MS in Quantitative Finance

The Master of Science in Quantitative Finance is intended to prepare pre-experience students with strong skills in mathematics, engineering, science, technology, finance and business for the rapidly evolving professional marketplace in the field of finance. It achieves this by leveraging key technical interests and capabilities of successful applicants into the modern financial architecture and its central functions such as trading, market and product design, underwriting and securitization, payments and settlement, derivatives, asset management, risk management, corporate financial management and a range of technical innovations that are evolving in these areas.

A high level of rigor is embedded in the MSQF program. It is targeted toward smart, disciplined and dependable students who have the ability to climb a steep learning curve and a well-developed capability for creative and critical thinking. This is the skill set in demand in the new world of finance, from the biggest and most diverse financial institutions to specialized financial boutiques and end-users such as nonfinancial corporations and asset managers. To succeed, market participants need to know how financial instruments are designed, priced, traded and deployed in a highly competitive and unforgiving market environment.


Learning Objectives

  • Students will be able to conduct sophisticated financial analyses pertinent to a range of financial functions in both financial and non-financial firms.
  • Students will be able to effectively communicate sophisticated financial analyses with tech-driven colleagues.
  • Students will be more easily able to adapt to new developments in finance and bridge the gap between application of modern product and process technologies and state-of-the-art finance.

Message from Program Academic Director

Domestic and international finance occupations increasingly require greater technical skills and breadth of topics than are taught at the undergraduate level, even in finance concentrations. The MSQF program will meet this need with a rigorous quantitative finance curriculum that falls between highly technical financial engineering and generalist financial management programs. The skills we teach will be doubly important as financial markets transition to new technologies like FinTech and to ever more sophisticated investing and risk management techniques.

Jeffrey Wurgler
- Nomura Professor of Finance at NYU Stern