Master of Finance

For information specific to International Applicants, please click here.

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The Penn State Great Valley Management Division is accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the highest ranking a business school program can receive.

Invest in your future.

The Master of Finance degree at Penn State Great Valley is an innovative, specialized program that produces leaders in the complex and sophisticated field of Finance.

You will receive a top quality education combining the resources of a leading university with a personalized, interactive classroom experience. Classes are taught by an outstanding graduate faculty who are respected scholars and successful business people. Their experience in the field gives them an understanding of your needs and career interests. In addition to the graduate faculty members, a few highly-qualified adjunct professors are invited to teach special topics courses such as financial fraud analysis, transfer pricing, topics on corporate income tax, Sarbanes-Oxley and financial reporting, and treasury management.

We offer the program in an executive-style cohort format. Courses meet on Friday evenings from 5:00 - 9:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., with one free weekend each month. The degree is completed in 15 months. To see the class schedule, click here.

Pre-Program Competencies

Applicants should have satisfactorily completed some course work in

Business Statistics
Financial Management/Corporate Finance
Microeconomics

If you have not taken courses in these areas, you are encouraged to take these preparatory courses at Penn State Great Valley or elsewhere prior to entrance in the Master of Finance program.

Curriculum

Core Courses: A set of six required core courses provides a common body of knowledge in finance, building a foundation for the elective and capstone courses that follow.

Quantitative Methods in Finance: Spreadsheet-based financial modeling including capital budgeting, basic statistics, and forecasting.

Financial Accounting Theory and Reporting Problems: Introduction to financial accounting and the external users of accounting information focusing on principles underlying financial accounting and specific applications of those principles through interpretation, evaluation, and use of accounting information for decision-making.

Advanced Corporate Finance and Financial Modeling: Finance topics involving strategic financial decisions, including capital structure and cost of capital, financial forecasting, valuation, and corporate control.

Multinational Managerial Finance: Financial management topics crucial to multinational companies subject to foreign exchange risk exposure and different tax regulations in foreign countries.

Analysis of Financial Markets: An overview of financial markets and institutions. Topics include determinants of interest rates; bond pricing and bond portfolio management; the term structure of interest rates; financial derivatives including options, futures, and swaps; and the Fed and financial markets.

Speculative Markets: Financial Derivatives and Risk Management: Analysis of derivative securities covering options, forwards, futures, OTC derivatives; topics include valuation, trading, hedging.

Elective Courses: A set of three elective courses adds depth in chosen areas, developing additional expertise in corporate finance or investments. A special topics course, included as an elective, provides the flexibility to introduce major current topics.

Capital Budgeting and Real Options: Capital investment analysis with dynamically uncertain cash flows and managerial flexibilities. Topics include discounted cash flow analysis, decision trees, and real options method in capital investment.

Portfolio Theory and Policy: An advanced finance course in investment/portfolio management. The primary focus is on the design of stock portfolios, rather than the details of the pricing of financial instruments or identification of arbitrage opportunities. The course provides a framework that enables you to view investment management in a changing investment environment.

Fixed Income Securities: This course covers analysis and valuation of fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.

Managerial Accounting: Introduction to the variety of ways in which managerial accounting information is used to support an organization’s strategic business objectives. The role of managerial accounting has been expanded to collect and analyze measure of financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and organizational learning and growth.

Special Topics: Selection of courses from current and evolving issues. Designed to assist you in developing expertise in a selected area, such as behavioral finance, financial fraud analysis, transfer pricing, topics on corporate income tax, Sarbanes-Oxley Act and financial reporting, or treasury management.

Capstone: The capstone course, Research in Security Valuation, focuses on the analysis and valuation of a firm’s equity securities in the financial market using a fundamental analysis method. Course research includes financial analysis of a publicly traded company through historical analysis of financial statements and a projection using pro forma financial statements. The analysis includes valuation of the firm and its equity, based on financial theories, models, and techniques developed in the program. The capstone ensures a culminating experience that requires students to demonstrate evidence of analytical ability and synthesis of the knowledge acquired in the program.