Job Prospects after M.Sc. Finance

Congratulations on a tip-top GMAT. A 770 will be impressive to any school and it shows that you are more than a left-brain. You are correct that your GPA will be a detractor, especially considering your demo, but that GMAT score should make up for that somewhat to prove that you can handle intellectual/academic rigor.

So much is up in the air now regarding immigration and work visas and each country already varies significantly. In the U.S. (which you did not explicitly mention), masters students with a focus in stat or strategy generally qualified for special work authorization, but this may change given the recent news H1B1. In general, the better the school and the better your grades, the more likely you will land with an employer that knows how to “play the game” and get you hired. Employers like the big banks, M/B/B, tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google hire a lot of internationals. If they lose the visa lottery, they often find a “home” for a candidate they really want in another jurisdiction (e.g., if Microsoft can’t have a finance manager start in Seattle as preferred, they’ll start in Montreal ditto with employers in England who have their employees start in Ireland). Most companies don’t have the legal and financial resources to deal with the ever-increasing immigration restrictions, so you’ll probably want to target the largest marquis companies that do, and these companies recruit at the best schools. So your best shot at landing with a company like this is to get in to a top-ranked school in the U.S. or Western Europe (or maybe INSEAD in Singapore) and do well enough there to recruit for these positions. I think you’ll find even the toughest masters programs in Europe and U.S. will be easier academically than studying Math in India. It would surprise me if you couldn’t get very good marks once you got into these sort of schools -- the challenge will be gaining admission given your demo and self-admitted academic underperformance in undergrad.

Taking a few finance classes (even online -- which may be preferable given the pandemic) and doing well in them will be a good way to signal readiness and competence in the area you want to study. You can add that to your resume and it might make up for lower marks in undergrad. You’ll need to make sure your strategic positioning (e.g., why you are transitioning from Math to Finance, what you want to do with your degree, how you will contribute to the school community while a masters student and how that syncs with prior civic engagement and volunteer leadership) is clear and compelling in your essays. If speaking to an admissions consultant may be helpful to you re strategic positioning ands school choice given post-graduation plans, feel free to sign up for a free consultation here: https://admissionado.com/free-consultation/