Transfer Decision

Colleges and Universities A-Z McGill University
1

<p>Hi, First post, looks like a nice bunch of people at this here' COLLEGE CONFIDENTIAL! Nice to meet you all! Anyway, I currently attend Western Michigan University and I am in the "Under Review" category on Minerva. My stuff was received February 9th...does anyone know how long it usually takes?</p>

<p>Also, what do the admissions people look at for transfer students? After one semester I was on the Deans List and got a 3.9 GPA and have 21 credits. My high school grades were decent, 3.2 at a competitive college prep high school in the States, and I passed 3 AP tests. I am a Canadian citizen too...</p>

<p>Have any transfer applicants been accepted? It says the decisions will be made between March 1st and May 30th I believe. </p>

<p>Help! Anyone!?! </p>

<p>-Mark</p>

2

<p>Hey man!!</p>

<p>Did you receive your answer for transfer?
U got in?
I am still waiting too.. waiting for the decision...
My cgpa is around 3.7 even though I failed a couple courses... hehe =)</p>

<p>Cheers</p>

3

<p>im still waiting for my transfer results too.
it says "ready for review" on minerva and has said that for about a month and a half I'd guess.</p>

<p>my gpa was 3.69 total.</p>

4

<p>Stilllllllll waiting, I sent McGill an email and they said the following:</p>

<p>Dear Applicant,</p>

<p>Please note that we release our transfer decisions slightly later. You
may receive a decision any time between now and the middle of May.
Please continue to check the status of your application on Minerva
(<a href="http://www.mcgill.ca/minerva-students%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.mcgill.ca/minerva-students&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>Admissions, Recruitment & Registrar's Office
McGill University
845 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC H3A 2T5
Tel.: (514)398-3910
Fax: (514)398-8939</p>

<p>So we'll still have to wait. I had a 3.9 GPA my first semester at college.</p>

5

<p>I see...
so we still have to wait! The good thing is that they told u you should receive an answer anytime from now to mid may..that's good....
Hopefully, will be soon enough.</p>

<p>Let's keep updated with minerva!!!</p>

6

<p>Any one of you has news on your application?</p>

<p>Cheers</p>

7

<p>my minerva account changed last week, it now says "further review required".</p>

<p>i had to get my university to send my last semester's grades to McGill for that "further review." </p>

<p>i'll let the board know what happens when I receive word...</p>

<p>-mark</p>

8

<p>I got a decision for the faculty of arts and science, I got refused below academic standard...weird...cuz it was my second choice...maybe the competition was too heavy for this faculty? I am still waiting for my first choice, the faculty of management, I had to call them and ask them if they had received my last semester transcript...hehe cuz they have not updated it on minerva...hopefully, my first choice will be the good one!!!</p>

<p>What about u?</p>

9

<p>Mine still says "further review required" so I am still waiting. Did they give you the decision on the phone or on minerva??</p>

10

<p>They gave it to me on minerva... I was like..that is weird... my second choice has been reviewed before my first....
Furthermore, I have already taken a couple courses at mcgill and when I called them, they told me to ask the faculty of management at mcgill (at their very own campus) to forward them my last transcript... but anyways I went on minerva and made the request and I am still waiting for the decision for faculty of management... I really hope it's feasible....</p>

11

<p>I'm still "Ready for Review", damn.</p>

<p>Just got rejected from Wharton, but hopefully McGill will take me. I'd really like to go there. I'm waiting for decisions from the faculty of management and the faculty of engineering, but I really don't want to be an engineer anymore. haha.</p>

12

<p>What are your stats ?
I have called the ARR, and they told me that for the faculty of management, it should be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.</p>

<p>Let's keep each other updated!</p>

13

<p>Awesome. Yea, I was going to call on the 20th which is the latest that the website states it would take for transfer decisions.</p>

<p>My stats?
Community College in Connecticut.
3.7 ish GPA doing Engineering.
Honor Society.
I trade FX currencies and have a bunch of ECs, but those dont really matter.
1310 SAT. 690 Chem, 640 Mat IIC, 540 Writing ( no idea here)</p>

<p>I speak Spanish, Italian, and English(native).
Going to Yale to take classes this summer where I will start to learn French if I get in McGill or not.
I went to a canadian boarding school on the Ontario curriculum in Italy where I had a steady 85+ish. Had a "scholar's tie" for every semester. </p>

<p>Hm. I heard McGill only bases decisions on stats though and doesn't really include your ECs. I sent them an essay and a resume just incase they were interested. </p>

<p>Hopefully I get in or else I'd probably have to go to a community college for another year or maybe as a non-matriculating at Columbia U. </p>

<p>I'm looking to do the joint honors in economics and finance with a minor in either math or stats.</p>

<p>What about you? I'll post if there is any change in my application on minerva.</p>

14

<p>Amazing stats man!
I'm at University of Montreal studying applied sciences.
Took a couple management courses already at the faculty of management at mcgill.
My CGPA is around 3.7 though I have failed a couple courses =)
Yes, I do believe that mcgill admissions are based on stats and it does not really matter what kind of ec's you have. Which I think is kind of good and bad at the same time.
I'm applying for finance or marketing.</p>

15

<p>Well, if it's just based on stats, then our GPAs are about the same and we have about the same chances.
How did you fail classes and still keep it that high?</p>

<p>This semester isn't my best. I've got an A in Stats and Intro to Programming, but a C in Chemistry II (I just wanted to pull out of that class, no longer want to be an engineer. haha)and a B in Calculus II. : \ </p>

<p>I have no idea how competitive McGill Management is though. It's hard to find good information about averages and such. </p>

