MIT Master's in Finance Application: Complete Step-by-Step Guide

[Music] So today is an exciting day because we are going to be applying to MIT's Master of Finance program. Now basically this is just to show you guys how you guys can be applying to master degrees in America. So, what I'll do is I'll actually start up an application over here, fill it out, and actually show you the step-by-step process of actually going through an application uh for your master's degree. So, what I'll do is I'm going to scroll up here and I'm going to look at the admissions. And at the admissions over here, they kind of give you information of what they're looking for. Um, you can also download their fact sheets and all of those type of things. And you can also see when their deadline is. So the deadline is January 5th and the decision date is March 10th. So what we can do is we can actually apply. So I'm going to hit the apply now. And what I'm going to do is fold this out. I'm going to put my birth date and then the round. They kind of give you all the rounds here. So, you can basically apply to any one that you want. Um, so basically they've got um dual degree, they've got MBA, they've got master's in finance, master in business analytics. So what I'll do is I'll click on the masters in finance and I'll hit submit. Now they're going to they actually sent me an email. So let me go and check the email that they sent me. So what I'm going to do is I'm clicking on the email. And here's the email by the way that they sent me. And um as you can see I clicked on it and they g they asked me for temporary pen. I'm going to copy the temporary pin that they sent me and I'm going to log in. Now I also have to confirm my birth date first and hit login. So now that I hit log in, they're asking me to actually put in a bunch of uh or to create a password. Um so what I'll do is I'll create a password over here. So again, this is the page and basically what we're going to do is we're going to fill it out. So down here, as you can see, I've started a application. So I'm going to click on this. This is the application that I started. I'm going to open it up. They give me a welcome. So thank you, Dean. Um, and basically it tells us what they're going to be looking at and when exactly their decisions are going to be released, etc. So what we'll do is we want to make sure that we go down here. Um as you can see there's also an application fee waiver. So if you want to get an application fee waiver, this is how you can do it. Um and then they also tell you about the interview timelines that they might be interviewing you etc. So let's continue. So over here I'm going to start filling in my information. Um so I can just put mister over here. Um, then here I'm going to be putting my street address. So here I can literally type in my street address, permanent or even mailing, but permanent is really better. I can say, you know, United States of South America or in fact, let's actually do South Africa so I can show you guys. Okay, so I'm going to say South Africa and I'm actually going to type in just like one, two, three, uh, Main Street. The city can be uh Kempton Park. The region you can see I'm going to put Khoeng. The postal code was like 1618 or something like that. I don't remember exactly. But there you go. I've put in my address. Now my current location. Again, it can be different to what your current address is or what your your address is. So you can again put whatever country you're currently in. So right now I'm in the United States of America. I can put that there. I can say I am in Dallas and Texas. Perfect. Now I have my emails over here. I can put my phone number over here. Um I can tell them what my native language is. Let's say my native language is French. Um, and then you can keep on scrolling down, right? And keep on scrolling down. Um, over here, your legal sex. I'm going to say I'm male. Um, and then this is all optional, by the way. So, your gender, I say I'm male. Are you transgender? No. What pronouns do you use? He, him. Then here you can see um you clicking a check box that basically says I agree to sharing this with MIT. Same thing over here. you can understand um that you're going to be giving them this information. So, you can tell them that you are straight or heterosexual or whatever your sexual orientation is. And then if you have dual citizen of United States, please list the uh the United States as your primary citizenship. So, they're asking you what's your primary citizenship, right? So um you know I can put South Africa over here and then you can also hit you and then maybe they ask you something like this. Are you a permanent resident? You can say no. All right. And then you'll actually confirm your first and last name. All right. So that's kind of important. Then are you in the military? Um over here I'm basically going to say uh no I am not currently in the a veteran or not affiliated. Um are you a first generation college student? This basically means if your parents did not complete for your undergraduate degree you can say yes if your parents did not complete a four-year undergraduate degree and hit continue. Now this is demographic information. Um are you Hispanic or Latino? No. Um I am black and I am African. All right. So we can keep on going. Now academic information. So what they're giving you over here is they're asking you for your academic information like where did you go to school, what degree did you get etc. So here they say we've know that you've worked hard. Tell us about your academic journey so we can understand it. Uh, please scan and upload your transcripts from all colleges and universities that you have attended, including study abroad or currently attending. If you're earning a degree, please upload your most up-to-date transcript. We review transcripts carefully. Please double check what you have uploaded is legible. And then they give you some important information here. They say all applicants must hold a 4-year undergraduate degree or a three-year equivalent international undergraduate degree by the time of metriculation. basically by the time you start at MIT um for their master's degree. Do not mail any hard copies of official academic records or transcripts. So, they're asking you not to mail