​Graduate School

Use the graduate school reporting form to provide relevant information about your acceptance to graduate school to the RM department.  

Report Graduate School

Graduate School Recommendation Letter Policy
 
Actuarial students often ask for recommendation letters as part of the application process for graduate school.  The Faculty in the Department of Risk Management met and set up the following ground rules.
 

• Please provide your transcript.  At a minimum, you should have a GPA of at  least 3.50, mostly A’s in the classes of the recommenders, and no C’s, D’s or F’s.  If you do not have good grades, the prospects for getting into (and succeeding in) grad school are not good.

• Moreover, unless your grades are really good:
  • It doesn’t make sense to apply to top schools like MIT, Harvard, and U of Chicago, as you will not be accepted.
  • Our reference letters have to be honest, and explain where you rank in our program.

• If interested in Actuarial Science or a related degree in Statistics, pass at least the P and FM exams and take LTAM or MAS exam 

• If interested in Financial Engineering, Mathematical Finance, or a related degree, take RM 415 & pass the P, FM, IFM exams

• Ask your Statistics and Math professors to be references
• Please provide us your resume, GPA, Exams passed, and GRE scores.

• How many schools are you applying to?  It takes time to write these letters so please keep your list to a reasonable number.
  • Please provide us a list of all the school names and your desired major before applying to them.
  • You might consider the PSU Masters in Applied Statistics (MAS)
  • To save us time, please apply to all your schools at one time, so we can do all our recommendations at one time.

• We urge you to talk to former students who went to grad school so that you will have a better idea of what is expected.  You can find them on the alumni list.  There is a column for grad school on it.

• You should waive your right to see our recommendation letter, as the school’s Admissions Committees tend not to value recommendations if the candidate is able to see it.