My questions about MFE

[Yang Wang]

Hi, I'm planning to apply for Master of Financial Engineering in US starting in fall 2010.
My profile is as follows

Peking University (Top 2 in China) currently junior
Degree: Bachlor of Economics, majoring in Finance
CGPA: 3.76/4.0(90%)
Math GPA: 3.8/4.0

Dual major in Statistics
CGPA: 3.7/4.0

Exchanged to U of Washington for one quarter.

GRE: V510 Q800 AWA4.5
TOEFL iBT: 106. expired and will retake

Math Course taken: calculus, real functions, linear algebra,advanced algebra, abstract algebra, probablity and statitics. time series.
Going to take stocastic process in fall
Programing course: going to take C or C++ in fall.

No work experience, internship at Top 5 consulting firm(did spreadsheet modeling) and accounting firm(auditing).


My questions:
1. I'm looking at schools like NYU, CMU, Columbia, Chicago Princeton Stanford UCB UMich etc. Is my profile good enough for these schools? or I should lower my expectation?
2. Do I need to retake GRE since the Verbal part is not very satisfactory.
3. Would Gmat be helpful to compensate the low verbal score in GRE?
4. Would a GRE Math sub help with my profile? if the answer is yes to both 2 and 4, then which one is more important? a high verbal or a math sub?

Thanks very much. any comments or advise are highly appreciated.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Your profile is typical, OK for people from Peiking, Tsinghua.
1) You have a good shot at those programs, or even at Baruch. Make sure to add Baruch to your list.
2) No you don't, unless you can retake and substantially improve the verbal and writing part.
3) No. Once you have GRE, don't bother taking GMAT
4) Yes. A 90% percentile in GRE Math means a lot more than a good verbal score which in your case is above average.

Goodluck.

 

[Yang Wang]

Thank you so much, Andy.
I forgot another question. Is it useful if I get a rec letter from my supervisor at internship, a consultant at Monitor? Because many student from non-finance background do not have such rec letters, I thought it might help me differenciate but I'm not sure a irrelevant internship tells much.

Thank you again.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

It surely won't hurt. Get any help you can.