Am I being too ambitious given my profile?

[jayjj]

Hi,

I am considering applying for Fall 2024 and would appreciate feedback on whether I should adjust my program choices based on my profile.

Education:

• Current Undergraduate at Top 50 US University graduating in May 2024
• Major: Mathematics and Finance
• GPA: 3.89 / 4.0;
• Relevant Courses: Linear Algebra, Cal I,II,III, Stat & Stochastic Processes, Probability and Risk, Linear Algebra for Machine Learning, FRM, Investment, Financial Accounting, Computational Methods in Finance(Python), Programming(Python) ; Received A in all listed courses

Work Experience:

• Liquidity Risk Management Internship at 500B+ US asset management firm (Involved stress testing and illiquid security analysis and reporting)
• Investment Performance Analyst Internship at a different 500B+ Canadian asset management firm (Mostly involved reporting attribution reports for target date funds and Data Mapping using vba)

Research & Academic Project:

• Undergrad unpaid research project with a Finance Professor involving topic clustering using NLP techniques on 10-K reports (Python)
• Used earnings call transcripts from Bloomberg terminal to predict stock price movement using machine learning techniques; SVM, Logistic Regression, Gradient Boosting, etc (Python)

Skills & Certifications:

• Technical: Proficient in Excel VBA, PowerBI, Bloomberg, FactSet, Python.
• Certifications: CFA L1, FRM Part I, SOA Exam P & FM, Bloomberg Certificate
• Online Courses: Chicago MSFM Prep Course on Linear Algebra & Python(100%), Coursera Certificate on Differential Equations

Career Prospect:

• I am aspiring to be in an asset management industry as a quant risk or quant research analyst given my internship experiences and CFA & FRM progressions.

Test Score:

• GRE: 326; Quant: 169

LoR:

• Math Professor, Finance Professor, Previous Manager during my internship

Program List:

• Chicago MSFM
• Yale MMS Asset Management
• MIT MFin
• Columbia MFE
• NYU MathFin
• CMU MSCF
• UCLA MFE

Given my limited exposure to computer science courses and experience primarily in Python, could this negatively impact my application? I would greatly appreciate any feedback!

 

[_quanty_]

You’re good, shoot high. If possible take another theoretical math class like theoretical probability or analysis. But if you don’t have the time to do that, still shoot high with some safeties. I’d just apply to the top 10-15 if I were you.

 

[Lukee]

Given my limited exposure to computer science courses and experience primarily in Python, could this negatively impact my application? I would greatly appreciate any feedback!

Take a look at quantnet's c++ if you haven't already, this can remedy the limited programming experience