Finance- B.S or Masters?

College Majors Business Major
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<p>I am 23 and i graduate from college 2 yrs ago with a degree in Criminal Justice with the aspiration of going to law school. Well now Law school is not in the picture and I stuck with what I feel is an unmarketable degree. Or at least unmarketable for any career Id like. I am currently working at a financial planning firm, thought financial planning is not the area I want to be in the future.</p>

<p>A friend suggested I try for a Masters in Finance, though I have absolutely no foundation of knowledge regarding finance. However, a part of me feels stupid doing another Bachelors.</p>

<p>Thoughts and opinons, please?</p>

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<p>MBA would be a good idea for you, a full switch to a new area.</p>

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<p>Don't do a bachelors. If you had decent grades in college, can score well on the GMAT, and can spin your work experience into something positive I would try to go to a good MBA program. Otherwise, I would look into Masters in Finance degrees. I'm assuming some of the programs do not require that you have a background in Finance.</p>

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<p>The programs dont require a background in Finance. Regarding the GMAT, I suck at standardized test, and after 2 awful SATs and 2 horrible LSATs, I dont think I can score well on the GMAT.</p>

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<p>The programs don't require a background in finance, that's right. But you better be real good at math.</p>

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<p>touche' tetrishead is right</p>

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<p>youd ont have to be good at math unless its a computational/quantatative financial masters or a financial engineering degree.</p>

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<p>A masters degree in finance is quantitative finance, because finance as we know it is basically applied econometrics, it's the application of mathematical models. There isn't a degree for people that just want to be financial planners or whatever the hell a "here is finance works without any math hurf durf" degree would be (that I'm aware of, anyway), they just get on the job training and read books.</p>

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<p>you don't know what your talking about bud..........</p>

<p>MS</a> Finance - Finance, Insurance & Real Estate - Warrington College of Business Administration</p>

<p>top program there, check out their placement record and student resumes, pretty impressive for uf.</p>

<p>Concentration</a> in Finance : Simon Graduate School of Business</p>

<p>no math there either </p>

<p>those are MS FINANCE programs...........</p>

<p>here is an example of a computational/quantatative/engineering track Masters .</p>

<p>Rutgers</a> Business School : Core Courses</p>

<p>scroll to the bottom to check the pre reqs, notice the req's are diffferent.......</p>

<p>so basically, if you don't have math and go to a MS Finance program your good. You prob won't be considered if you don't have atleast differential equations/linear algebra for the financial engienering or quant finance programs.</p>

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<p>...</p>

<p>I randomly clicked on the second course for the UF MS in Finance.</p>

<p>
[quote]
During the course, we will discuss the following topics: The basics of U.S. equities, U.S. fixed income securities, international equities, real estate, and derivative securities
Portfolio theory, CAPM, factor models, and mean-variance optimization, with and without short-selling constraints
Tracking error volatility and information ratio
Strategic and tactical asset allocation
Rebalancing strategies
Performance attribution
Multivariate regression analysis to forecast average returns
ARCH/GARCH analysis to forecast return variances and covariances

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yes, nothing says "does not require math" like multivariate regression analysis.</p>

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<p>do you know what multivarita regression analysis is? i learned that in a intro stat class. also, uf is a top tier program. if you know anythign about finance, there is allot of basic statistics/regression.</p>

<p>Anything about stochastic calculus in there? partial diffy q? computation?</p>

<p>Courant</a> Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU</p>

<p>MFE</a> Prospective - For Prospective Students - Pre-Program Courses - Haas School of Business</p>

<p>THOSE programs require math, as i said in the previous post, UF, Rochester, don't require anythign but intoductory courses, (Calc, stat)</p>

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<p>for ms finance programs, check</p>

<p>M.S</a>. Programs in Finance at U.S. Universities (provided by Don Chance)</p>

<p>also, notice it says "not be in financial engineering, quantitative finance, financial mathematics, mathematical finance, computational finance, etc.; this list may not be inclusive of all possible variations of finance that are excluded. See Global</a> Derivatives v3.0 - Home for a list of those programs. Their list also includes most of these as well.''</p>