The letter introduces an experimental honors class at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) School of Finance. It describes SUFE as a top-rated and selective university in China specializing in finance, economics, and business. The honors class was designed to modernize the curriculum and prepare students for a global economy. Students were selected based on their math and English skills and take rigorous courses taught in English using advanced textbooks. The letter provides context for a student from this class applying to graduate programs and notes GPAs may understate students' abilities due to challenging coursework and grading scales.

1. Columbia University
Uris Hall
3022 Broadway, Room 812
New York, NY 10027-6902
T. 212 854 3869
F. 212 662 8474
nw2128@columbia.edu
Neng Wang
Chong Khoon Lin Professor of
Real Estate: Chair, Finance
Subdivision
Professor of Finance
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing you this letter to introduce the Experimental Honors Class at
the School of Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
(SUFE). You are receiving this letter because a student from this highly
selective inaugural Experimental Honors Class is applying to your
graduate program. To help you better understand this applicant’s profile,
please allow me to first provide some background information about the
School of Finance at SUFE, and the origin of this Experimental Honors
Class at the School.
SUFE is a top‐rated and very selective university in China that specializes
in Finance, Economics, and Business. Because of its academic focus, it is
less well known than other top Chinese Universities such as Peking
University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University. As an analogy,
SUFE is in China as London School of Economics (LSE) and London
Business School (LBS) are in the UK. Importantly, the competitiveness and
selectivity of SUFE both in terms of faculty (from oversea recruiting) and
students (within China) rank very high and are comparable to the major
Chinese universities mentioned above.
Within SUFE, School of Finance is the most selective one in terms of
college admissions, as Finance is the most popular college major among
students in China. This is perhaps not surprising given the fast growth of
Chinese economy and very high demand for talent by the fast growing
Chinese financial industry. Because students in China are required to
choose majors before being admitted into college, the selectivity of
different majors within a Chinese university can be very different. This
also partly explains why SUFE with its focus on Finance, Business, and
Economics attracts strong applicants.

2. Most importantly, SUFE is among few selective leading Universities in
China that are taking an ambitious global development perspective. For
example, the School of Finance has adopted the western tenure-track
system and has actively recruited two dozens tenure-track faculty
members in the last few years from the international academic job
market (e.g. at American Finance Association and American Economic
Association).
In May 2009, I was invited by the President of SUFE to advise the School
of Finance. My main responsibility at the School is to increase its
academic visibility, and more specifically, (1) to improve its faculty
research quality, recruit faculty from the international PhD job market,
and enhance its intellectual impact in the academic Finance profession;
(2) to modernize curriculum for undergraduate, master, and doctoral
students so that students are better prepared for the global economy;
and (3) to eventually make the School a globally recognized academic
institution in Finance (which will take a long time and a lot of effort, but it
is nice that the University’s ambition is there!)
The Experimental Honors Class was designed three years ago with the
purpose to modernize the curriculum and prepare students for a truly
integrated fast-changing world (and sometimes quite volatile) economy.
The philosophy of the curriculum design is to prepare students to think
critically and creatively tackle/solve unforeseen difficulties and
challenges. The curriculum comprehensively covers Analytical/Technical
Skills, Economics, Finance, and more broadly social sciences. Specifically,
the curriculum not only provides an excellent education in economics and
finance but also has a very rigorous training in analytical skills and other
finance/economics related subjects. It is also worth noting that the
curriculum puts a significant emphasis on English. From my own college
education experience in China, I see the limitations of traditional English
teaching methods in China. To improve students’ abilities to use English,
the School of Finance has hired excellent English teachers (native
speakers) to teach students how to speak well and how to write
proficiently. On average, students from this Experimental/Honors Class
are quite well prepared with the use of English languages (not just high
test scores!) Finally, I have been encouraging students to read high-
quality newspapers such as the British magazine, the Economist, and the
Wall Street Journal since their freshman year.

3. Their economics courses include micro, macro, and international
economics. Their finance courses include investments, money and
banking, corporate finance, financial institutions and financial markets.
Importantly, all of these courses use English textbooks and the level of
difficulty for courses is high. For example, they use Hal Varian’s
Microeconomic Analysis (which is for graduate students in many schools)
instead of Intermediate Microeconomics (which is commonly used in the
US for the upper-division courses.)
In their first and second years, they also took many math, statistics, and
economics courses including Mathematical (Real) Analysis, Linear
Algebra, Probability, Statistical Analysis, Differential Equations and
Stochastic Processes. After gaining strong background in Analytics, they
continue to take Econometrics, Financial Econometrics, as well as
Economics and Finance electives. I can attest that the exams are very
challenging. Indeed, the textbooks are the leading ones in the US and
Europe.
As rigorous and modern as the curriculum is designed to be, it is also
critically important to have high-quality faculty to teach the courses. We
indeed have often staffed theses courses with recently hired tenure-track
faculty members (trained in the US and/or Europe or professors with
high-profile international research records). These young scholars bring
state-of-the-art knowledge, their passion about their research, and solid
foundational teaching into the classrooms for these students.
Let me also briefly mention how the students in this special Class were
selected. At the beginning of the freshman year, we held School-wide
tests on Math and English (both oral and written). Out of three hundred,
thirty were admitted into in this special Experimental Honors Class (i.e.
top 10% on the school-wise test). Being admitted into this Experimental
Honors Class is a big achievement for a freshman student. Having said,
the other 90% students at the School of Finance are also on average
talented, and indeed some of them are exceedingly competitive. Our
eventual goal with the Experimental Honors Class is to improve the
curriculum for all future students in the School of Finance based on what
we are learning from the curriculum designed for the Experimental Class.
The grading scheme at the School unfortunately does not sufficiently
adjust the difficulty level and higher standards for the courses such as
Mathematical Analysis. Hence, the GPA for the special Class tends to

4. understate the student’s true academic records and potential. I have
personally looked at some of these exams and the grading curve (e.g. for
the Mathematical Analysis course). I can attest that these courses are as
challenging as the ones at Columbia but the curve is much less generous
at the School (unfortunately sometimes due to the hard constraints
imposed at the University level). In my view, students in this special class
are comparable to students at top US universities such as Columbia
University where I have taught for eight years. The top ones from this
class are comparable to the very best students that I have taught at
Columbia. Because of the challenges of interpreting the grades from
Chinese universities (SUFE included) and also based on my own college
experience in China, I tend to weight less the GPA for an applicant from
Chinese universities than I would otherwise for an applicant from an
American institution. This of course does not mean GPAs from Chinese
universities are not informative, but just less informative and factors not
necessarily reflected in the transcript (e.g. creativity, ambition,
endurance, and other hard-to-measure skills such as oral/verbal
communication skills) are much more important particularly for Chinese
applicants. At Columbia, I myself have made admission decisions
following this line of reasoning for doctoral applicants (especially for
those from China).
Given the special features of this Experimental Honors Class, I’ve written
this long letter with the hope to provide important information about this
candidate in the Experimental/Honors Class at School of Finance at SUFE.
I sincerely appreciate your effort and patience to read this long letter.
If I can be of any help in any way with regard to this student’s application,
please do not hesitate to contact me.
Warmest regards,
Neng Wang
Chong Khoon Lin Professor of Real Estate and Finance,
Graduate School of Business, Columbia University