it. If you received an undergraduate degree as part of a master's program, please include an undergraduate entry in addition to your master's degree. If your transcripts are not in English, please scan and upload both the original and certified translation. We accept translations issued by an institution or professional translating service such as Wes. Okay. Uh we cannot we cannot accept digitally signed or encrypted um transcripts. If you're having difficulty uploading your document, this may be the reason. Print out your transcript, scan it, and upload the PDF. We do not accept transfer credits. classes taken at MIT before metriculating cannot be counted towards your degree at MIT. And then they said, if you admitted, you'll be required to provide an official signed and sealed transcript from all schools attending attended. Any discrepancies between the scanned transcripts and official transcripts may result in a candidate's rejection or withdrawal of our offer of admission. So what this basically means is guys you can upload your transcripts and then only if you get accepted will you be required to actually mail in the hard copy from the school. So over here what we're going to do is we're going to click over here and we're going to say hey what institution did you go to? Right? So what institution did you go to? Um and then the website and all of the information here. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to type my first one is going to be uh University of Rochester. Um their website, let me go find University of Rochester's website. So, they're asking for the website. I'm going to click here. I'm going to put the website. The country, um, it is in the United States of America. Um, the city is in Rochester. Um, the state is in New York. And then the start date, I believe I started in August of 2015. 2016. August of 2016. and my end date was May of 2018. Has this degree been um um conferred or basically have you been have you been given this degree? Right. Yes. So when did you get the degree? Basically May 20th. So May 20th is when I got my degree 2018. level of study undergraduate it was uh on campus and here I can go up here and see the primary language I can say it was English not seeing English uh where's English oh there it is on the top so then the degree I got a bachelor's guess it's a bachelor's of arts I guess that's the best way to describe it in economics. In economics, if you had a second ma ma uh m major or minor, you can put it there. And then here, please report your grade point average and scale using your institution. Your GPA and class range should exactly match your transcript. Do not round your GPA. If your university does not provide a cumulative cumulative GPA, report calculate your GPA to the best of your ability using the same scale your university uses to grade uh to report grades. Uh include an explanation of how you calculated it in the text box below. Include all courses that counted towards your degree and factor in the number of credits and each classes. Please do not enter zero as your GPA. the system does not accept does not accept letter grades or integers less than one. Okay, so basically they want to know the GPA. The best way to actually do this, I'll be honest with you, is I would actually use chat GPT if I didn't have um a GPA that was um similar to America. Um so what I'll do is actually I don't have to do it because I know my GPA, but you know for for most people they'll have to go and do this. Okay. So, my GPA was 3 point I don't know what it was. I don't remember. I think it's 3.75. I don't know out of a 4.0. Um, and then you can explain it if necessary. All right. Then class rank. I don't have the class rank. Okay. So, as you can see, we have class rank over here. Out of I have no idea what my class rate rank is out of. Um, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to skip that. And then they ask you to upload your transcript. So I can upload something here. So I uploaded something here and then I just hit save and as you can see we have my school there. Okay. Then they ask you do you have any areas of concern with regards to your academic record? If so explain here. So again guys, if um you have any issues um or if you you know got bad grades or anything like that, this is where you're going to explain that, right? So this is where where you will explain any issues. Perfect. So here they're saying um our curriculum is rigorous. Knowing that co what courses you've taken will allow us to access how you might handle the fintech curriculum. To add a relevant course add new. Then put it in here. Right. Um so then they're saying your transcript will be reviewed in full. Please only include your most relevant courses in this section. The purpose of this relevant coursework session is to provide a snapshot of your applicable coursework and is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all the courses you've taken within each subject. So over here you can put stuff such as oh um yep I done linear algebra linear algebra I had done this at so I don't even know the course number to be honest um I think it was 2318 but I done this um at central college so here you go that's my college um it was undergrad And the grade I got was an A. Um then over here I think the grade scale is a 4.0. What percent of the course was devoted to this subject? 