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- 1/12/25
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Hi QuantNet!
I am a student at a T10 (non-Ivy), US citizen, studying Applied Mathematics & Computer Science.
My GPA is 3.95+ and I have not taken the GRE yet, since I will study for that soon (I'm definitely aiming for a top quantitative score and ready to grind that out as needed).
I started my college career studying biology, before realizing that was not my calling my sophomore year, and did a hard pivot to cs and mathematics, which I found deep interest in. I love working with math and programming, and I really have no regrets regarding pursuing those academic interests. Through that, I developed an interest in financial mathematics, and pursued masters-level courses on equity markets, portfolio theory, stochastic processes, etc.
This leads me to wanting to apply to MFE programs, and since my family isn't uber-wealthy (kind of the opposite lol), I want to get a very good ROI (from what I understand that means Princeton, Baruch, Columbia, CMU, right?). The goal for me would be to join a firm for trading or research (kind of the ideal but I understand if research is not approachable from where I am), something that would actually allow me to merge my interest in math and cs while working in finance.
However, I have a real concern for my background not matching. I looked at the Princeton MFin resume book and those people are amazing! Already worked at quant strats at Goldman, actual hedge fund quants, etc. Truly inspiring people.
However, my background has been a software internship at a bank (non-BB, basically a credit card company haha). I also have been working on deep learning research, which really has been a mix of signals processing/applied maths and deep learning architecture research, but not working with something related to financial applications at all honestly. I wasn't confident in my probability skills (I took a high-level course last semester so now I am much more comfortable with it) so I didn't end up applying for QT roles for this summer, but managed to get a small IB internship and potentially a SWE internship at a Unicorn. In addition to this, I am a TA for a masters-level deep learning course at my university and held previous CS TA positions in the past (alongside some boards for student orgs but that's not really relevant).
In terms of my projects, I have some experience with regular software projects (full-stack, etc), ML projects, and C++ projects making small tools to help improve finance workflows (like automated modeling, performance metrics, using MPT for optimization with real-time API calls, that type of stuff).
I'm just really really worried about my background not matching what those MFin programs are looking for. I'm wondering what I can do to prepare myself to apply for this cycle? Is it possible for me to get into those MFin programs based off of my background? Should I aim to add something else to my resume that is realistic for me to do?
Would love any advice that you all can offer. Thank you so much!
I am a student at a T10 (non-Ivy), US citizen, studying Applied Mathematics & Computer Science.
My GPA is 3.95+ and I have not taken the GRE yet, since I will study for that soon (I'm definitely aiming for a top quantitative score and ready to grind that out as needed).
I started my college career studying biology, before realizing that was not my calling my sophomore year, and did a hard pivot to cs and mathematics, which I found deep interest in. I love working with math and programming, and I really have no regrets regarding pursuing those academic interests. Through that, I developed an interest in financial mathematics, and pursued masters-level courses on equity markets, portfolio theory, stochastic processes, etc.
This leads me to wanting to apply to MFE programs, and since my family isn't uber-wealthy (kind of the opposite lol), I want to get a very good ROI (from what I understand that means Princeton, Baruch, Columbia, CMU, right?). The goal for me would be to join a firm for trading or research (kind of the ideal but I understand if research is not approachable from where I am), something that would actually allow me to merge my interest in math and cs while working in finance.
However, I have a real concern for my background not matching. I looked at the Princeton MFin resume book and those people are amazing! Already worked at quant strats at Goldman, actual hedge fund quants, etc. Truly inspiring people.
However, my background has been a software internship at a bank (non-BB, basically a credit card company haha). I also have been working on deep learning research, which really has been a mix of signals processing/applied maths and deep learning architecture research, but not working with something related to financial applications at all honestly. I wasn't confident in my probability skills (I took a high-level course last semester so now I am much more comfortable with it) so I didn't end up applying for QT roles for this summer, but managed to get a small IB internship and potentially a SWE internship at a Unicorn. In addition to this, I am a TA for a masters-level deep learning course at my university and held previous CS TA positions in the past (alongside some boards for student orgs but that's not really relevant).
In terms of my projects, I have some experience with regular software projects (full-stack, etc), ML projects, and C++ projects making small tools to help improve finance workflows (like automated modeling, performance metrics, using MPT for optimization with real-time API calls, that type of stuff).
I'm just really really worried about my background not matching what those MFin programs are looking for. I'm wondering what I can do to prepare myself to apply for this cycle? Is it possible for me to get into those MFin programs based off of my background? Should I aim to add something else to my resume that is realistic for me to do?
Would love any advice that you all can offer. Thank you so much!
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