<p>Hi, I am a high school student who wants to pursue an MFE (or simmiliar program, e.g Master of Finance, Master Of Computational Finance) for graduate school.</p>
<p>Here are my stats:
White Male From Maryland
SAT I : 790 CR, 760 M, 710 W (Retaking in the fall... I am sure I can get at least my math score to 800.)
SAT II: 800 Math II, 790 Physics, 750 World History
AP Scholar with currently all 5's on the 10 AP Tests I have taken.
Unweighted GPA 3.6 (this is bad, but to be fair, the course load was challenging - for example, I took Calculus my freshman year), Weighted 4.35
260 Service Hours, Will Probably Get Up To 300 By The Time I apply.
EC[s Include Captain/Founder Economics Challenge Team, Vice President Of Robotics Club, Co-Captain Of The Math Team.
I was an AIME Participant, Have won numerous programming competitions, and am also a national semifinalist for the Physics Olympiad. I also got second place regionally for physics Bowl.</p>
<p>Finally, I have done a summer internship at an IT firm, and next year as part of the Superintendent Student Leadership Program, will be interning at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.</p>
<p>Can you suggest some undergraduate universities to look into? The ideal course of study would be a mix of the quantitative (particularly math/comp sci) but would also involve finance/econ. Also include some cheaper safeties :D</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick response. Any cheaper, but good safety options. I was thinking UMCP because it is cheap and has relatively good Math/Comp sci, but darn… it’s finance sucks xD</p>
<p>You don’t necessarily have to go into a school that has a strong finance department. If you want to mainly focus on MFE then you need calc1,2, multivariable, diff eq and linear algebra in addition to some programming knowledge. Other than that when most MFE students gain experience in the bulge bracket or some boutique bank before they actually enroll in an MFE program.</p>
<p>But if you look at some of the people enrolled in the Berkley MFE, some were engineers with non-finance related jobs before they entered the MFE program. </p>
<p>for MFE info you should really go to quantnet.com (Mostly about graduate programs though)</p>
<p>You do not need an undergrad in Finance to excel at a MFE/MSFE degree. Some of the better if not best FEs are former math/stats, CS, and engineer majors. Its the math that is looked at. If you are serious about pursuing it take regular calculus not business calculus. Try to find an undergraduate stochastic calculus course too or become familiar with it. Every FE program needs you to take stochastic calculus to get the Masters. </p>
<p>Basically you can learn finance in the Masters program. It’s not that difficult.</p>
<p>Well be an ******* if you want to, if I were you I would try to take graduate level courses as independent study in undergrad. That is what I did.</p>
<p>Well some math departments do offer a mathematical finance course and that might be a good introduction to quantitative finance. That way you still deal with the quantitative part but also learn some finance. I agree with Juggernaut that you should take a stochastic calculus class as well. You’ll probably be able to fit those courses somewhere in your four years at school</p>
<p>Diversification is good. So I’m asking multiple sources.
In addition, most advice on there was headed to what major I should take, not what Universities I should apply to…
So any thought on that?</p>
<p>No, my dad is a programmer :[
As for connection, atm I have essentially none (although a couple of students in good schools that will probably develop into legit connections :D)</p>
<p>No, I got into the Superintendent Leadership Program offered by my county, and part of the program is an internship. For my place of work I chose Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.</p>
<p>Since you want to do MFE firstly looking at the Ivy League and definitely a school like NYU since they have a fantastic math department and comp sci department. However, all those schools are extremely expensive so in terms of cheap safeties would have to be state flagships which usually have pretty decent mathematics departments.</p>
<p>An economics undergrad degree would better prepare you for the rigor of MFE. But so are other disciplines such as mathematics, physics, business administration and any field of engineering.</p>
<p>The best MFE program I know is the one offered at Berkeley-Haas – excellent profs, the best student body, higest salary potential, etc, etc – [Master</a> of Financial Engineering Program - Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley](<a href=“http://mfe.haas.berkeley.edu/]Master”>http://mfe.haas.berkeley.edu/)</p>