CMU Master of Science in Computational Finance (MSCF)

ESSAY A：
What are your reasons for undertaking graduate study in the field of computational finance at Carnegie Mellon? Please describe how your experience, your education, and your graduate training at this school and your future career plans relate to each other. Describe your short-term and long-term objectives and how you plan to achieve them.

As the top quantitative finance program, Carnegie Mellon’s MSCF program equips graduates with both a solid foundation in quantitative finance and high-level skills and conceptual framework required to find innovative and effective solutions for the challenges faced by the ever-changing and increasingly complex financial services industry. That is why CMU’s four leading institutions encompassing Computer Science, Mathematical Sciences, Business and Statistics jointly operate the 18-year-old fully interdisciplinary program.

Innovative solutions are what every industry hungers for but the most hard to come by. Innovations are difficult because they are derived only from what is non-ordinary. MSCF is non-ordinary because, contrary to the general trend of producing specialists, it develops generalists with specialized multi-disciplinary knowledge. This unique generalist-specialist combination is why CMU’s MSCF can produce graduates capable of innovative and effective solutions.

Solutions at once Innovative and effective are very limited in number because people of the generalist-specialist trait, in this age of increasing specialization, are limited in number. But it is precisely this limited number of innovative people who will be the leaders of tomorrow and their innovative solutions will make a huge difference in our world.

I want to enter the MSCF program because I possess the rare multi-disciplinary excellence that your fascinating program requires and because I have a real need. My education background consists of a B.S. degree and a M.S. degree in computer science at a leading university in my country, where my distinguished academic performance is embodied not only in highest GPA but also in Excellent Thesis of the University, as well as Excellent Student Honor. As a computer science major, I have received mathematics training whose rigorousness is virtually comparable to that of mathematics majors and my research projects and theses already involved complicated mathematics modeling and the in-depth application of computer programming.

My education is closely related to my 6-year work experience at two leading international IT corporations—Bell Labs China and Sun Microsystems China Engineering and Research Institute. As indicated by my Resume, my outstanding contributions to more than a dozen cutting-edge global IT software projects as developer, program manager & technical consultant (including the JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) which, after its adoption by JDK 6.0, serves as a powerful utility for millions of global Java developers), has made me the Star Employee. More immediately relevant to your program is my development of the Financial Information System for the Three-Gorge Financial Company, which oversees the financial operations of the world’s largest water conservancy project. With my IT engineering expertise, I have collaborated with a professor of economics on studying and publishing about the hedging performance of copper futures in Shanghai Futures Exchange involving three complicated hedging models. Hence, even before undertaking your MSCF program, I have already been integrating my multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills in financial engineering endeavors.

Such endeavors and achievements have made me realize my full foundation and unlimited potential in financial engineering. Therefore, the MSCF program is really an expansion of my intellectual pursuit in formal financial engineering, a vital turning point to transform me into a professionally-trained financial engineer. My greatest learning need in your program is to assimilate sufficient advanced knowledge in finance (like Financial Instruments, Portfolio management, risk management or pricing theory) and math (like stochastic calculus) to allow for greater precision and depth in my computational analysis and modeling. I will trim my quantitative and industry engineering skills specifically for financial engineering purposes. I will improve my knowledge in four major fields of FE only for the purpose of integrating them as the basis for innovative and effective solutions.

China is bound to fully open its financial market to the rest of the world gradually, fulfilling its pledge upon its WTO accession. Considering the immense demand for top-notch financial engineers with first-rate education from the world’s top business school, my career prospect is undoubtedly boundless. But I would first use 3 to 5 years upon completing your program on developing real world experiences in the financial industry in the United States. Through increasing industrial experience, I hope to: 1) deepen my knowledge of financial products, along with their risk analysis and trading strategies; 2) acquire R & D experience in risk management, able to apply various financial instruments to undertake well-structured risk analysis and management; 3) enrich my experience in the design, development and engineering of financial software systems and to effect financial engineering innovations by tapping my unique strengths in IT.

My long-term career goal is to work with a leading investment bank in China. While introducing advanced conceptual and methodological knowledge of financial engineering to my home country, I would focus on providing the design and development of financial instruments and risk management to related service industries. My greatest professional ambition would be to exploit my background and my network in IT and finance, and develop commercialized platforms of financial products trading and financial analysis—platforms what take into account the special circumstances of China’s financial industry and are up to state-of-art international standards. Such a career path is what I see as the best alternative whereby I can contribute to the modernization and internationalization of China’s financial industry.