My Profile - Radha

[radha]

Hello Everyone

This is Radha, an applicant for the MFE program at Baruch.

To begin with, here is my profile :

Work experience: ~ 5.5 years
2 years of financial modeling and analysis: - Developing mortgage prepayment models, Customer Pre-acquisition analytics, Due-diligence on Credit Card Portfolios etc. My work primarily involves using advanced statistics to build models and help clients execute the models. Presently, I am working on building an asset acquisition model for my current employer.

3.5 years in IT domain – Variety of roles and responsibilities. I have worked primarily on J2EE for developing service applications and C++ for developing a CRM product. I have programmed in a host of languages depending on the situation and the need, but mainly it has been Java and C++.

Academics:
MBA (Finance): Indian Institute of Management Indore
B.tech: Indian Institute of Technology Madras
GRE: Q: 800; V: 680; Analytical Writing: 5, TOEFL: 283



I have a few questions and would be happy if any of the current students could provide some pointers

At least from my experience I have felt that access to industry data in academic programs sometimes is an issue. Is there any constraint on that front at Baruch? Is there a possibility of getting data with sensitive data encrypted, so that students can work on it?
Being in NY should be helping Baruch in a big way. To what extent does the industry interaction help the students? Are there regular lectures from the industry / fin community? Are there any discussions on some specific business questions which Baruch students can work on? Also any of your feedback on my profile would be immensely helpful to me.

Regards
Radha

[RussianMike]

Strong profile. With regards to first question: Access to industry data, I think you can appreciate why an investment bank may not want to share research not meant for its non-clients etc. I do not think it has anything to do with being in academia or not.
Regarding second question, Baruch has many lectures from finance practioners. Check out the list at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/math/masters_quantnet.html.

There has been some discussion of doing something (specific business questions/needs) that our MFE students may work on but nothing concrete at the moment as far as I know. Since I am not a full-time student I am not sure to what extent I would be able to participate so my knowledge is limited in that respect.

[maxrum]

I have a few questions and would be happy if any of the current students could provide some pointers

At least from my experience I have felt that access to industry data in academic programs sometimes is an issue. Is there any constraint on that front at Baruch? Is there a possibility of getting data with sensitive data encrypted, so that students can work on it?To learn the basics of Financial Engineering you don't really need any real-time data. However, the Subotnick Center has 42 Reuters and 2 Bloomberg workstations which are available for Baruch's students.

http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/centers/subotnick



Being in NY should be helping Baruch in a big way. To what extent does the industry interaction help the students? Are there regular lectures from the industry / fin community? Are there any discussions on some specific business questions which Baruch students can work on?We have numerous talks from professionals working in the Financial Industry. On a top of that, it will be much easier going to interviews living in New York, because you don't have to travel. In addition, there are many seminars, talks, expos are running in New York all year, so if you have time (this will be a huge issue while studying in the program) you can attend all those events.


Overall your profile is very strong, and I think you can do well and benefit from our program. Good luck with your application. I hope to see in the Fall ;)

[radha]

Maxrumyantsev , Mike : Thanks a lot for the clarification on those questions.