Seeking for profile evaluation

[AlanRiv]

Hi everyone,

I plan to apply MFE program next year and I want to assess whether I'm aiming too high given my profile below..

Academic Background:
Fresh Actuarial graduates with minor in statistics (Major GPA: 3.4/4) from a Top 10 school in Asia

Studied courses below:
C++ / Data Structure: (Grade: B-/B)
Linear Algebra: (Grade: A)
Multivariate Calculus : (Grade: A-)
Algo Trading, Arbitrage: (Grade: A)
Other statistics courses, e.g. Time Series / Machine Learning: (Grade ranging from B+ to A-)

Didn't study ODE/PDE formally.

Projects/Competition:
1. [Course Project] Studied and implemented various pricing methods on Asian options in Python (incl. Monte Carlo Simulation, PDE, Edgeworth series expansion, etc)
2. [Course Project] Built a statistical arbitrage trading model based on Johansen test and Engle Granger test
3. [Competition] Implemented Vine Copula framework in Python to analyse cryptocurrency return dynamics and make trading decisions based on it. The competition is a local competition and our team only ranked middle..
4. [Personal Project] Working on HMM model to analyse market regime of the US stock market. Based on simulation result in each market regime to make informed trade.

Working Experience:
Working as an Actuarial Analyst in a life insurer for a year, focus on pricing insurance products and assessing pricing assumptions in group medical/life product.

Professional Qualification (if it matters):
near-ASA, with only modules left

Target School:
UC Berkeley / UCLA MFE
NYU / NYU Tandon MFE
NCSU MFE
Georgia Tech MFE

I have checked the class profile of these MFE program, and I see most of them have a UG GPA above 3.7 and exceptional achievement (e.g. rank top 10 in a highly-regarded trading competion) , so I highly doubt that I have any chance to study in one of these programs. Appreciate some advice and honest opinion about this. Thank you so much!

 

[sweet]

My advice would to just apply to all of them (if you can afford all the applications fees) - your profile looks decent so I don't think it would be a waste of your time. Let them decide if they don't want you instead of deciding for them (you never know!). Since your GPA is on the lower end (which tbh doesn't matter that much as long as you have solid grades in your technical classes and a good GRE Q score).