Profile evaluation would be greatly appreciated

[DavidKSJ]

Hello, I am applying for 2014 admission and wanted to see where I stand.

Undergrad - Georgia Tech, mechanical engineering

• Overall GPA: 3.93/4.00 Major GPA: 3.90/4.00
• Published a research paper as a third author in a field of crane control movement
• Worked for a big corporate company as an intern three times before going to grad school

Grad School - Georgia Tech, mechanical engineering

• Overall GPA: 3.55/4.00
• Served as a Vice President for a small student organization related to stock market analysis
• Passed CFA Level 1 exam while in school

GRE Score

• Took older version in July 2010 | V: 720 Q: 800 W: 4.0/6.0
• Scores translate into V: 168 (98%) Q: 166 (93% uhh) W: 4.0/6.0 (54%)

Recommendation Letters

• 2 from Georgia Tech (expecting one to be decent, other to be very good)
• 1 from a supervisor of current company (expecting a good one)

Current Job - IT consulting

• Worked for several projects including desktop transformation, operating system migration, application analysis, creating/packaging central image files
• Interacted/communicated with clients many times
• Learned PowerShell scripting, have a little bit of experience in XML
• Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Windows Server 2012
• Will be hitting 1 year mark by next February

Other Qualification

• Passed CFA Level 1 in June 2012 (did not attempt Level 2 in year 2013)
• Candidate for FRM Level 1 in November 2013, crossing my fingers
  
• Plan to take CFA Level 2 in June 2014
• Plan to complete Baruch Certification for C language (not yet confirmed)
• Familiar with MATLAB, a little bit of experience in FORTRAN
• Took classes related to probabilistic models (stochastic process), engineering economics, financial statement analysis, investment, financial/managerial accounting, basic probability/statistics while in undergrad/grad

I did not apply for FE after undergrad because I simply did not know if finance was right for me. I realized that finance was my passion after I took the CFA exam while in grad school. Since then, I have tried to study finance on my own while completing my degree. Also, the reason why I started to work after graduate study was to improve communication skills and due to financial issues.

I am planning to apply for eight different schools: Columbia, UCB, UCLA, Chicago, Baruch, NYU, Cornell, and GT. I have been working on my SOP for past 2 weeks and numerous revisions/edits have been made already. What are my chances? I really want to become a competent risk/portfolio manager and a CFA charterholder later. I would sincerely appreciate any feedback. Thank you.

 

[Jay YK Kim]

I'm no related to any faculty of any FE programs, but your profile seems very awesome. Try to show that you have strong interest in finance field with your SOP and to relate your technical skills with the field.