Master of Science in Finance
Successful finance experts need to understand how the industry’s key players—commercial and investment banks, investment management companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, and regulatory agencies—operate, thrive, and even fail. A Master of Science in Finance degree can help you understand and succeed, even in volatile financial conditions.
At Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart School of Business, you’ll study in a nationally ranked M.S. in finance program that is located in Chicago—home to the world’s largest markets in financial derivatives.
In your M.S.F. courses, you’ll learn the latest industry-relevant concepts and technologies from finance professors who are both practitioners and scholars, bringing their career knowledge and understanding of the markets directly to the classroom.
Stuart School of Business is a global leader in bridging technology and business, offering distinctive education that trains students to become outstanding professionals in economics, finance, analytics, marketing, business, public administration, operations, and management.
Finance and Economics at Illinois Tech have a prestigious history that dates back to the late 1800s, with some of the nation’s first courses in "Family and Consumer Science" (including “Home Economics” and “Household Management”) being offered by the Lewis Institute, Stuart’s original home, and the Institute’s subsequent formation of the Department of Business and Economics in 1926.
Over a period of more than 125 years, building on curricular innovations by Julia A. Beveridge and George N. Carman, and on foundational scholarly works by trailblazing Illinois Tech scholars Herb A. Simon (author of Administrative Behavior, later awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics), Karl Menger (developer of the St. Petersburg paradox in economics) and Abe Sklar (developer of the Copula in financial modeling), the Stuart School of Business has refined education in business disciplines.
A long-standing leader in curricular innovation, in 1990, building on the foundational works of numerous Illinois Tech scholars, and Harold L. Stuart’s own contributions to finance and the broader business community, the Stuart School of Business established quantitative finance as an academic discipline, with a world’s first postgraduate Master’s program in Financial Markets and Trading – a program that highlighted a new model for embedding into a postgraduate academic program the emphases on career readiness and connectedness with the business community, and transformed business school education.
Today, the Master of Science in Finance continues Stuart's tradition of being a frontier innovator in the finance discipline, offering students outstanding concentrations and curricular and co-curricular opportunities that place them on the path to success.
Curriculum
The Master of Science in Finance program requires 33 credit hours (11 courses) of graduate work. Students have the option to choose a concentration or design their own.
MASTER OF FINANCE CURRICULUM
| Code | Title | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Core Courses | 18 | |
| Mathematics with Financial Applications | 3 | |
| Statistical Analysis in Financial Markets | 3 | |
| Financial Modeling | 3 | |
| Valuation and Portfolio Management | 3 | |
| Futures, Options, and OTC Derivatives | 3 | |
| Financial Statement Analysis | 3 | |
| Choose a concentration of 3 courses | 9 | |
| Financial Technology | ||
| Machine Learning for Financial Markets | 3 | |
| High Frequency Finance and Technology | 3 | |
| Global Markets and Technology | 3 | |
| Portfolio Management | ||
| Asset Valuation | 3 | |
| Quantitative Portfolio Management | 3 | |
| Fixed Income Portfolio Management | 3 | |
| Risk Management | ||
| Credit Risk Management | 3 | |
| Asset Valuation | 3 | |
| Investment Banking and Venture Capital | 3 | |
| Quantitative Modeling and Trading | ||
| Models for Derivatives | 3 | |
| Term Structure Modeling and Interest Rate Derivatives | 3 | |
| Energy Commodities Analytics and Trading | 3 | |
| Custom Concentration - requires program director approval | ||
| Choose from the following electives or from courses listed in the concentrations shown above | 6 | |
| Entrepreneurial Finance | 3 | |
| Special Topics in Finance | 3 | |
| Independent Study in Finance | 3 | |
Minimum degree credits required: 33
Core Requirement
All Master of Science in Finance students must complete the six core classes unless they have obtained written permission from the program director to substitute an alternative class for a core class.
Free Electives
Up to two graduate-level electives may be taken from outside the courses prescribed above. These electives may be taken from other offerings at the Stuart School of Business, the Chicago-Kent College of Law, or Mies Campus graduate programs, provided that:
- They are consistent with the Master of Science in Finance program objectives.
- They have been approved, prior to the student’s registration, by the Master of Science in Finance program director or the student’s academic adviser.
