seems to be bit low too. Look the tracker and the profile of students and you would be able to get an idea of what schools are for you.

 

[ravikantbhatt]

i would advice you to wait for your exact quant score as 750- 800 is a very wide range. Your gpa seems to be bit low too. Look the tracker and the profile of students and you would be able to get an idea of what schools are for you.

I guess quants should work out fine...maths has never been a problem.....please advice me some university names

 

[bansalmohit]

i will say go for Rutgers as it is near NYC. Also IIT in Chicago looks good for your profile. Being in Chicago would help again.

 

[ravikantbhatt]

i will say go for Rutgers as it is near NYC. Also IIT in Chicago looks god for your profile. Being in Chicago would help again.

i have decided on Purdue, Rutgers, Boston university,Florida State Univ,and University of Illinois......i have not heard good about IIT chicago....please guide

 

[ravikantbhatt]

i have decided on Purdue, Rutgers, Boston university,Florida State Univ,and University of Illinois......i have not heard good about IIT chicago....please guide

any suggestions ????

 

[Andy Nguyen]

any suggestions ????

Tell me why you decided on those programs? How much research have you done on them?

 

[ravikantbhatt]

Tell me why you decided on those programs? How much research have you done on them?

Hi Andy,
i tried a fair bit of research on my part and i found good in terms of brand name, cost involved and course content.
i took two different types of programs that is MS in Finance(Purdue, Olin school of business,HEC Paris and University of Illinois) and MS in Mathematical Finance(University of Boston and Rutgers). As i am an international student brand name matters for me as i need to have a degree from an a very well known institution, second i have financial constraints too, and the last one....Financial engineering is very interesting,but it does come along with coding...i am ok with coding but don't want to rely on it as ....honestly its not something which comes very naturally to me.....i aim at investment banking.....corporate finance.....you may say that,in that case i should go for an MBA but i do want to explore the maths behind in detail....i asked a friend of mine who is in UCLA and after hearing me he said MS in finance will serve my purpose way better than an MBA,as far as MS in Mathematical finance is considered i checked the syllabus, they are maths heavy and are not that much coding heavy, and they do have an option of converting my course into Phd.

I had 2 levels of CFA , GRE range (1300-1450, now i have the scaled score and its 327) and 11 months of work ex along with desire to study on which i could leverage myself....i have a poor gpa ....which i needed to cover up...these things i took into consideration while i zeroed onto these univs

whats ur take sir ?

 

[Freakonometrics]

HEC Paris has a strong brand value in EU.

 

[Joe Ross]

Hi Andy,

....i have a poor gpa ....which i needed to cover up...

Do you have good grades in your math courses? If you do, then an overall poor GPA shouldn't be terrible. However, I don't know what you mean by "poor gpa".

Also, I don't think you will be able to "cover up" anything. These admissions departments get paid to review your application and figure out whether you can cut it and letting people in who can't cut it doesn't reflect well.

In reference to your school choices I can tell you that Rutgers is not easy by any means. You should expect a 60-70 hour week, at least, to make good grades (A or B+). If you are really really smart, you could manage with 40 hours a week.

 

[ravikantbhatt]

Do you have good grades in your math courses? If you do, then an overall poor GPA shouldn't be terrible. However, I don't know what you mean by "poor gpa".

Also, I don't think you will be able to "cover up" anything. These admissions departments get paid to review your application and figure out whether you can cut it and letting people in who can't cut it doesn't reflect well.

In reference to your school choices I can tell you that Rutgers is not easy by any means. You should expect a 60-70 hour week, at least, to make good grades (A or B+). If you are really really smart, you could manage with 40 hours a week.

i got my cgpa converted on a scale of 4 ...it comes to 3.3.....as far as my maths is considered, i have been always good or ok at it, covering up means to compensate for something.
do i need to apply to more colleges????

 

[vaibhavk]

How did you convert your cgpa?

 

[Joe Ross]

i got my cgpa converted on a scale of 4 ...it comes to 3.3.....as far as my maths is considered, i have been always good or ok at it, covering up means to compensate for something.
do i need to apply to more colleges????

I don't think you need to apply to more schools, but make sure the ones you apply to are the right ones for you. Keep in mind that if you don't go to a top tier school or one that has its own career services then you need to have a spectacular ability to find a job, which means there has to be something spectacular about you that companies want to have. This is not necessarily GPA related, but needs to be something that sets you apart from the rest of the field.

 

[ahe]

Hi all,

I'd really appreciate some help here - my circumstances are a bit different from most I've seen here, so I'm just looking for people to tell me if I'm being realistic or if I'm just daydreaming.

Education
(Semi?) Target, Undergrad bschool
- major in Finance
- GPA 3.5 (on the low side - problem #1), only counting quantitative courses it's 3.8 (I have a bunch of art history courses that killed my grade)
- The school's sent many people to top programs years past, but I'm not a math major/engineer, and have limited # of courses in those aspects although I am a quantitative person (prob #2). I didn't know I'd be interested in FE coming to college, and chose a broader range of courses.
- I am int'l for all technicalities, but I speak perfect English and am great at interviewing
GRE
EDIT: Just took it today, 170/170 quant, 159/170 verbal, don't know the percentiles yet

Experience
I am graduating May 2012, so no fulltime experience
I interned with GS in trading Summer 2011, and had my own business (although not related to finance, so probably not worth mentioning)

Recommendations
- 1 superb recommendation. This one is from my professor in Financial Systems Engineering, in which I got an A+ and won an annual hedging tournament. We built a trading system (granted, only with VBA & SQL, don't laugh...), hedge algo (again, very simple), and ran a 3 hr simulation. Me and my partner won after I spent 2 weeks with minimal sleep debugging the program.

