The University of Connecticut's Professional Master's in Applied Financial Mathematics prepares a graduate for work in an analytic capacity across a wide spectrum of the financial services industry investment banks, private equity, hedge funds, mutual funds, consulting firms, investment firms, insurance companies, commercial banks, brokerage houses and other corporations. The program emphasizes finance, investing, and risk-management together with rigorous mathematical modeling and analytical techniques applied to problem-solving in those areas and communications skills required to be effective in a corporate environment.<br><br>A unique component of the program is that students must complete at least 6 credits of Practicum courses, including internship options with the Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research. Since its inception in 2008, the Goldenson Center has had a successful track record of working with teams of graduate students on applied research projects with industry. Such project experience has helped Actuarial MS graduates in the past to secure employment as well as H1b visa sponsorship.<br><br>Students do well in this program if they enter with a high GPA bachelor's degree in mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering, quantitative economics, or other related fields and want a career applying their already strong mathematics skills and knowledge to the understanding and solution of problems involving finance, investing, and risk. No prior knowledge of business, finance or investing is required but the mathematics background is essential. We expect applicants to have completed undergraduate coursework in differential calculus, integral calculus, multivariable calculus, differential equations, linear algebra and mathematical probability/statistics (taught in a calculus framework). If one of these is missing it can be made up upon enrollment, but usually an applicant's background should be missing no more than one of these.<br><br>In addition to the Graduate School requirements for admission, we require a personal statement and three recommendation letters, preferably from mathematics instructors. Undergraduate GPAs for those we admit average about 3.5/4.0 for quantitative coursework.