How important is banking experience for admission?

[Eric.Z]

From the tracker, it seems that many people with strong math and programming background get rejected whereas many students accepted by CMU or NYU or other top programs have experience in the banking field. I wonder how important banking experience is for admission? How about internships?

 

[snipez]

I don't know about admissions this year but NYU generally accepts a lot of people without any previous experience (internship or full-time) in the field (this is hinted at somewhere on the Courant MSMF website). I also know a few people at CMU who also have limited to no previous experience. It certainly depends on the program I think, for example Berkeley seems to prefer candidates with some prior experience whereas NYU is probably at the other end and care more about your quantitative ability.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Relevant internship/work experience is always valuable in every program. The problem is that this group is outnumbered by fresh graduates with much better grades, test scores who have minimal experience or programming background.
If you are in the admission office, you have to pick, mix, and balance between the two groups. And then you find out that your best applicants also applied and got admitted to the other top programs.

There is no clear cut solution here. You admit the best applicants you can find each year and they do vary in quality yearly. Then you hope that your program is attractive enough to lure them over. If you have nothing to show such as detailed year placement stats, you will lose some candidates to other programs.