If you want to get a job at an investment bank, you need to go to a good school.
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And once you get into a good school, you have to do a good course. One of the most popular for prospective financiers is the masters in finance (or MS Finance, MSc Finance, Master in Finance, etc. depending on where you are in the world).
A masters in finance is a middle ground between doing an MBA and the CFA charter, both in terms of cost and career prospects: as we explain in other articles, if you didn't secure a second year banking internship, it allows you to complete a new internship between graduating from university and starting the masters. That internship will hopefully then lead to a full-time role.
Masters in finance programs are often more popular with sales & trading professionals rather than investment bankers, for a variety of reasons. Investment bankers have historically tended to gravitate towards MBAs rather than MSc Finance courses. Neither are to be confused with the much more niche master’s in financial engineering courses which offer access to quantitative roles. Be warned, though, that even after completing a masters in finance you will usually only join as an analyst, the bottom rung of the ladder.
Our ranking of top Masters in Finance courses
The table below shows a ranking of the top 32 schools for a masters in finance, based on our own data and some publicly available information on where graduates work.
The ranking reflects the percentage of masters in finance graduates from each school working in a front-office investment banking role compared to total program alumni in the financial services ecosystem and the percentage of those in front-office roles at the industry's well-respected institutions (a combination of bulge bracket banks and elite boutiques)*.
The best masters in finance: Imperial College Business School
Our top-rated masters in finance is offered by the UK's Imperial College London’s business school. Although it performed well in terms of the prestige of its alumni, it was in a class of its own when measuring the proportion of its graduates working in front-office roles: this was more than twice as high as the average school we assessed.
The (second) best masters in finance: Warwick Business School
The second highest-rated masters in finance course was offered by the UK's Warwick business school. Although Warwick performed reasonably well in terms of front-office weighting, it was the best-rated masters program we looked at for the prestigious institutions its alumni attended.
The (third) best masters in finance: McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business came third. Although the masters in finance program is generally a European phenomenon, McCombs’ graduates have strong penetration of the most prestigious banks.
The (fourth) best masters in finance: Owen Graduate School of Management
Owen Graduate School of Management, part of Vanderbilt University, led the pack behind McCombs. Like McCombs, it performed particularly well when assessing where its alumni ended up, and the school had a relatively low proportion of its graduates in revenue-generating front-office roles.
The masters in finance course at the London School of Economics (LSE), based in the UK came fifth. The LSE benefited both from alumni in the front office and students at prestigious institutions.
Generally speaking, the list was dominated by American, British, and French universities. Between the three of them, they made up 75% of the list, with only Spain and China having more than one entry.
*”Prestigious Institutions” in investment banking were defined as the following, or their respective investment bank subdivision where applicable: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Evercore, Lazard, Rothschild, PJT Partners, Perella Weinberg Partners, and Moelis.
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