Here are the Masters in Finance courses most beneficial to your career prospects

20 June 2011

2 minute read

Here are the Masters in Finance courses most beneficial to your career prospects

The benefits of undertaking a Masters in Finance are debatable. Applications are on the up, and most cost around 30k+, but there's no guarantee of a either a new role, or a more highly paid position, at the end of it (especially during a tough job market).

However, the Financial Times has just produced its first rankings of Masters in Finance courses, which generally paint a positive picture of how they improve your career prospects.

If you're embarking on one of these with a few years' experience under your belt, the London Business School Masters in Finance is the stand-out performer (out of only three courses in the rankings, admittedly).

Students achieve an average salary of around $130k (80k) three years after graduation, which is a 72% uplift on their previous packages. The job market is clearly tougher for graduates than this time last year, however - 85% are employed three months after graduation, compared to 97% in 2010.

The vast majority of Masters in Finance courses are 'pre-experience programmes', however. If you're thinking of undertaking one of these, you may be also be curious to find out how it will benefit your career prospects down the line.

Rather than looking at the overall rankings, which factor in various critrion including the diversity of the school, we've compiled the list below from the FT's league tables purely based on the 'careers rank'.

This looks at how alumni of various Masters in Finance degrees are performing three years after graduation, in terms of seniority and size of the firm they're working for.

UK universities do not rank particularly favourably, whereas those graduating from French institutions find most success.

The top ten Masters in Finance courses by 'careers rank'

1. HEC Paris, Masters in International Finance (France)

2. EMLyon Business School, Specialised Masters in Corporate Finance (France)

3. Eada, International Masters in Finance (Spain)

4. ESCP Europe, Specialised Master in Finance (France/Lebanon)

5. Illinois Institute of Technology: Stuart, MSc in Finance (US)

6. Skema Business School, MSc Financial Markets and Investments (France)

7. University of Oxford: Saïd, MSc in Financial Economics (UK)

8. Warwick Business School, MSc in Finance (UK)

9. Tulane University: Freeman, Master of Finance (US)

10. Washington University: Olin, MSc in Finance (US)

Source: Financial Times

AUTHORPaul Clarke

21 comments

To
Toto
21 June 2011
Is HEC Paris the new Goldman Sachs?
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Li
Lil'pimp.
21 June 2011
not a "name" school but a lot of people have got into asset management via Stirling's MSc in Investment Analysis, gives level 1 CFA exemption.
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Ch
Churchill
21 June 2011
@ kia, LSE has had finance M.Sc. programmes as long as I can remember. They may not have been called M.Sc. Finance. E.g. around 2000-ish they had both M.Sc. Accounting and Finance and M.Sc. Finance and Economics which were the two degrees with the best City prospects. Despite the dual subject titles, they were/are both very much finance degrees and not short on proper finance content. E.g. the latter was mainly an advanced quantitative finance degree with one mandatory economics course (but option to elect more) while the former was "softer" more typical finance degree with no more accounting content than any M.Sc. in finance should have anyway.
@ r.i.p la france, i don't think the french are on the favourite colleague list of many non-french people. However, to give credit where due, i do think the elite part of the french education system is pretty good, particularly for highly quantitative subjects, hence the many french on derivs desks and mkt share in this area of bnp and sg. Where the system seems to fall short is in developing personalities you want to be around! And the self-dilusional gap between self perception of abilities and the reality is unreal.
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r.
r.i.p la france
21 June 2011
HEC #1? Have you tried working with french? I think they should introduce work ethics in all their programs and they should constantly be reminded that it is Einstein the smartest guy in the room, not them... Please, anyone but not french!
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Pa
Paul, eFinancialCareers
21 June 2011
@Tom, Just to clarify, as we mentioned in the article, we compiled the list based on the FT's 'careers rank' rather than the overall league tables, which rely on a whole range of criterion. This is why they differ from the rankings you've linked to.
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