I'll try to be as quick and clear as possible. I work for a reputable fortune 500 company at wall street as a programmer/analyst. I have currently 2.5 years of experience, including a promotion and very good recommendations. I have a Bs in CS from a top 10 school in the US, however my GPA has some issues.
It has some issues in a sense, it's divided into 3 sections, I have attended 2 community colleges and my final university. Of course, my final university did not transfer my GPA from previous colleges and I ended up getting a 3.15 GPA for all my senior level course work, which is again not horrible, it obviously does not look good next to those 3.8s and 3.9s people have from not so competitive schools. If I were to combine all my GPAs together, I get somewhere around 3.55 as a final GPA.
My strong point is my math skills. I have a 4.0 GPA in math in all college courses I have taken. In fact, the last time I have received a B in my transcript in math was in 8th grade, and that was the only year (due to gf issues). I have taken all the Calc (1/2/3), diff eq, linear algebra, prob, and real analysis. My CS GPA is 3.0 which is considered pretty descent for my school.
At this point, I am debating whether or not I should take the GRE this summer and apply for Fall 2010. My aim is obviously top schools, UCB, Princeton, Baruch, NYU, Columbia, Cornell, CMU, etc. However, being very much realism oriented person I am, I know I will have problems proving myself to adcom due to a) My not so good GPA, b) Not so much financial math oriented and short work experience.
My work experience at work DOES require lots of finance knowledge, I do know about the business. I work very interesting projects of which I was lucky enough to do C++, C#, and Java, all in the same job role (right now C++), however, it's a tech job and it's nothing like being an analyst or financial modeler (but then I wonder why someone would give up that job to get an MFE degree).
I am buying books (very advanced level) and reading and learning about financial engineering, quants, options pricing, etc as much as possible and may in fact spend some time on an open source project. I love C++ and I believe I can build a very nice GUI around a quantlib like library which I believe will help me learn and get me to closer to be where I want to be.
Another problem with me is my sucky skills in GRE verbal. I am very very bad at it, at the moment, I have not really sat down and studied, but i don't believe I can exceed 500 in verbal unless I really study 2-3 hours/day for 3 months straight.
So my concerns are : a) Not so great GPA, b) Not so long work experience, c) Low GRE verbal.
Please explain your thoughts about my profile, the concerns above, and on top of that tell me if it makes sense for me to take this to the next step and study finance like i am doing now and build an opensource project (or anything that sort) to improve my chances. I am willing to wait 1 more year and spend lots of time on a side project to learn about this, the only thing is, will it help? Will I be wasting my time? And after all, I don't want to learn 90% of the stuff I am supposed to learn at school and waste my money, there is no point of going overboard.
Thanks.
It has some issues in a sense, it's divided into 3 sections, I have attended 2 community colleges and my final university. Of course, my final university did not transfer my GPA from previous colleges and I ended up getting a 3.15 GPA for all my senior level course work, which is again not horrible, it obviously does not look good next to those 3.8s and 3.9s people have from not so competitive schools. If I were to combine all my GPAs together, I get somewhere around 3.55 as a final GPA.
My strong point is my math skills. I have a 4.0 GPA in math in all college courses I have taken. In fact, the last time I have received a B in my transcript in math was in 8th grade, and that was the only year (due to gf issues). I have taken all the Calc (1/2/3), diff eq, linear algebra, prob, and real analysis. My CS GPA is 3.0 which is considered pretty descent for my school.
At this point, I am debating whether or not I should take the GRE this summer and apply for Fall 2010. My aim is obviously top schools, UCB, Princeton, Baruch, NYU, Columbia, Cornell, CMU, etc. However, being very much realism oriented person I am, I know I will have problems proving myself to adcom due to a) My not so good GPA, b) Not so much financial math oriented and short work experience.
My work experience at work DOES require lots of finance knowledge, I do know about the business. I work very interesting projects of which I was lucky enough to do C++, C#, and Java, all in the same job role (right now C++), however, it's a tech job and it's nothing like being an analyst or financial modeler (but then I wonder why someone would give up that job to get an MFE degree).
I am buying books (very advanced level) and reading and learning about financial engineering, quants, options pricing, etc as much as possible and may in fact spend some time on an open source project. I love C++ and I believe I can build a very nice GUI around a quantlib like library which I believe will help me learn and get me to closer to be where I want to be.
Another problem with me is my sucky skills in GRE verbal. I am very very bad at it, at the moment, I have not really sat down and studied, but i don't believe I can exceed 500 in verbal unless I really study 2-3 hours/day for 3 months straight.
So my concerns are : a) Not so great GPA, b) Not so long work experience, c) Low GRE verbal.
Please explain your thoughts about my profile, the concerns above, and on top of that tell me if it makes sense for me to take this to the next step and study finance like i am doing now and build an opensource project (or anything that sort) to improve my chances. I am willing to wait 1 more year and spend lots of time on a side project to learn about this, the only thing is, will it help? Will I be wasting my time? And after all, I don't want to learn 90% of the stuff I am supposed to learn at school and waste my money, there is no point of going overboard.
Thanks.
