<p>I recently learned about the Financial Engineering at Columbia and didn't really look into columbia before that. </p>
<p>What does the financial engineering program look and focus more heavily on? Is ECs/personality/passion...etc more important, or are they just looking for a loaded stats person?</p>
<p>Someone said SAT II's are very important for FU. Others say at other univ, they are not very useful at all. Can someone verify this?</p>
<p>THANKS</p>
<p>Maybe you should email an admissions counselor instead of asking other applicants who have just as little an idea of this as you.</p>
<p>1) columbia financial engineering is a concentration within industrial engineering/operations research. you do not automatically get into the program, but essentially apply for it.
2) it is very math intensive, so aptitude in math at time of admission is of course important (read stats).
3) but columbia is highly competitive admissions and does not admit purely on stats, you have to have them, but you have to have a bunch of other things too, and it is feasible someone with worse stats than you will be admitted because they are a better candidate top to bottom.
4) you should research FIEN at columbia to gain an understanding of what might be asked of you.
5) SAT IIs are better indicators of your aptitude in a subject than the SAT I. Both will be looked at, but no one test or one part will lead to an admission. </p>
<p>But I think you should do your homework here - and i know you are writing in shorthand, but some of your thoughts are difficult to read, i am not sure what you mean by “Other say at other univ” - so write clearly here and we can help out more.</p>
<p>thanks for the responses</p>
<p>what i mean is that some other schools like agricultural/life sciences at cornell or chicago don’t require SAT 2s so they are not that important anyway. On another forum here, someone said 2 was more important than 1 for FU. I personally know a guy who got in CC without ever sending sat2s…</p>
<p>well they are requirements for columbia, and everyone i’ve ever talked to at columbia admisisons says it is looked upon very closely. plus there is more data out there that SAT IIs by themselves are better predictors of performance as they are tests that more exactly test your knowledge and aptitude. schools more and more are realizing it and preferencing IIs over I. </p>
<p>but there are a whole host of other data that can show aptitude - teacher recs, statewide testing, awards, your own achievements, research. so it is not as if the score itself will matter, but supposing you come from a place where you can’t do much research, where teacher recs are bad, and no statewide testing - not having an SAT II would severely limit the adcoms ability to know if you could do well at their school.</p>
<p>regarding the guy you know - 1) what people say and do are different. 2) read the fine print, columbia reserves the right to make a decision on you before your application is complete, it could work out, but more than likely if you haven’t submitted a requirement that’s a bad idea. i can show you an anecdote to say almost anything, but it doesn’t prove anything. by in large the students who are admitted have strong SAT IIs, Is, great personality, academic achievements and stellar recommendations.</p>
<p>and this is columbia, not cornell or chicago. every school has their own policies. columbia believes in SAT IIs, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t require 2. or back in my day when they required 3.</p>
<p>Basically, if you’re applying to SEAS, make sure you score high on the Math II and on either Physics or Chemistry. Other than those, whichever SAT IIs you decide to take, if any, is up to you. </p>
<p>It’s also pointless to worry about majors before you’re even admitted. SEAS students declare their major in the fall of sophomore year. Also, you don’t get to declare majors on the app either; they only ask you to list major interests. Choosing one over the other has no affect on your application whatsoever.</p>