Stanford University - Mathematical and Computational Finance

Stanford ICME (MCF) Admission Discussion

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BigDicker said:
I think I am admitted, I have a button can setup Stanford ID
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Congrats! Would be great to hear about your background.

I am really wondering what are their admission criteria especially for international applicants with professional experience.

GRE>330 - done, CFA - done, investment bank roles - done. Yet it appears that it is way easier to get into MBA at Stanford rather than MCF. Perhaps need to redo undergrad for flawless GPA….what the hell do they need?!
 
Rey_De_Leon said:
Congrats! Would be great to hear about your background.

I am really wondering what are their admission criteria especially for international applicants with professional experience.

GRE>330 - done, CFA - done, investment bank roles - done. Yet it appears that it is way easier to get into MBA at Stanford rather than MCF. Perhaps need to redo undergrad for flawless GPA😅
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You can find my background in the Tracker, but I only have internship experience. I believe a GPA (like 3.8+/4) will be enough, I think they care more about your fits to their program.
 
Rey_De_Leon said:
Congrats! Would be great to hear about your background.

I am really wondering what are their admission criteria especially for international applicants with professional experience.

GRE>330 - done, CFA - done, investment bank roles - done. Yet it appears that it is way easier to get into MBA at Stanford rather than MCF. Perhaps need to redo undergrad for flawless GPA….what the hell do they need?!
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oh trust me, MBA admissions aren't a walk in the park. As adhoc as MFE admissions might seem, MBAs are even worse. They most definitely would put more weight on your "intangibles". Stanford and Harvard MBAs are notoriously hard to get into. First of all, a significant portion of their seats each year have been allocated to rich kids. Then they like taking in people with some unconventional backgrounds (veterans, Olympic medalists for example). Then there are the target employers (think McKinsey, Goldman Sachs). As a normal candidate, you are fighting for what's left.
 
Rey_De_Leon said:
Congrats! Would be great to hear about your background.

I am really wondering what are their admission criteria especially for international applicants with professional experience.

GRE>330 - done, CFA - done, investment bank roles - done. Yet it appears that it is way easier to get into MBA at Stanford rather than MCF. Perhaps need to redo undergrad for flawless GPA….what the hell do they need?!
Click to expand...
I was frustrated like you a few weeks ago too, when I still hadn't heard anything from the five top 10 programs (excl. top 2 which I didn't even bother with) I applied to. I even got rejected by Imperial College in the UK.

My profile is: GPA 3.90; GRE 339; CFA; FRM; asset management fund analytics and macro research experience; got As or A+s in graduate real analysis and graduate probability courses. I didn't expect to get into Princeton, Stanford or Baruch, but not even ONE of the other top 10? I was very frustrated too.

But I spoke to a friend who studied PhD in a fairly prestigious statistics department and I think what he told me really makes sense. The admission process a lot of times is much more ad-hoc than you think. Take his school for example, the PhD admission process involves a bunch of professors in the department sitting around a table going through a pile of applications. Then they just pick and choose whomever they feel they would like to take under their wing. They really don't have a systematic way of "ranking" the applicants, despite being a very prominent statistics department in the world.

Personal relationships also play a much stronger role than one might think in academia. Suppose one of your academic references comes from a good friend of one of those professors sitting around the table. And your recommender didn't just write you a letter but went through the trouble of picking up the phone and putting in a good word for you. How much more likely do you think you will be able to make it into the program?

My point is, the admission process isn't a simple logistic regression on your GPA, GRE, your career experiences. You might feel that it's unfair, but that is the way it has always been done.
 
Just wanted to make sure: is Stanford releasing decisions on a rolling basis up to the first week of April?
 

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