- 1 great recommendation. This is from one of my managers on the derivatives trading desk at GS. The whole desk are engineers, and I survived it equally well as another intern who studies astrophysics. I know for sure he approves of my quantitative abilities (which is what I need from him, to make up for less courses taken), but I'm not sure if he spent that much time raving about it in the form... We were decently close, though.

- 1 good recommendation. This last one is from another desk manager who oversaw me on a structured products desk, where I solved problems just as well as my fellow interns doing MSCF at CMU & MFin at Princeton. Again, just don't know how much he'd write for me..

Personal Statement
Writing essays like this is my strength, it'll be good. I discovered my interest in trading 2 years ago and I'm extremely passionate about the markets, and I just want to build more of an edge on the trading floor. I'm not necessarily looking to become a quant, but rather a quantitative trader. I'm looking to stay in the market long-term, until I'm 100 years old if I could... Anyway you get the jest of it.

Applications
I'm only applying to the Tier 1 schools, because anything less will not be worth the money for me, for various reasons I won't get into.

• Princeton
• Cornell
• Columbia
• NYU
• CMU (debating - pretty sure i wont get in, so might as well save the money?)
• LSE (safety, b/c it's rolling & from what I've seen, not to hard to get in but still has a decent rep in Europe)

I was hoping that better recommendations, internship and great personal statement and possibly great GRE would make up for what I feel like is a significant lack of credentials in maths and cs. Also I'm a female so many there's some sort of diversity angle there lol...

So there it is. Please leave some feedback, even if it'll crush me... Waking up now is at least better than waking up 4 months later...

 

[bansalmohit]

Hi ahe

Most of the schools have few fundamental Math courses that you need to have taken in order to be even considered. These include:
1. Probability
2. Statistics
3. Differential Equations
4. Linear Agebra
5. Calculus series

These are the basics, any added courses like PDE, Stochastic processes is always an advantage. Now your intern experience helps a lot, so does some of the other works you mentioned.

But had i been you i would look more towards programs which are less quant like MIT. Its better to find schools parallel to your past curriculum where you have maximum chance of getting in.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

How is your programming skill? Do you need to a program with a structured career services? Can you find a job without help from the program?

 

[ahe]

Hi ahe

Most of the schools have few fundamental Math courses that you need to have taken in order to be even considered. These include:
1. Probability
2. Statistics
3. Differential Equations
4. Linear Agebra
5. Calculus series

These are the basics, any added courses like PDE, Stochastic processes is always an advantage. Now your intern experience helps a lot, so does some of the other works you mentioned.

But had i been you i would look more towards programs which are less quant like MIT. Its better to find schools parallel to your past curriculum where you have maximum chance of getting in.

Hey thanks for the quick reply... I've taken stats and calc, and I'm writing that I am taking linear algebra + probability next semester. My professor is helping through the rec letter to assert that my quantitative skills will be proficient... Would that help a bit - the fact that I will be taking those courses and that I can do well? Or do they just want to see concrete grade?

I really don't see the point of doing a less quantitative program, because it wouldn't really add any value for me. I mean, I already did Finance for undergrad... I'm sure I can handle the quant stuff, I've been focused on that in the Chinese high school education system and I was definitely a top student, but it's just about getting in...

 

[ahe]

How is your programming skill? Do you need to a program with a structured career services? Can you find a job without help from the program?

I had some foundation from high school (when people still used PASCAL... lol) and it definitely is not enough anyway. I have a good grasp of logic and for my IT course we built a whole trading platform (granted, using vba......) When I expressed my concern to my IT professor, he said for me it should just be a matter of taking the time to practice.... Well but that's the issue isn't it... I can't just say I can do this and do that, but have nothing to show for it... And that's my biggest concern in the admissions process. As far as getting through the program, I'm confident I'd be able to pick it up fast enough. I'll just work extra hard before the program starts...

As far as career services go, I don't really need a structured program anymore really. As long I go to a reputable program, I can utilize my own network that I built up already. In fact, I'd probably do a summer internship before the program and try to get a FT offer from that directly...

 

[bansalmohit]

I had some foundation from high school (when people still used PASCAL... lol) and it definitely is not enough anyway. I have a good grasp of logic and for my IT course we built a whole trading platform (granted, using vba......) When I expressed my concern to my IT professor, he said for me it should just be a matter of taking the time to practice.... Well but that's the issue isn't it... I can't just say I can do this and do that, but have nothing to show for it... And that's my biggest concern in the admissions process. As far as getting through the program, I'm confident I'd be able to pick it up fast enough. I'll just work extra hard before the program starts...

As far as career services go, I don't really need a structured program anymore really. As long I go to a reputable program, I can utilize my own network that I built up already. In fact, I'd probably do a summer internship before the program and try to get a FT offer from that directly...

forget High school, tell your college work. you have been saying you have quant back ground from high school and programming background from high school.

 

[ahe]

forget High school, tell your college work. you have been saying you have quant back ground from high school and programming background from high school. It sounds really immature.

I know, but truth is I haven't done a lot of related work in college after I decided I wanted a better liberal arts foundation.

I was simply explaining why, given that I didn't do much quant-related coursework, I'd want to do a MFE program. I was trying to give you context. Plus, I wasn't sure if Andy asked me about programming skills because of admissions or for getting through the program.

If you think that I'm crazy to think I could qualify, you could simply tell me that... I'd still appreciate it. And thanks for the comments from posts above.