how important really is GPA?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
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<p>lol I didnt want to type it all out because you could get the information from the IOE advisor face to face but I’ll explain here…</p>

<p>Many financial engineering classes are offered via the IOE department. No surprise, because financial engineering is technically branched off of operations research, added with some programming classes. Therefore, technically speaking, an IOE grad student could specialize his IOE DEGREE on financial engineering, which means, he would get an IOE degree but with a concentration on financial engineering classes. That’s the thing you can do with SGUS. NOTE: If you do that, you are still getting an MS-IOE, not MSFE, which is the typical financial engineering degree. The only reason someone would do that is if they cant get admissions to the financial engineering program (which is more competitive) and still want to do financial engineering. If you do the MS-IOE with concentration in financial engineering track, you’ll be taking the operations research/modelling/statistics/stochastics class for the typical financial engineering degree, but you’ll be missing out on the computer science component of the MSFE program. The CS component is actually very very important. You cant test your models unless you can program to have your models tested. Unless you are DE Shaw, do you think a firm would want to hire a programmer just to test your program? Or do you think the would hire someone who could make models and program (which brings us to MSFE)</p>

<p>MSFE at michigan is offered by interpro (interdisciplinary engineering program). THe 39 credit requirement include, financial modeling from IOE AND computer science classes catered to modeling (You will be taking those classes with IOE grad students). You graduate with a much more marketable MSFE degree. You cant do SGUS to MSFE. The admit rate for MSFE is also much lower, and the average GPA last time I checked was 3.7</p>

<p>now you see what i didnt want to explain? haha</p>

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<p>Columbia MSFE, which is one of the top programs (more reputable than Michigan’s…even thought Michigan is still top 10 in FE) used to offer the less qualified MSFE applicants admissions to the MSOR (Operations Research) program. Back in the rosie years, everyone was getting jobs, including those that did MSOR speciallizing in financial modelling. But as of late, the demand of quants has declined, due to a certain sector in wall street trying to pass blames on quants (which is totally ridiculous) and the uncertainty in future regulations on trading due to the existence of that dumb tard “I am commy” Obama. The MSFE grads there are still getting the job offers, but way less; and the MSOR grads are finding themselves doing the same thing before they went to grad school and not getting the typical quant jobs</p>

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<p>Okay, thanks :)</p>

<p>Would you think that a CS minor would teach you what you needed programming-wise or is it a different skill set?</p>

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<p>totally different</p>