argtrader

Thank you very much, Brazilian friend! Your observations are very sharp and it's very refreshing to read things that, otherwise, wouldn't come to my mind. I guess that's why you're into a PhD in Marketing! Let me know if I can be of any help. Warm regards!

Thank you very much for your answer! You made a very strong point there with the LOR's. The reason I left out the TOP10 BS is that I figured I had no chance at all at those. I don't want to push back in time this, I really want to maximize the probability of successfully enter a 2019 program. I'm very grateful for your time. Count on me if you need help as well. Cheers!

Incentive: the most complete answer gets access to a full Magoosh account by March 1st, 2019. Operative until May 31st, 2019. Given that complete is a subjective concept, I will let you decide. We'll vote and decide who gave the best answer. Thanks in advance.

Hi, everyone! I'm glad to be posting for the first time in this nerdy place :). I'm from a South American country and also have Italian citizenship (bringing this up, 'cause if you think my chances are higher at an European BS -say, Bocconi or Swiss Finance Institute-, feel welcomed to say it). I'm really dubious about my possibilities of being admitted at a T20+ PhD in Finance in the US. I invite you to check out my profile: Test Scores: TOEFL 107/120 (all above 20). GRE is due on Nov 28th. Undegrad GPA:7.77/10 1st in my class among 1500+. Financial Accounting degree. Latin American Public University. Top 3 in the country. Graduate I GPA: 8.5/10. 1 year Master in Financial Accounting. Specialization: Credit Risk Modelling. Thesis about structural credit risk models compared to Altman Z-Score. Same UN than undergrad. Graduate II GPA: 8.3/10. 2 year Master in Finance. Specialization: Quantitative Methods. Thesisabout a jump difussion model for local equity futures volatility. Latin American Private University. Top 1 in Latin America in Finance. Research Experience:RA for 2 years in the Department of Statistics and Mathematics (Multi Attribute Methodology applied on Finance). RA for 2 years in the Center for Financial Research (sovereing debt curve modelling -NSS, Moench-, Consumer Economics, Inflation Expectations, extrapolating risk-neutral probability distribution for commodities futures from their options pricing, etc). Teaching Experience: more than 9 years being teaching assistant in undergrad and grad courses on Macroeconomics, Public Finance, Portfolio Theory, Derivatives. Earned a higher position by competition in Public Finance (Profesor Auxiliar, don't know the translation of this title). Work Experience: more than 3 years for an international hedge fund located in Madrid, working exclusively in quantitative/research trading of CME interest rate derivatives. Almost 2 years working on the top local hedge fund doing quantitative trading, statistical arbitrage and the automatization of these strats. Relevant Math/Programming Courses: Algebra (A), Calculus (A-), Financial Calculus -Baxter- (PhD level, A), Financial Math undergrad(A), Financial Math MsC level (B+), Operational Research (A), Stats I(A), Stats II (A), Stats for Research (PhD level, A), Probability and Statistics MsC level (A), Dynamic Optimization for Finance in Matlab (A), Derivatives Mathematics (A), Applied Econometric Models for Finance (A), Advanced Econometrics (A), VBA Programming (B-, :/), Computational Finance in R (A), Machine Learning in Octave (Stanford - Coursera, certified). The latest is the only online course, the rest of them are in-class. Relevant Econ Courses: Macro I(B-), Macro II(A), Micro (B+), Public Finance (A), Public Finance II(B), Economic Policy (A-), Economics History (B+). Concentration Applying to: PhD in Finance or Econ, Financial Economics. I thing the first is much more difficult to enter to, since they're smaller programs and much more selective. Planning to apply T20-50. Not picky geographically, but of course if it's California or the East Coast I would be grateful. Research interests: Asset Pricing (ideally, on derivatives and fixed income), focused on the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing (discovering value through non-arbitrage conditions). Also interested in market microstructure, price discovery. Econometrics, time series analysis. Number of programs planned to apply to: 10-15 Dream Schools: Anderson (UCLA) or UCLA itself, Marshall (USC), UCSD, CUNY, Urbana Champaign, Booth, Penn State, Tepper (Carnegie-Mellon), Foster (Washington- Seattle). All comments are welcome! Thanks in advance, guys!

Hi, guys. Glad to be here among this nerdy crew. I would like to ask you for some advice. See, my profile is heterodox and I really can't say what chances I have. I'm very interested in doing research in Finance, mainly in asset pricing. However, as far as I know in some Econ PhDs this is a fairly possible research plan. This is messing my head up, since I read it's very difficult to be admitted in the BS Finance PhDs. This said, let's have a look at my profile (I used the template of another user without his permission -sorry, stranger!-):