100%. Now again if you don't understand any of these use chat GPT to help you out. Okay. So I have one over here. I can add another uh let's just add multivariable calculus. I think it was called cal uh three one two three I was like 2320 I don't remember um let's see if let's say we don't find the school right so let me type in something here it says no matches found um let's see if they'll still allow me to proceed oh they still want me to complete this of course undergraduate the grade that I listed let's say I got an A let's say of Open let's say it was 75%. So you can see even without the correct name of the institution you can still put it in here. All right. Um so here they are. You are welcome to submit other pieces of academic um evidence such as certifications you know course work that you've done elsewhere. Um those type of things right and make sure you do include details. So you can add them over here. You can add, hey, uh, I got a CFA or whatever it is, and you can put it over here so that people can know. All right, I'm just going to remove that. Please upload any supporting material showing your completion or enrollment of your of your nonderee coursework. Um, so again, you can upload supporting material. Um, and then you can also upload awards. So if you got an award, you can put it over here. the type, the scope, all of those type of things. Then you can hit continue. So you can see now they're asking for test scores. Um I don't have any test scores. So I'm just going to look at this and say, hey, maybe I don't need a test score. So because it's optional here, right? So what I'm going to do is I'm not going to have it. I'm just going to keep on going. And now they have employment. So I can add my employers over here, right? Um, so basically what I'm going to do is I'm literally going to say this is my my current job. Uh, let's call it ABC Corp. The country is United States. The region is uh Dallas, Texas. The industry, let's say I am in education. And then you can describe company here. And then company size. Let's say what my company size is. So full full-time work, 40 hours, the format, um, hybrid. And then I can put the website of my company. And I can also, um, click on these type of things here. And then, as you can see over here, they're asking for your starting position, what position you're starting as. engineer and then ending position. You can put your starting date, whatever your starting date is, know your ending date if you have an ending date, your functions. So, it's all of these things that you can put, right? You can put doc uh comput uh compensation details. Let's say you make 200k, right? Um and all of those type of things. But as you can see, they need all of this information. So, what I'll do is I'll keep on coming over here and I'm going to type in a website. Uh, so they want that. Um, they want ending position. I'm surprised they said because I said this is my current role. So, I'm I'm surprised by ending position. Um, I guess they don't have proper validation over here. The only thing I can say um ending job des ending position job description. So I can say building apps. How many people do you report to? Maybe one. Compensation. I have that. Ending compensation. Let's say I'm at 250. Bonus. Let's say I'm at 10,000. Um save. So now you can see I have my job here. Do you anticipate financial support from an employer? No. Do you anticipate financial support from an organization that's not your employer? No. Do you have access to scholarship from an employer or elsewhere? No. Um we define full-time employment as more than four months. So they say um I will they asking you do you plan to join us with full-time post university experience? You can say yes or no over here. How many months of full-time work uh will you have by the the start? And wow, look at that. That is crazy. Say 180. Uh that's okay. 180 months is a little bit too much. Uh let's just put 60 months. Okay. Um how many months of full-time work of full-time internship employment will you have by that? Uh probably only four months. How many total months of full-time will you have by the time you start? It should be the sum of the two um 64. Okay. If there are any gaps in your employment history, explain. Okay. So, you can explain all that good stuff here. Now, we just hit continue. Resume. So, they're going to ask us for resume. I'm just going to upload something here for my resume. I'm going to continue. recommendation instructions. So, as you can see, they want letters of recommendation. So, how do we get that? Make sure you select individuals qualif qualified to speak about your qualifications and impact. So, you must submit three letters of recommendations. Okay? So, one letter must come from someone who can speak to your quantitative skills, right? If you're a current student, you should submit two letters from your current school and one letter from an a recent internship, preferably from an a previous supervisor. If you're working full-time, one letter of recommendation could come from your most recent employer and another letter of recommendation from an academic source, preferably a previous professor. The third recommendation can be either. All right, so this is interesting. Um, we do not accept recommendations from family members. Uh, recommenders must submit their letters online. So, you can see they give you all these things, right? And these are the questions they're going to be asking. So, you're going to be adding recommenders. All right? So, let's click on going. So, you're going to add a recommener. You're going to put their name here. So, you know, Dr. ABC last name Lee. The organization for instance is like you know University of Rochester uh position there was a professor relationship student. All right telephone number you can try and find that telephone number and um of course their email you can also try and find that. Uh sometimes you can get away with telephone number not putting it there. So email, let's just put lee@gmail.com. Now as you can see over here, they love you using a recommendation uh recommenders institutional or corporate email address, right? Um so any submissions from anonymous email addresses like Gmail and stuff will be u subject to additional review. Okay. So here, what you're going to do is you should usually wave your right to access the report and then you're going to sign over here and then you're going to hit send to recommener. All right, so I'm not going to do that, but you're going to hit send to recommener. Anyway, let's continue. Now, they're going to ask you questions. How has the world you come from shaped who you are today? Um, and then you can just type that in here. And then if you continue, you can see you have masters in finance um program questions. So here they they're asking, hey, would you like to be considered for the 12-month program only? You can click that, right? And then you can see the other ones. Indicate which type of concentration you're most interested in. Um, you can look over here. Capital markets, financial engineering sounds fun. Uh, then the next one is there's no right or wrong answers here. What's your career goals? Um, I can say investment banking. No. Asset