Profile evaluation for Fall 2025 admission

[fkingloser]

Hi Everyone

I would appreciate it if you could rate my profile for Fall application, as I have no knowledge about this admission environment.

Education:
Bachelor's degree on Mathematics & Finance from Top 3 university in my home country(Korea) (2 separate degrees). CGPA: 3.4/4.0, Major GPA: 3.5/4.0

GRE: Quant 170, Verbal 159

Work Experience(Internships)
1. Global markets summer analyst at BB(HK/SG) -> Rates/Fx Trading & Structuring
-Mostly used VBA for pricing, and little bit of python for data Analysis
-learned some concepts on exotic products
2. RIsk mgmt intern at European Bank(regional office) -> market, counterparty credit (rates, fx, bonds)
-Little bit of VBA, but concentrated on gaining some fixed income risk knowledge.
3. Quantitative Research Intern at Worldquant(Regional Offfice) -> Equities
- it's official program for FT hire on Quant Researchers, has nothing to do with Brain research/consultant things..
-80% C++ for optimization and module development, 20% python for NLP
Current Occupation
1. Systematic Trader at top BB(HK/SG office) -> Equities
-KDB+/Q for desk-wise main language
-Python/C++ for individual data analysis/Optimization works
-Javascript for little bit of frontend development
linux...it's quite obvious here


Ambitious
-Princeton, Baruch, Stanford, CMU,
Reach
-MIT, UCB, Columbia, UChic, Cornell
Safe
...I have no idea, but NYU, Gatech, JOhns hopkins, UCLA maybe?

My concern is that my GPA is terrible compared to peers who get admitted, and I don't have any research expereince during my undergraduate. I only used to focus on getting a decent job. So honestly I have no idea how far I can reach to, in those school rankings.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

If you can properly prepare for applications, apply to all the targeted programs. You have decent shots at many programs.
I would stress that the workload is overwhelming in many top programs, especially those with heavy mathematical courses where stochastic calculus, probability, measure theory are subjects that give most MFE students a hard time.
Make sure you prepare beyond the application stages so that you can hit the program in early summer for interviews, taking full courses load, adjusting to a very fast paced environment.

 

[fkingloser]

If you can properly prepare for applications, apply to all the targeted programs. You have decent shots at many programs.
I would stress that the workload is overwhelming in many top programs, especially those with heavy mathematical courses where stochastic calculus, probability, measure theory are subjects that give most MFE students a hard time.
Make sure you prepare beyond the application stages so that you can hit the program in early summer for interviews, taking full courses load, adjusting to a very fast paced environment.

Thanks. I guess I would have to start preparing for those right away, as deadline is not really far away.
Yeah I recogned US internsihp recruitment starts way earlier than Asia, so definitely need to brush up on the math again, as we don't usually use stochastic calculus here in my desk.