Aerospace Eng BS --> Finance PhD

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi all, just found the site, glad to have this resource to look at when making decisions about grad school!</p>

<p>Anyway I was hoping some people could give me their feedback about my situation.</p>

<p>I just graduated in May with a BS in Aerospace Engineering from #2 ranked Georgia Institute of Technology. At first I was going to just go into industry for a while and then maybe get an MBA, but now, with the economy the way it is, I'm not really finding jobs I'm interested in. I've always had an interest in the economy or more specifically the financial markets (stocks and especially the foreign exchange). I started seriously considering a PhD in finance a couple months ago and am in the process of preparing for the GMAT (with my extra free time i'm going all out, using about 12 books to study from).</p>

<p>I want to see what kind of schools you all think I should realistically expect to get into.</p>

<p>I don't have any specific research interest ironed out, but probably something in monetary policy or currency markets. I want to use computational methods, including programming if necessary, along with econometric analysis. I think I would primarily be interested in an academic career.</p>

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<p>My stats:</p>

<p>Undergrad GPA (Aerospace engineering/Georgia Tech): 3.03 (not great, I know, but the grades trend from freshman year to graduation was definitely up. My junior/senior GPA is a little above a 3.3)</p>

<p>GMAT: Based on my practice tests and prep I'm hoping for 750-760 with about another month to prepare</p>

<p>Major experience:</p>

<p>Several aerospace related national team design competitions, with my team getting 2nd place one year, 1st another (when I was team leader), and 3rd just last year (as part of my senior design project).</p>

<p>Undergraduate Research Assistant in a lab doing 3D computer modeling and that kind of stuff, I did some assisting with online classes for Boeing employees but nothing too special.</p>

<p>Engineering summer internship for a manufacturer working on Boeing's 787 plane (I worked 70 hour weeks for a period of about 10 weeks, if that matters)</p>

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<p>I can probably get some decent recommendation letters but they would be from professors and professionals in the aerospace industry.</p>

<p>Schools I'm considering (from pie-in-the-sky to reasonable): MIT, Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, University of Tennessee</p>

<p>Sorry for the long message... but what do you all think?</p>

2

<p>Most finance programs require GRE not GMAT. See [url=<a href=“http://www.quantnet.org%5DQuantnet.com%5B/url”>http://www.quantnet.org]Quantnet.com[/url</a>] for information on finance, including schools.</p>

3

<p>thanks for the link, i’ll look into the test issue but all the programs i looked at either require or strongly prefer GMAT.</p>

4

<p>I’m aero as well and looked into econ and business grad programs a bit. It looks like finance is more on the business side, so the GMAT is preferred. For econ and financial engineering, the GRE and anything supporting math skills are definitely preferred. It sounds like OP is more interested in finance strictly though, not financial engineering.</p>

5

<p>Thanks for your reply aoeuaoeu. I am somewhat interested in financial engineering, or more specifically quantitative/computational finance. The thing is that I’m not too interested in a MS in financial engineering because I don’t want to work in the industry. I’d rather work in academia, thus the interest in a PhD. I’m assuming I can find a quantitative/computational finance niche in a PhD program… econometric analysis and such.</p>

6

<p>Financial engineering is pretty much equivalent to computational finance (and computational finance is pretty much CFD with different PDEs). I’d be surprised if you could find a quant position in a finance PhD program, considering the latter sounds more aligned with business than quantitative finance programs which are applied math. The most I’ve heard is that every quantitative finance program stresses math skills extensively. I’d wager that a 3.0 in aero, but with a 4.0 in math courses throughout PDE’s would be enough to get into most top quant programs. I emailed Emanuel Derman (you probably know the name) and he replied simply that grades in math courses are the most significant factor in FE admissions.</p>

<p>This is just a personal aside… but I ended up staying with aero because I got bored to hell with the numerical, nonspatial field of finance as I seriously looked into it. Things like the [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black–Scholes]Black-Scholes[/url”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black&#8211;Scholes]Black-Scholes[/url</a>] just didn’t excite me compared to fluid mechanics. Something to think about, since most engineers tend to be spatial thinkers (from what I’ve seen).</p>