^I agree that Harvard is better than Yale for what you want to do. But the question is whether it’s worthwhile to put in the not-insignificant effort to transfer, since you’re going to get a graduate degree anyway. You may be better off spending your time on other things that will make a more meaningful difference to your future employer.
OP: My references to Northwestern’s programs & to the University of Virginia were just to give you an idea of courses that might interest you & help direct your academic path.
Since you are planning to stay through the sophomore year–at least–at Yale, junior year entry would be too late for both Northwestern & Virginia. Plus, both schools’ programs have limited enrollment & are highly selective. ( The 20 to 30 students at Virginia & the 50 students selected at Northwestern as well as the MMSS contingent at Northwestern will be equal to MIT, Harvard, CMU, Stanford & CalTech types.)
CMU was referenced for the masters program in computational finance. Otherwise CMU undergraduate courses may help direct your planned development in your desired field.
In my opinion, your plan to transfer to Harvard/MIT is wise because the worst that you can do is to learn to love Yale. Some regard Stanford as a mix of Harvard & MIT although on the West Coast.
Yes, Northwestern places in Chicago, but with the very close NU/Kellogg relationships, if one prefers NYC, then interviews can be arranged. (I have one relative who loves Chicago, but was offered NYC & refused–although not for hedge fund placement. Another relative from UChicago–a math major–started in a Chicago hedge fund after undergrad then after two or three years moved to a NYC based hedge fund.)
Virginia McIntire–both undergrad & graduate–as well as UVA law school, place well in NYC for various sought-after industries. In my view, UVA really is a great school for business/finance/and for law.
I have dipped in & out of this thread for a while. Let’s take it as a given that the OP is going to re-apply to Harvard, and that the OP knows that it is a really long shot.
So, the space where we might be able to be helpful after that is: what is plan B? IF Harvard rejects for a second time is Yale an OK choice? It doesn’t sound like it.
Then, OP: if you really don’t want to stay at Yale what would be the next best choice after Harvard? Have you looked at the suggestions-CMU, NU, UVa, etc? Would you not consider applying to MIT? There is more Liberal Arts there than you might realize.
@Publisher You’re advice has been very useful! I’ve taken a look at a wider range of schools that could possibly fulfill my goals. After doing some more research I think my top choice would be either Princeton or Harvard.
I knew about Princeton’s ORFE major, but I didn’t mention it on here since like Harvard, their transfer rate is very low. But, the program is the embodiment of everything I want in a school, so it’s at least worth a try. The one thing to note about Princeton is that unlike Harvard where I was waitlisted, I got flat out rejected at P. Some of it may have to do with the fact that we had 2 female athletic recruits (who played the same sport as me), so in admissions they my have been considered to similar to me thus limiting my chances. But of course, I’m only speculating.
I also think I could make a much stronger case for a transfer to Princeton since the program is highly specialized in financial engineering and the concepts behind it. At Harvard, I could also make a case, but it would undoubtedly be weaker since quantitative finance is only a side-speclaization within the statistics concentration.
Another strong contender would also be Stanford. They have the management science and engineering degree which also has some pretty specialized quant finance aspects to it. A case could be made for Stanford since their STEM heavy emphasis provides a lot of opportunities within the field in the form of professors focused on quantitative financial modeling among other aspects.
And the last schools I am considering is Wharton. I know they aren’t generally regarded as a quant powerhouse, but they still concentrations and classes that focus on quant finance and financial engineering. Given their large emphasis on finance as a whole, I think blending a math heavy degree with fundamental finance could prove to be very interesting. Something I forgot to mention is that the hedge fund manager I interned with is an alum who is a substantial donor to Penn, and primarily Wharton, so that may or may not help come admissions time.
Looking back on it, I regret not giving Columbia, Cornell, and Northwestern more consideration. Given that I wasn’t very interested in quant finance at the time, I thought Yale would be my best choice, all thing considered, out of the ones that I was accepted to.
@collegemom3717 Your assessment is spot on! I am definitely going to apply to Harvard, regardless of the odds; I know I would regret not trying. Planning for a plan B is also very important.
You mentioned that Yale doesn’t seem like a good choice moving forward, and I am inclined to agree. As much as it pains me to say it, my first year at Yale was awful. I made a lot of friends and made some good relationships across the board, but academically, I could feel that I wasn’t enjoying the atmosphere. And socially, my friend group was limited to a small subset of the entire student body. I just don’t feel like I can branch out at Yale, both socially and academically. To put it simply, I feel confined to something I don’t want to do and be. Obviously, I am going to go into a sophomore year with an open mind, but I highly doubt my experience will be drastically improved.
