The Master of Science in Finance (MSF) blended online program focuses on a global outlook, experiential learning, real-world trends, and the importance of principled leadership to deliver a rigorous, comprehensive and practical education.
The world-class MSF curriculum is available either part-time or full-time over 21 months for the traditional track or 10 months for the (intensive full-time) accelerated track. The curriculum requirements include six core courses, two advanced courses, and a choice of elective courses (minimum of two are required), as well as a weeklong in-person Financial Markets Residency and the capstone Global Consulting Project course, where students apply much of the knowledge and skills they have learned throughout the program to a real-world consulting project for an international firm. The course concludes with a trip to the client’s home country for an in-person presentation to the firm’s executives. The students also engage in cultural activities during their visit.
Students pursuing the traditional full-time track take the Career Strategy course and two additional electives (students may switch from the traditional full-time track to the traditional part-time track or vice versa). Students in the other tracks also can choose to take the Career Strategy course and other electives. Compare a curriculum breakdown for the traditional and accelerated tracks here.
This weeklong in-person course builds on the concepts and skills learned in the Financial Markets course through a deep dive into the investment industry, especially mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The course consists of lectures from industry experts and full-time faculty with extensive research records and industry experience. The cornerstone of the course is a case competition where the students will be assigned to teams. Besides spending much of the week gathering and analyzing data for their presentation, the students will receive coaching on their presentation skills. The course faculty will also advise the student teams in one-on-one sessions. Credits: 2 Course Details
The Global Consulting Project is the program’s capstone course where you apply many of the skills you have learned throughout the program to a real-world consulting project for an overseas client you will work on with a team or three to four other classmates. The course consists of assigned readings and classes where you learn about the business, cultural, and the political climate of your client’s home country. The course concludes with a trip to make an in-person presentation of your team’s project analysis and recommendation(s) to your client. You and your classmates will also participate in cultural visits to learn more about your client’s home country. Credits: 3 Course Details
This course begins with the building block concept of the time value of money, and quickly moves onto applying this concept to government bond valuation, Macauley and Modified duration, the shape of the yield curve, the relation between spot and forward rates of interest, and the relation between nominal and real returns. We then apply these skills to corporate bond and stock valuation with a deep dive on bond covenant provisions, the discounted dividend model and the use of comparables in valuation. We next make a connection between these valuation approaches and the Markowitz efficient frontier method for constructing an optimal portfolio. The relation between the Markowitz method and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is our next topic followed by how to apply to CAPM for constructing an optimal portfolio and estimating a security’s expected return. We conclude with a detailed explanation of how markets work—and consequently how investors should invest—according to the efficient market hypotheses and the competing hypothesis of behavioral finance. Credits: 3 Course Details
Financial accounting refers to translating a firm’s economic activity into highly structured information about financial performance and condition. This information is highly structured because all firms apply the same GAAP standards to produce the information, yielding financial data that are comparable across firms and across time. This class focuses on how we can use financial information to gain insights into firms’ financial performance and condition. This course seeks to teach you how to understand and communicate firm performance to outside stakeholders (e.g., current and prospective capital providers, business partners, employees, etc.) for your role as a future business leader. Credits: 3 Course Details
This course is very generally focused on two questions. First, what investments should the firm make? Investments include projects within the firm, acquisitions of other companies, and corporate divestitures, which reverse prior investments. Second, how should those investments be financed? Both questions are approached from the perspective of maximizing the value of the firm. That is, we will develop the necessary analytical tools to choose investment and financing schemes that maximize the value of the firm. We will cover some related topics, however, developing the analytical tools to answer the corporate investment and financing decisions is the primary goal of the course. Credits: 3 Course Details
This course provides a preparatory, though comprehensive, perspective on statistical concepts, related techniques, and methods used extensively in business decision-making activities. The course draws from concepts and applied techniques in statistics aiming to develop competence in the interpretation and analysis of data and development of models. Topical issues and specific techniques covered include: concepts in probability and distributions; inferential statistics; and simple and multiple regression analysis. The focus of this course is regression analysis. All material leading up to the topic of regression modeling and analysis is considered prerequisite. Case studies and computer packages are used to illustrate and reinforce their applications of the regression topics considered. Credits: 3 Course Details
This course covers advanced valuation topics such as the free cash flow and multiple approaches to equity valuation, as well as the use of accounting and market data to measure and manage the value of the firm. Credits: 3 Course Details
Consistent with the mission of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, this course is designed to contribute to your development as principled leaders: women and men who act with integrity and have well-deserved reputations as honorable, humble, and caring individuals. The course will concentrate on three overlapping areas, organized around the following questions: – Managerial moral responsibility: What do we owe morally to one another in a business context? – Leading ethical performance: What is required to incline a group of people to play by the rules and act with integrity? – Leading social performance: What does an organization owe to the people and places impacted by its activities? To stimulate and structure your thinking, normative frameworks and empirical models will be introduced and applied. Credits: 3 Course Details
