Prof. Blecherman: 
Hi, I'm Professor Blecherman. This short video
is about the process that happens
after you file an application to the
Master of Science in Financial
Engineering program at NYU Tandon.
Everything that happens until the
application is complete is between you
and the Department of Graduate
Admissions here at NYU Tandon. Once the
Graduate Admissions people tell us that
an application is complete, they
surrender it to us, we begin to look at
it, and what follows in this presentation
are the things that we look for and what
we find important to make sure that we
admit people who can be successful
financial engineers. So what do we do? We look at fundamentally five categories of
different things. We look at your grades
as an undergraduate student. We look at
how well you know the material, the
prerequisite material that we need you
to know, to begin studying with us. We
look at your GRE scores. We look to see
if you have any job experience. We look
at your TOEFL or IELTS score if you are
an international student under some
circumstances which I will try to
explain in a minute or two. When we look
at your undergraduate grades what do we
see, what do we look for? We look for
high grades overall. The average GPA of a
student that we accept from a United
States university or college is about
3.75. We look at the grades that you get
in specific courses in mathematics and
computer sciences. Now, if you have a GPA
that's not 3.75but you're straight-A in
math and computer science that's a good
thing. If you have a 3.8 or a 3.9 but you
have grades of C and math that's not a
good thing. We look for both strength
overall and strength in areas that
prepare you to study financial
engineering. And we of course
look at the reputation
of the college or university that you
went to as an undergraduate.
What prerequisites do we specifically
look for? Well, we look to make sure that
all of your prerequisite material was
done at an accredited institution. Lots
of times we get the question, "Hey, I don't
know computer programming, can I learn it
on edX or Coursera?" And the answer is
yeah--learning computer programming on
edX or Coursera is a great thing, but we
need to know that you really know this
and edX and Coursera are not graded
platforms where we can get a real good
feeling that you're good at that stuff.
So, we need everything to come from an
accredited institution. We need to look
at calculus through multivariable
calculus some places call it calc 3 some
places call it multivariable calc,
it depends where you went to school. We look at your programming grades. We look at grades in courses
called linear algebra usually, sometimes matrix algebra. We look at courses that you've
taken in applied probability theory,
sometimes called stochastic processes.
This is very important. And we look for
grades that you've earned in courses in
statistics and applied statistics,
specifically not business statistics but
statistics from a statistics department
or statistics from a mathematics
department or an engineering department.
Now, these things are all prerequisites.
If you don't have all of these things on
your transcript when you apply, we will
not admit you. So, what do you do?
You can go to a local college after graduation
and you can fill in the gaps that you
have in your background and that'll be
just fine but we do not conditionally
accept students who have these things
missing assuming that they will fill
them in when they get here. When you
arrive here, this stuff here,
all of it, has to be as
easy for you as taking out your phone
and sending a text message
because these are the tools that we use
to do financial engineering. We look at
your GRE scores. The accepted students
for the class of 2017 had an average GRE
score of 168.9 on the quant side and
155 on the verbal side. If your score on
the quant side is under 160, we will see
only a summary of your application and
it will be automatically rejected, so 160
is the hard floor for quant GRE test
scores. We want to have a diverse student body.
We want to have students from many
walks of life, from many different places,
and sometimes what we will do to achieve
that is we'll take this 160 minimum GRE
quant score and from places where we get
a lot of applications we will raise that
minimum above 160. So, there'll be places
where it'll just be harder to get in
from, and that's the way it is when we
have places in the world or people 
of certain backgrounds that are
rarities and can add value by providing
unique experiences and perspectives
in our classrooms, those people, the floor
will be closer to 160. On the verbal side,
the floor is 146. Below that, we won't
look. If you have job experience or
research experience and if it is
relevant to the world that we live in
here in financial engineering, we
absolutely will weigh that when we
decide whether or not to grant admission.
If you don't have job experience or
research experience, then you are
pretty similar to about 70% of our
incoming students. About 70% of our
students come to us directly from
undergraduate programs and the other 30%
of our students have some work
experience or research experience.
Okay. TOEFL scores or alternatively IELTS
scores. If you're an international
applicant and you went to college in a
place where English is not the language
of government then our graduate
admissions team will require you to take
a TOEFL exam or an IELTS exam. Right now,
those exams are simply like light
switches. If you score at or above
90 on a TOEFL or at or above 7 on the
IELTS your application can proceed. If
you do not, your application is denied.
There is thought in the near future of
raising these thresholds from 90 on the
TOEFL and 7 on the IELTS and of doing
more compensatory modeling with them, but
right now they're absolute. 90 and above or
7 and above. If you have questions about
the application process and our
decision-making about applications, there
are three different ways to get your
question answered. Each way is
appropriate to a different kind of
question. If you have a question about
the process of filing an application,
what to submit, when to submit it, letters
of recommendation, test scores, the
application itself, supporting material,
statement of purpose, resume,
all of those things, along with questions about where
is the application in process, do you
have everything, all of those questions
go to engineering.gradinfo@NYU.edu.
If you have questions about the
graduation requirements of our program,
the curriculum of our program, or if you
have questions about a particular course
in our program as a requirement or as an
elective, the email address for
that is engineering.fre, that's our
department, Finance and Risk Engineering, engineering.fre@nyu.edu.
And if you have questions
about this presentation I'd be more than
happy to answer them. My email address:  BSB279@NYU.edu. If you send the
email message to the wrong place it will
eventually find its way to the right
place but it will delay you getting an
answer, so try to focus on what kind of
question you have and the right place to
send it. I thank you for your time, I look
forward to seeing your application and
answer your questions.