As far as a plan b, I listed my top options above. Like @Publisher mentioned, I am quite limited due to the fact I am applying as an incoming junior. Of course MIT could always be an option. I visited when I was considering applying as a freshman. It wasn’t awful to the point where I decided not to apply based on the visit experience (like CMU), instead I decide to not apply, because I wasn’t into the cohesive and expansive STEM cult they have. It sounds contradictory, but one of the reasons I don’t like Yale is the lack of STEM culture, but I also don’t want a school that is all STEM. In my opinion, schools like Princeton and Harvard do a good job of balancing STEM with other fields.
If you could take a look based on my current list, I would love to hear your advice. The school I listed above are a rarity for transfers especially from a school like Yale. Out of all the ones, I’m looking at right now, Wharton would probably be the easiest as a transfer (and I say easy in comparison to Harvard; I understand it’s incredibly competitive), but it’s also the one that deviates the most from what I’m looking for. My top choices are for sure Harvard and Princeton (and maybe Princeton has the slight edge). Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!
2019 transfer acceptances:
Harvard- 13 (0.135% of applicants)
Princeton- 13 (0.9% of applicants)
Stanford- 27 (1% of applicants)
Wharton- Junior transfers not accepted
Columbia- 150 (under 10%)
Cornell- too hard to separate out the contract transfers
Northwestern- 159 (8%)
My suggestion is that if, when transfer apps are due next spring, Yale is still really, truly not a place that you can make work, you add to your list of schools you deem acceptable. If you stick to HPS (W is not an option) your odds of success are so low that you are likely to end up staying at Yale.
Haven’t read all the posts.
You said would it help your app if you talk about all the reasons you don’t fit at Yale. No, it will not.
Harvard isn’t interested in why you don’t fit at Yale. They are interested in why you need to be at Harvard. Give them solid reasons why you need to be there.
Princeton only recently (about two years ago?) (re)started accepting a few transfer students and the few spots are primarily reserved for low-income students and community college students.
With respect to courses offerings and one’s major, it is relevant to point out that one’s current school–Yale in this case–does not offer the appropriate courses, but that the target transfer school does offer these needed / desired courses.
Agree with @1NJParent that Princeton is very unlikely to accept a Yale transfer applicant.
Nonetheless, it is important that OP examine Princeton’s course offerings in quantitative finance / applied math in order to better construct & communicate his reasons for applying to transfer.
There have been a few on the forum who got rejected from Harvard and re-applied as transfers and got in. Most are pre-2007 when Harvard accepted around 80-90 transfers a year. I’ve only seen one user who got in as a transfer after 2010 when they drastically reduced the size of the transfer class.
@gyuanyu got in as a transfer in 2016 but got wait-listed and then rejected as a freshman applicant. She was a legacy applicant however.
Lurking on the 2006 threads, @For Shaganov got in as a transfer after getting rejected as a freshman. @WindCloudUltra got waitlisted and then rejected as a freshman and got in as a transfer in 2006.
One user I can’t find now applied 3 times and got in on her 3rd time. She said she applied as a freshman, didn’t even get waitlisted. She got rejected as a sophomore transfer and finally got accepted as a junior transfer.
There have been quite a few from just quickly lurking but they were in 2006 and before. There were also quite a few in the 2005 thread that had applied before and got rejected and then got accepted.
It seems like the best time to transfer to Harvard was before 2007.
@transferthrow555 Hello. I signed up for this site specifically to comment on your post. I stumbled onto CC many years ago, and since then I have dropped in on occasion. However, I don’t think that I have even come by here often enough to be labeled a “lurker.”
First, be honest with yourself. You don’t want to give up the Yale name without getting something comparable back. There is nothing wrong with that. As long as you don’t disrespect people who have gone to less selective colleges, you have the right to celebrate and cherish the concept of prestige in your own way.
I would like to suggest 4 schools to you: Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, the London School of Economics. I think that one of these schools could be a good option for you. I realize, based on what you wrote earlier, that this would mean giving up a summer internship in order to fulfil ROTC. But if you are really unhappy at Yale then that might be a sacrifice that you need to make. You could always do the same internship, or a comparable internship, after junior year.
I think Oxford could be a good option for you if Harvard and Princeton don’t pan out. Perhaps Cambridge could as well. They both have an incredible brand name, alongside HYPS. They are world-renowned. And I don’t think going to Oxbridge will be unimpressive to employers. You don’t want to go to MIT, and might not get into Harvard or Princeton, so that leaves those two schools, along with Stanford.
I understand that you think it will be helpful to have an American university as part of your pedigree, but there is always grad school. And Oxbridge looks great to American grad schools, especially if accompanied by 2 years of terrific grades at Yale on your transcript.
