Many of the questions I get are asking about the different between a master in finance and an MBA. Here is a great description of the differences in the programs and which one is best for you. Hope it helps!
“Unlike an MBA program which focuses on a general business education and will include courses on strategy, management and marketing in addition to finance, our program teaches only finance. This allows us to do so at a much deeper level contrasted with an MBA and enables us to incorporate all the interdisciplinary aspects of modern finance, such as financial mathematics, financial econometrics, computational finance, behavioral finance and corporate finance. Our courses are more quantitative than a typical MBA course and some may find them more demanding.
The MBA is still the degree of choice for the corporate finance divisions and mergers and acquisitions areas of the modern investment bank, but the MFin degree is becoming the preferred degree in the trading and asset management areas of the I-bank. These would be areas such as quantitative asset management, risk management, derivatives pricing and trading, fixed income analytics and other areas where the pricing and analysis of complex securities require significant quantitative input.
Also, the world of finance is broader than the traditional investment banking business, with opportunities in insurance, commercial banking, commodities and energy trading and risk management for traditional industrial companies, to mention just a few areas where our MFin program is becoming well known due to the quality of the students and the learning experience provided by Princeton’s MFin program.”
– Quote taken from Princeton’s website
I think this is one of the best descriptions of what an MSF is and how it is different from an MBA. Anyone going for an MSF or who already has one should read this over carefully. Whenever someone asks me what the difference is I will go back to how perfectly Princeton has summed it up.