management sounds fun. Uh, quantitative trading. That sounds super fun. Um, and then next one is private equity maybe. uh quantitative research slashdata science maybe even portfolio management I don't know something like that now they're asking you questions over here question number one right and again you can see over here that they have a bunch of information that they're giving you so they're interested in students with drive and ambition etc etc etc so what I want to do over here is say please discuss your past academic and professional experiences and basically you will Okay, this is the stuff I did. Now, of course, I'm going to um answer this a little bit better uh if I was you instead of just having that and then go on with the next question. Tell us about your short-term and long-term professional goals. Um my goal is to have fun. Right. Next is what uh personal qualities will enable you to contribute to the advancement of our mission. So you go find their mission and you'll tell and then you'll you'll you know respond here saying um I will be a great student. Of course you guys won't be doing this but I'm just showing you guys an example over here. Will you have completed MIT's MA micro masters credential? Nope. Next one. We prefer candidates with pre with demonstrated proficiency in Python. An online course that has been graded is acceptable acceptable. Candidates may be admitted without Python. However, it's expected that admitted students will need to demonstrate proficiency in Python prior to their start. So, yes, I know Python level of Python is advanced. How did you learn it? Degree course work. Um gosh, I guess yeah, you'll put your degree um or the course that you took. So, intro to CS. All right. And then you can upload your supporting material for that. Okay. Um, what other schools have you applied to? Um, you tell them I'm applying to Harvard. Um uh maybe master's masters in computational science or I don't know something like that. Um I guess it's computational science and then the the degree here would be masters, right? That's how it would work. Then you can continue. Now you can upload media. Okay. Okay, so they have a really cool one over here whereby they like introduce yourself to your future classmates. Here's a chance to let your personality shine through. So, um, video should adhere to the following. Um, no more than one minute in length, single take, no editing, speak directly to the camera, do not include background music or subtitles. We'll ask you to introduce yourself to future classmates in this video. This video will not be shared beyond the admissions committee and and is for use in the application process only. So here you go. So we can actually start an upload and actually upload it. Then let's see. Um the next one here is the second one. Um all applicants must submit a brief video statement responding to a randomized question posed by the admissions committee. You'll need an internet connected computer, etc. um the uh this part of the application is basically going to be reviewed by the MIT admissions committee etc. So you can see you can hit start test over here. I wonder what question they would give but anyway let's keep on going. Um then additional questions they're asking you where did you learn about MIT have you previously applied you know those type of questions application sharing. Would you like us would you like to share your contact information with MIT Sloan students? Why not? Have you attended an MIT event? No. Were you able were you ever subject of disciplinary action? No. Have you ever been committed of a crime? No. Have you been convicted at trial? No. And we hit continue. Now, funding. This is important. All right. So, MIT is telling you that they've got ways to fund. So, they um admits the most promising MFN candidates. Regardless of financial circumstances, when it comes to figuring out how to fund your MIT education, you're not alone. We're here to help you every step of the way. So, you're going to be automatically considered for merit-based scholarships. Okay. Um, so they'll let you know at the time of your admission. Now, uh this is another thing here where they're telling you about uh federal financial aid. And then if you're interested in private loans, you also need to submit um an application directly with the lender of your choice. And then they give you these. And then they tell you all of those type of stuff and the cost. And then you can continue. And then they have privacy stuff. You can continue. And then you can just sign that you agree to all of this stuff here. You can continue. MIT values. You can agree to this. And then you will hit review and submit. So as you can see, this is all the stuff that I didn't fill in. So you can see at the end it tells you that the stuff you haven't filled in. And basically what's going to happen, guys, is once you filled all of this in, you'll be able to um apply over here. All right. So, I'm definitely going to go back into this, put my real information in and everything and probably send out an application so it so that we at least have one out there or basically experience a little bit how how it is applying to schools. But this was just like a a guided walk through um a master's degree program here in America. So, as you can see, it's not that difficult. Um it will take you, you know, maybe an hour or two. Um, of course you definitely want to put more thoughts into, for instance, your essay and stuff like that, which will mean that it'll take you a little bit longer than just an hour or two. Uh, but anyway, here you go. So, this is us completing the application for MIT's master's degree in finance. Uh, it looks very, very cool and I do thank you guys for joining me on this journey. Um, I hope it's given you some insight on how you can be applying to schools such as MIT. And of course, what I'll do is I'll finish this up and then let you guys know how it goes. Um, but thank you so much for watching. Make sure that you subscribe to my YouTube channel because um I'm going to be doing a lot more things like this which is definitely going to be beneficial for you if you're thinking about coming to study in America as an international student. But anyway, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.