Now here is where UCL and LSE come in. If you can’t arrange a transfer to Harvard, Princeton or Stanford, and you aren’t willing to consider Columbia, which is close in prestige, and seems like a much more viable option based on what @collegemom3717 wrote above, then you will have to ask yourself whether you can stand to go back to Yale for in the Fall of 2021 for a 3rd straight year. If the answer is no, then you will have to consider other options. This especially holds true if you cannot arrange a transfer to Oxbridge, or aren’t yet ready to commit to that scenario. If that is the case, then I think I have a solution for you that you have not yet considered: a year abroad.
Yale allows students to go abroad for a whole year. And you can get 9 Yale credits, or a years worth, if you attend one of those schools through Yale’s programs. They don’t seem to have a program with Imperial College London, which is just as well, since I have heard that ICL kind of like the MIT or Caltech of the UK. But they do indicate that you can try to pick a university not on their list if you petition for. LSE is legendary for finance and UCL is regularly listed as one of the best universities in the world. If Oxbridge is like HYPS, and ICL is like MIT and Caltech, then maybe UCL and LSE are most comparable to Columbia and Wharton, respectively.
I think you could probably take the classes you are looking for in quant finance and computer science at 1 of these 4 schools. I get the impression that you have to rank your choices and then Yale matches you up. Here is the site I went to: https://studyabroad.yale.edu/get-started/search-programs?combine=&field_country_value%5B%5D=United+Kingdom
After doing a whole year in the UK you would have a couple of options. First, you could come back to Yale for your final year, having gotten a break from it, and tolerating the things you don’t like about it. Second, you might be able to request a permanent transfer to the school that you attend for a year. So perhaps if you are attending Oxford you can take care to make certain that the classes you are taking are putting you in line to get the classes you need in order to successfully graduate after 4 years in college, 2 at the UK school you are attending.
Of course, it is possible that they will regard you as a senior transfer student, which they don’t allow. But if you have done a year there already then perhaps they will retroactively view you as a junior transfer student. You should probably check to see which of these 4 schools are most likely to be willing to let you do that. In any event, you will meet professors who might be willing to go to bat for you with the admissions committee. You could simply say: I love it here, I don’t want to leave.
Being able to say, for the rest of your life, that you went to Yale for 2 years, before graduating from Oxbridge, sounds pretty cool. And after a year at UCL or LSE you might decide that they are good enough as well, when taken in tandem with Yale. If nothing else, they will get you out of New Haven for a year, if you really feel like you need a break from the place.
In the meantime, I would suggest taking a look at Stanford and Columbia as well. And I would also suggest, as you have already indicated you plan to do, that you give Yale another chance for sophomore year. It is a great school and there are a lot of things there that you could really enjoy. Finally, if you are getting the kind of terrific grades at Yale that you have described to us, then that will no doubt look very good when the time comes to apply to grad schools.
OK, that wraps up this post, my first on CC. Extra credit for anyone who can look at and read my whole post and figure out where I went to college. For brilliant people who went to Harvard and Yale the riddle should be solvable.
I went to Harvard, work in a stats related field and also have a sibling at Yale also pursuing a quantitative degree. If you get a good education in fundamental stats, math and probability and CS, regardless of whether it is at Yale or at Harvard, you’re fine for any quant finance job that is willing to hire undergrads. To overly focus on a few specific quant finance related courses at Harvard or MIT seems pretty misguided. They are not going to make or break or even be a significant factor in your career success.
Also what do you mean by not being a social fit? By and large Harvard and Yale demographics are very similar.
It seems to me that perhaps your bitterness about not getting into Harvard is coloring your Yale experience and making you overly focus on things that in the grand scheme of your career will make little difference.
Look at the Common Data Set…there were only 17 transfers to Harvard last year.
https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2019-2020.pdf
Also see if there are Yale graduates at the firm you want to work at…what did they major in?
Lots of premature optimization by OP here. Having the alumni network of MIT/Harvard will help you land an interview. After that, it’s completely on you to get the offer.
No point in transferring to Harvard just to get an interview but not have the technicals down. Passing the interviews is mostly self study and personal projects. I guarantee that a few quant related courses at Harvard/MIT will NOT be the reason you land an offer. It would be silly to think a math/physics degree from Yale will hinder you from doing well. The finance and modeling is taught to you in your first few weeks of internships anyway. Focus on stats, CS, and probability and stay hardworking.
This is a meritocratic field where school name comes secondary to talent. You will have to be a bit more proactive with applying to newer/smaller funds from Yale, but that has never held anyone back. For reference, my three friends interning at JS in the past year went to UCSD, USC, and UT. All 3 are USA(J)MO qualifiers.
Smart people will be smart wherever they go.
I’d add UChicago to your list as well.
There’s no harm in applying and then deciding.