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Prerequisites & Adjunct Courses

While prior employment in finance is strongly encouraged, it is not strictly required for admission; however, the advanced content, rigor, and pace of coursework demands that students begin the MSF Program with a shared platform of quantitative knowledge and skills.

Students must, therefore, have working knowledge of the terminology and basic principles in statistics, calculus, accounting, and financial management. Approved academic coursework in those topics must be completed prior to matriculation.

Candidates who hold an MBA or undergraduate degree in business typically meet all prerequisites. Individuals with significant experience in finance and/or strong academic backgrounds in other disciplines are also encouraged to apply. The Carroll School’s Graduate Admissions Committee evaluates each applicant’s record of experience and achievement and provides individual guidance in fulfilling preliminary requirements.

Prerequisite Coursework

Accounting

Students should have completed a course focused on the development and use of accounting information to evaluate the status and performance of business enterprises. Specifically, students should have a thorough grounding in the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows. The course should cover reporting of information for use by persons and institutions outside the enterprise as well as the use of accounting information in managerial decision making.

Calculus

Students should have completed an introductory course in Calculus covering a brief review of polynomials, trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions, followed by discussion of limits, derivatives, and applications of differential calculus to real-world problem areas. The course concludes with an introduction to integration.

Financial Management

Students should have completed an introductory course in Financial Management which covers projected financial statements, the time value of money, capital budgeting, financial leverage, security valuation, risk/return, working capital management and international finance. The course should also cover financial statistical analysis and tools of planning and control.

Statistics

Students should have completed a course focusing on the analytical tools of statistics that are applicable to management practice. The course should include descriptive statistics and probability and progress to inferential statistics relative to central tendency and dispersion. In addition to basic concepts of estimation and hypothesis testing, the course should include coverage of topics such as analysis of variance, regression, probability, hypothesis testing, Z-scores, P-values, the standard normal distribution, OLS regression, t-statistics, and Chi-square distributions.

Adjunct Courses

The MSF Program also requires that students have a basic understanding of economics. Students must complete undergraduate- or graduate- level course work in microeconomics and macroeconomics before the MSF degree will be conferred. This coursework is not required to start the program.