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Singapore
Quant interview preparation, MBA admissions, and Oxford and Cambridge STEM entry for candidates and families in Singapore. Sessions in your evening, my morning.
What is different about applying from Singapore
Most of the students I work with here sit either the Singapore-Cambridge A-levels or the IB, and the two land very differently on a UK maths application. H2 Mathematics covers a great deal of the MAT syllabus already, so the gap is rarely knowledge; it is that the papers reward accurate execution of known methods, which is close to the opposite of what an admissions test asks. Candidates arrive fast and accurate and unused to being stuck.
H3 Mathematics helps more than people expect, not for its content but because it is the first time many students meet a question that does not tell them which tool to use. If it is available and the timetable allows it, it is worth taking for that reason alone.
On the quant side, Singapore is a genuine hub — the trading firms run Asia desks here, and the graduate screens are the same ones used in London and New York. That cuts both ways: the process is reachable without relocating, and the standard is not locally adjusted.
National Service also changes the shape of an application in a way UK admissions staff understand less well than they might, and it is worth addressing plainly in a statement rather than leaving a reader to infer a gap.
Time zone and format
Singapore is six hours ahead of me in summer and seven in winter, so my mornings are your afternoons and evenings. That is the slot most of my Asian clients use. Everything is online.
Quant careers
Singapore is one of Asia's main hubs for trading firms, and candidates here face the same interviews as in London or New York: probability, expected value, market-making games, mental arithmetic and coding. I work as a high-frequency trading quant. See quant interview preparation and worked interview questions.
MBA applications
For professionals applying to INSEAD (which has a campus in Singapore), LBS or the M7: school selection, essays, CV and interview preparation, from an LBS MBA and LBS admissions interviewer. See MBA admissions.
Oxford and Cambridge
Singaporean students are often exceptionally strong at computation, which the MAT and the Oxford interview are built to look past. The work is changing what happens in the first thirty seconds of a problem. See reading a MAT question the way an examiner does.
Who you work with
One person, from the first call to the last session: a working high-frequency trading quant with an Oxford MSc in computer science, a master's in financial engineering and an LBS MBA, who interviews MBA and Executive MBA applicants for London Business School.
The first conversation is twenty minutes and free. Or write to alex@geodesicpartners.co.uk.