YuleWalker

thanks jahmal for the link does anyone hear about the distribution (master vs. phd, international vs. domestic, physical science vs. social science) for the award?

3,000 awards for OGS? Do you know about the expected proportion of recipients in different disciplines?

Thank you all for the advice! Really appreciate it! I am currently in my third year, and have already taken graduate level analysis courses, which include signed measure, Hahn decomposition, Radon measure, ect. Besides analysis, I have taken two advanced linear algebra, one advanced geometry, so I guess I am not that far behind. Also, I may be able to make up most of the algebra courses and further study graduate analysis by the end of next winter. I think the most unusual thing in my education background is that, I spend my "supposed-to-be" forth year under the name of a FE master degree. But indeed, I will mostly study pure math instead of professional finance courses. The reason for my strategy is that, by switching to a master program, I can pay one-third of my undergraduate tuition fee and have more research opportunities as well as easier access to graduate courses. Things are flexible because I stay in the same university where I do my undergrad. I do agree with most of you that my background is not competitive for those prestigious schools. So I wonder what I can do in the following year to improve my profile? Also, if that FE master degree will really have negative effect on my profile, despite my reasoning as above, then shall I just continue my bachelor's degree, in which case I can get a pure math degree with the extended undergraduate study. Thank you again for your opinions!

Hi, I will probably get into a thesis-based master program in financial engineering this fall. With the thesis option, it will be very flexible for me to select courses and research topic. As I become more and more interested in mathematics, especially analysis, I am considering applying for a math PhD afterwards. So I plan to select more graduate level pure math courses in addition to my two required finance courses. The courses that I want to take are harmonic analysis, functional analysis, probability theory, stochastic calculus, and operator algebra. I think I can handle these demanding courses because I took some advanced math courses for my bachelor's degree, such as real analysis, measure theory, integration theory, time series, applied probabilities, ect.. My questions are - 1. Will it be realistic, or does it look odd that I want to apply for a math PhD following a financial engineering master program? 2. Will the financial engineering program director allow me to take those pure math courses? (I can choose a demanding thesis topic that requires a lot of pure math knowledge. In that way, I guess I can convince them to allow me to take those courses.) 3. What are my chances of getting into a top 10 math PhD program, like MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley? (FYI, I have a good undergraduate GPA, 91%-94%, with a major in math/finance, at a quite famous university. For my master thesis, I will probably work on stochastic analysis which will involve a lot of pure math knowledge, and I will try to get around 95% GPA for my master study.) 4. I am thinking of working with a finance professor and try to write some papers, which will involve a lot of math stuffs. Will that be helpful in proving my research ability or just a waste of time considering those are not pure math stuffs? Thanks in advance for your advice!