<p>I got into MIT EA and I listed I want to study economics. However, after reading about financial engineering on the Princeton website, I want to study. The problem I foresee is that MIT doesn't have a financial engineering major, but does have graduate education in financial engineering. Does this mean that I can pursue a 5 year masters+undergrad program in financial engineering at MIT? If so would I need to keepmy GPA above a certain point to be eligible? or any other qualifications?</p>
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The problem I foresee is that MIT doesn’t have a financial engineering major, but does have graduate education in financial engineering. Does this mean that I can pursue a 5 year masters+undergrad program in financial engineering at MIT?[\quote]</p>
<p>Not to be rude, but is this seriously the norm at other colleges? MIT only has a joint undergrad + master’s program for EECS and if it’s typical for colleges to offer joint programs with all of their graduate degrees, this is news to me. If you came to MIT, you’d be able to take grad classes in financial engineering, but there aren’t any other 5-year programs that I’m aware of.</p>
<p>Additionally, 5 years is considered pretty fast to finish a bachelor’s + master’s. For the MEng, it’s only advertised as an extra year because people who take it generally finish their undergrad requirements first term senior year and take their required classes second term senior year so they have the whole next year to write a thesis.</p>
<p>I understand this isn’t normal at most, and that only two universities in the country offer financial engineering as an undergraduate major, Columbia and Princeton. Sorry to sound ignorant, but I just wanted to know if I could do more than just take classes in financial engineering during undergrad. Does anybody know anything about the specifics of MIT’s financial engineering?</p>
<p>^I thought Management Science with perhaps a concentration in Operations Research would be the equivalent of Princeton’s ORFE. But geez I really have no idea :P</p>
<p>Does anyone know?</p>
<p>Sloan definitely doesn’t offer a 4+1 plan, but in general, taking grad classes as an undergrad is pretty easy. If you have a good relationship with Sloan professors, it would probably be relatively easy to get into the Master’s program after you graduate as well (at least, that’s how it works in the other departments). I don’t know if anyone on this board is really all that familiar with how Sloan stuff works, though.</p>
<p>Also I apologize to everyone on this thread for screwing up the quotes tags…it’s been awhile since I wrote any HTML, clearly :P</p>
<p>k4r3n2 could be right.</p>
<p>From my knowledge, MIT grad school in engineering loves it’s undegrads. MIT sciences tend to dsicourage in-breeding and wants people to leave for grad school. I have no idea about Sloan in these terms.</p>
<p>why do you want to switch from econ to FinEng or OpMan, twazie?</p>
<p>what you’d probably want to do is major in course 15 (business management, the full undergrad major run by sloan) and then get a masters of finance. </p>
<p>but if you want to focus in financial engineering as an undergrad, frankly MIT isn’t the best program for you, since that’s not what we do. princeton and wharton are schools that specialize in that.</p>
<p>My understanding from friends is that undergrad course 15 majors generally prefer to go elsewhere for their MBAs, because many Sloan courses are joint grad/undergrad classes, and doing an MBA at Sloan would mean repeating much of the coursework they took as undergrads.</p>
<p>MBA programs also tend to highly favor applicants with work experience. The track of many of my fellow MIT alums has been to graduate, work at a top company for a few years, then go back to business school. In the case of my friends, that business school has been HBS.</p>
<p>thanks everyone for all of your words. As of right now I am undecided, but am just bouncing around ideas. Thanks for all your input.</p>
<p>@twazie, if interested in financial engineering, also consider there are many ways to learn. Doing a math, applied math, or engineering degree is one way. If there are operations research classes, that would work too. Then, you can always apply to a 1 year financial engineering program, of which there seem to be many good ones. I imagine MIT has one. And that getting into MIT after a fairly strong showing at MIT should be easier or at least no harder than if you were elsewhere.</p>
<p>You want to have solid foundations in things like probability, stats, stochastic mathematics, and know how to program. OR classes might teach mathematical modeling, optimization, and other useful skills. Getting some internships helps too, I imagine. Some fin eng programs, like MBA, prefer work experience greatly.</p>