Hi y’all,
I am currently a senior at UCI majoring in Chemical Engineering while getting two minors in Computer Science and Statistics. I’m been interested in Financial Engineering for while. I was wondering how hard is it to get into the top schools for MFE or Mathematical Finance programs (Princeton, UCB, Stanford, Columbia, etc.)? what GPA do they require? My GPA is about 3.6, so will I have a chance? Are my undergrad classes sufficient to be accepted to any of those programs?
It is very competitive. The best programs have acceptance rates hovering around 10% and they get a lot of extremely qualified candidates (800 GRE, International Math Olympiad finalists, ranked #1 in class, etc).
A GPA of 3.6 would probably be close to the cut-off at top programs.
Many programs publish incoming class statistics as well as pre-requisites. You may want to look at their websites to check whether your stats are competitive and whether you satisfy their admission requirements.
Source: MFE grad