<p>Eventually I'd like to work in either investment banking (probably not because of the hours, but I'm willing to intern to check it out) or fixed-income/currencies trading. The website says that a huge list of employers recruit on campus at McGill, yet when I checked Goldman Sach's website they didn't mention stopping in McGill.</p>

16

<p>I'm interested in going into investment banking or trading too, although I think I'm going to do a double major in economics and finance instead of the joint honours because it looks like the joint honours has more of a focus on economics. The double major gives you a more balanced emphasis on both, i think. What are the hours like for investment bankers? Did the mcgill website mention goldman sach's as a recruiter? I think a 3.7 looks pretty good for an acceptance. Good luck!</p>

17

<p>Yea, the hours are rough. Coming out of undergrad, you're an analyst and can expect to work a steady 100 hours a week. I think that when calculated it comes to about 7 USD an hour. IB isn't a target job -at all- on wall street. It's just the only job that most undergrads know. When you come back with an MBA you can expect to work the same hours for 3 years as an associate before moving to VP where things get a bit nicer, but still suck. Pay, however, goes up markedly.</p>

<p>McGill mentions that tons of banks have recruited there in the past 3 years, however after checking websites of the banks, I see no mention of McGill on the north american recruiting tour. I do know, however, that Lazard recruits out of McGill as the only univ in Canada.</p>

<p>Trading is much better, though. Except that the job security is less. You can be a complete idiot and do investment banking. Basically they just want you to do excel work as an analyst. I'm still willing to check it out for myself though just so that at least I can say that I tried it and it wasn't for me, but from what I've read and heard talking to bankers, it sucks - a lot.</p>

<p>Starting out in trading you make the same money but work more normal hours of 60ish - 70ish, I believe- allows time for a life and time to spend the hard earned money. The potential to make the real money is in trading. It's a more competitive "eat what you kill" environment though. Traders are also looked down upon as being uncivilized and boorish. I mean, at least on the NYSE, you are yelling prices all day. It does get really hectic. People in IB like to think of theirselves as better, yet at your level they'll just be hunched over a screen typing report numbers for 100 hours for the same pay.</p>

<p>I'm nearly positive that I want to go into trading as you can probably tell from my tone. :D</p>

<p>Equities are dead and boring. I'm looking into eventually trading Fixed income, currencies and commodities or options/derivatives. That's why I want to get a statistics concentration. Thinking about it, I agree. I think it would be better to get a major in finance with a minor in statistics rather than the econ/finance degree.</p>

<p>Then again, I may not go to McGill. I'm now looking into Columbia General Studies. We'll see how it ends up. I'm still waiting for my decision. :)</p>

18

<p>so then what are the target jobs on wall street? I originally wanted to go into trading as well, but it's something that you either have or you don't. And it's something that you don't need that much training for..at least the type of training you get from textbooks and lectures. It just seemed to me that investment bankers were somewhat more sophisticated, shall we say? I am also very interested in trading currencies, which is why I kind of wanted to do economics and why I wanted to learn a bunch of languages. I don't know if the languages will actually be relevant, but why not?</p>

19

<p>Private Equity is a target job, the top of the top. I don't know much about it.</p>

<p>Trading seems like the best deal for me though. IB is ... interesting, but I really don't want to sacrifice my early 20s by sitting in an office doing excel report only to be kicked out once I've finished two years to go get an MBA. IB is also a cyclical business. There are waves of mergers, when IB get most of their business. </p>

<p>Well, in order to trade equities and even currencies, you don't need much formal education but more of a "feel" of how everything affects the markets. Structured finance, derivatives and options ( I dont know much else about it ), requires a very strong mathematical background. This is where the Ph.Ds on wall street are. They come up with trading models. Also, another large area is arbitrage which is basically a riskless profit. It involves trading on a price discrepancy. Again, you need advanced statistical techniques to catch these.</p>

<p>Learning languages won't help you trade currencies.
See, there are then two types of trading.</p>

<p>There is flow trading which is the normal s&t job. It involves completing orders and making profit from the spread. Then there is proprietary trading, which is very very hard to get into. This is where you trade your firm's own capital based on market developments. Goldman Sachs has an internal hedge fund. </p>

<p>I like languages too, but it is only so that I can work abroad and do the same thing. It will allow me to communicate, but won't help my ability to trade.</p>

<p>My plan is to get a degree in either Economics and Statistics or Finance and Statistics depending on which school I go to. I'm going to intern and see which areas I like the most, then either follow with that or go for a masters degree in finance so that I can start out doing options trading, deriv trading, or statistical/event-driven arbitrage.</p>

<p>I really don't feel like McGill is a very finance oriented place though and might look bad for my eventual career prospects, especially since I'm am American. I saw that in their investment club the top guy only was just getting an IB internship at CSFB in his last year. Frankly, I'd want to go to a school with a better track record for excellence in finance placement. This is why I'm leaning toward Columbia, even if it is the General Studies school. It all depends where I get in though.</p>

20

<p>Investment bankers do make a lot of money though, you have to admit, especially in the beginning. Obviously traders can make even more depending on their performance, but investment banking is a little more stable. I don't know what the pay structure is like, or whether they work on commission or not. I think that I would want an MBA just because you're going to need one if you want to keep moving up in the ranks. I do want to do trading, but I don't want to make statistical models or do analysis. I want to make money for people, not models with which they can make money. I'll definately take statistics and continue taking math courses throughout, but I don't think that I would want such a technically-focused direction. I would prefer to interact more with people than with computers or statistics. Don't know where that's going to lead me...</p>