The total global market value of derivative securities such as forwards, futures and options is exponentially greater than the value of stocks, which underscores the importance for all finance professionals to understand how these markets work, how these derivatives can be used, and how to value them. The course also explores specific applications of options in the corporate setting, including executive stock options and real options. Finally, the course examines how corporations can manage currency, commodity price, interest rate, and other risks they face in doing business in a multinational setting. Credits: 3 Course Details
This course is designed to introduce the student to investments and fixed-income securities. Topics include the identification and analysis of investment opportunities, portfolio analysis and optimization, the identification and execution of investment strategies, and the professional responsibilities of financial advisers and asset managers. While the equity markets often get more attention in the popular media, the fixed-income world is much larger in terms of both outstanding issues as well as annual issuance. Consequently, we will cover fixed-income duration and fixed-income portfolio construction. Although offered as one course, this course has two tracks. Both tracks will cover the fundamentals of investments and fixed-income securities. Students will self-select into either track and will have access to all the learning materials in both tracks. Students in each track will have separate material assignments but will meet in a common class time each week. The Personal and Private Wealth Management (PPWM) track will focus more on investment problems faced by individual investors, including retirement planning and spending. The Institutional Asset Management (IAM) track will focus more on investment problems faced by institutional asset managers, including various alpha generation strategies. Credits: 3 Course Details
Program Electives (students must choose at least two of the following 1.5-credit electives)*
*Depending on availability, students may be able to enroll in additional elective courses offered by the Georgetown McDonough MBA program. Students may also have the option to take an approved 1.5-credit MBA elective as a substitute for one of the required MSF elective courses.
This course will focus on the art and science involved in making an investment in commercial and multifamily real estate through a bottom-up (asset level) and top-down (capital markets) approach that is regularly employed in the real world. Lectures will be delivered from the perspective of an equity investor with the intention of instructing each student on the proper approach to measuring risk associated with a real estate transaction. This approach will broadly cover the physical and the financial aspects of the investment, but will delve deeply into a variety of subtopics including leverage, and income tax considerations. Students will gain a broader understanding of the institutional real estate world and how circumstances in the current market impact the ability to acquire (and dispose) of product. The course will also employ a case study approach for applying the course concepts to practical real estate problems. Credits: 1.5 Course Details
Big data is a relative term—data today are big by reference to the past, and to the methods and devices available to deal with them. The challenge big data presents is often characterized by the four V’s -volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Volume refers to the amount of data. Velocity refers to the flow rate—the speed at which it is being generated and changed. Variety refers to the different types of data being generated (currency, dates, numbers, text, etc.). Veracity refers to the fact that data is being generated by organic distributed processes (e.g., millions of people signing up for services or free downloads) and not subject to the controls or quality checks that apply to data collected for a study. Credits: 1.5 Course Details
Financial Statement Analysis (FSA) is the process of reviewing and evaluating an organization’s financial statements to gain an understanding of its economic situation. Good FSA enables effective decision-making. For example, it plays an important role in understanding the potential risk and rewards of an investment. Credits: 1.5 Course Details
Small Data is an integral part of Business Analytics and it refers to two important concepts in practice:
I. When solving a consulting problem, it is very common to have a small sized data set (say less than 30) in order to solve practical business situations. This data set may not be normal or could be quantitative or qualitative. The data could be categories such a political parties, rankings such as customer preferences or continuous such as the time a customer waits in line on hold with a credit card 800 customer service number.
II. Small data is also a new concept in Business Intelligence which appeared in late 2012, it is the opposite of Big Data and it is an innovative way to understand your customers’ actions.
It refers to all tidbits of information created by customers by means of customers’ preferences, wearables devices and self-tracking. Think of all the digital tidbits consumers leave in their paths as they go through the day. Credit card payments, location fixes, newsletter signups, Facebook likes, tweets and Web searches. Small data are derived from our individual digital traces. Small data is generally small sample sized and not normally distributed. Small Data drives personalization. Credits: 1.5 Course Details
This 16-week, one-credit, pass-fail, fall semester course provides students with the tools, resources, techniques, and access necessary to be ready to leverage the MSF degree both in the short and the long-term. Credits: 1 Course Details
Semester structure: 3-credit courses offered in 7-week modules; *1.5 credit courses offered in 4-week modules.
Additional Non-Credit Learning Opportunities for MSF Students
During the non-credit data science course, students deepen business and technical finance skills while gaining exposure to Python programming.
Over the span of four weeks, students join MSFLive sessions consisting of 90-minute interactive case discussions and complete a comprehensive data programming assignment. Learn more about the data science course.
World-Class Faculty
Our faculty are deeply devoted to the cura personalis approach, or “care for the whole person,” in their teaching. You can expect individualized attention and respect for who you are and the experiences you bring to the classroom. Faculty bring considerable data analytics experience from multiple disciplines and industries, as well as a world-wide perspective.