Vasilli Zubov:
JUNE 2008 UPDATE: Vasilli has decided to join University of Lausanne's program and will be starting in the fall of 2008.
APRIL 2008 UPDATE: Since writing this biography, Vasilli was accepted with a merit scholarship to Carnegie Mellon's Master of Science Program in Computational Finance, to the University of Lausanne with a grant from the Swiss government, and to Wharton's Ph.D. in Finance Program. He is still waiting to hear about his application to Stanford before he makes a final decision on where he will go.
Vasilli Zubov is our December 2007 student of the month. He scored an impressive TOEFL writing score of of 27 and GRE score of 800 in the quantitative section—which is a 94th percentile score. Moreover, Vasilli was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study in the US.
Vasilli was born in Moscow in 1984 in a family of a factory engineer. After winning several secondary school Olympiads, it became apparent that he had an aptitude for Mathematics. During the last three years at school, he attended a math classes in preparation for a university degree in applied mathematics. A few of the classes took place at Moscow State University, which inspired Vasilli to attend that prestigious university. Although he understood that his chances of admission were small, he resolved to attend MSU despite the odds. He scored 34 out of 35 on the University Olympiad. Only 1 out of 200 participants obtained such a high score. Vasilli attended MSU, worked hard, and excelled. For example, he was the only student in his group who won the right to study English language in preparation for an adjunct degree of a professional translator. He also took extracurricular courses at 4 departments of MSU besides his own. He chose a concentration in probability and statistics because his best achievements were in mathematics. From 2005 to 2007, he was awarded several scholarships. One of which was the prestigious Lavrentiev scholarship at Sberbank He was also elected one of the 6 winners in the annual grant competition conducted by McKinsey & Co for senior students and Ph.D.’s of technical specialties. Vassili also wrote three research papers, one of which was published in Theory of Probability and its Applications, the best Russian journal in the field of probability and statistics.
Vasilli graduated from the Moscow State University in 2007 as a specialist (summa cum laude) in the Department of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics. He has recently applied to Ph.D. programs at top US business schools including Harvard and Stanford. He has also applied to some top ranked masters’ programs in financial engineering.
Perhaps most importantly of all his achievements, Vasilli was awarded a Fulbright fellowship in October. This extremely competitive world renowned scholarship program selects top early career professionals from all over the world and pays for their obtaining graduate level education in top US universities (See our webpage here for more information about the Fulbright fellowship.) This is a tremendous opportunity for Vasilli.
Vasilli’s professional interests reside in strategy consulting, risk management, and derivatives pricing. In September 2006, he accepted an offer from INVESTSBERBANK, the Russian subsidiary of OTP Bank Group. The group is widely known in Eastern and Central Europe, its headquarters being in Hungary. While there he was employed by the Risk Management Division of the firm. His responsibilities included analysis of the Bank’s Credit Portfolio and credit risk related business processes.
Let us congratulate you on your score Vasilli, we’re sure that you’ll be successful in any endeavor you decide to pursue, and best of luck in your Fulbright studies! We know you are headed for great things.
