Toggle Mobile Menu

Apply for the Master in Finance

Master in Finance

Apply For the Master in Finance Program

Go further with Princeton BCF

Regularly placing among the top schools across several global academic rankings, Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance offers innovative, interdisciplinary academic programs and conducts research activities to shape existing practices and knowledge around modern finance and monetary economics. 

The Master in Finance degree prepares students for a wide range of careers both inside and outside the financial industry, including financial engineering and risk management, quantitative asset management, macroeconomic and financial forecasting, quantitative trading, and applied research. Enrolling approximately 35 students out of more than 600 applicants, the program is highly competitive.

You’ll learn theory from top Princeton faculty and academic researchers, while also gaining practical skills from leaders in the financial services industry.

For our Fall 2024 cohort, we are offering three distinct program tracks based on career interests and goals:

Quantitative Asset Management

  • Focuses on designing and evaluating financial products that help organizations manage risk-return trade-offs.
  • Work on portfolio management, risk management, asset pricing and hedging, providing the necessary quantitative background to leaders and innovators in this growing field.
  • Highly requested at major investment banks, hedge funds, and successful quantitative asset management firms.
  • Includes courses in probability, optimization, stochastic calculus, dynamic programming, machine learning, and several disciplines in financial economics. 

Data Science & Financial Technologies

  • For those interested in computer-based technologies and their increasingly important use of big data in finance.
  • Focuses on computational techniques needed in “real-time” computing environments including efficient trading systems, algorithms, high-frequency data analysis, interfaces, processing large databases, and the security of computer networks.
  • Essential for competitive financial firms demanding more efficient trading processes, data signal extractions with increased speed and lower costs.
  • Courses cover the latest tools and techniques of financial technologies (FinTech), computer science, and computational methods in finance, including machine learning, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and deep learning.

Valuation & Macroeconomic Analysis

  • Focuses on the strategic understanding of a firm’s valuation and structural macroeconomic conditions.
  • Studies how to evaluate and finance investment projects, including start-up financing, deal restructuring, and how to determine the optimal capital structure of a firm.
  • Formulates strategies consistent with the expected performance of the macroeconomy.
  • Fundamental for venture capital funds, global macro funds, strategic consultancies in finance, and pension funds.
  • Includes courses in corporate finance, behavioral finance, investment projects, financial reorganization, mergers and acquisitions, incentive design, initial public offerings, time series analysis, macroeconomics, and asset and liability management.

 

Watch an Information Session

We encourage interested students to watch our informational video with BCF Director and Professor Markus Brunnermeier, Professor Caio Ibsen Rodrigues de Almeida, and Manager of Career Development and External Relations Lindsay Bracken.


Program Length and Fees

The Master in Finance program is four semesters. A small number of students with strong prior knowledge of the field, mathematical aptitude, and work experience are given the opportunity to take a compressed two-semester program. We will make a determination about your ability to complete the program in one year upon your admittance to the program. For more information on the compressed program, please contact Melanie Heaney-Scott at mheaney@princeton.edu.

The cost of tuition and the required health plan fee can be found here. More details about tuition and other costs are available online at the Graduate School website.

 

Stay Updated on Princeton’s Fall 2025 Master in Finance Program

 

Join our mailing list for program news, events, and important dates.

Subscribe

 

Application Process and Timeline

Prospective students interested in applying to the Master in Finance Program should apply through the Graduate School at Princeton University.

Students will be required to submit academic transcripts, including math courses taken, three letters of recommendation, and a personal statement. GRE or GMAT test scores are accepted, but not required. For students whose primary language is not English or who did not either complete their entire undergraduate instruction entirely in English or at least one year of full-time graduate instruction entirely in English, TOEFL, DET, or IELTS test scores are required. For more information on required testing, visit the Princeton grad school site or contact gsadmit@princeton.edu.

All applicants are required to take a math assessment on the first Saturday after the application deadline.

All applicants should receive a response to their application by March 15. Due to the large number of candidates that apply each year, it is not possible for us to inform applicants if their applications are incomplete, or give other information during the review process.

Admitted students will need to respond by April 15. On-campus housing will be guaranteed only to students whose completed housing application has been received by the university by the reply deadline of April 15.

READ MORE

 

 

Letters of Recommendation

Three letters of recommendation are required as part of your application. For applicants with at least two years of full-time work experience, two of the letters may be written by employers, and at least one must be an academic reference. For applicants without full-time work experience, two academic references are required. We encourage you to register your recommenders as early as possible to meet the strict application deadline.

 

More on the GRE and GMAT

Students can submit GMAT scores instead of GRE scores. When students register for either test, they must specify that their scores be sent to the Princeton University Office of Graduate Admission. Princeton’s code for the GRE is 2672, and WC1-L5-59 for the GMAT. Princeton does not use department codes. It takes four to six weeks for scores to be released to the Office of Graduate Admission following your request.

 

Questions About an Application

All information and questions regarding your electronic application should be directed to the Graduate Admission Office. For information on how to check the status of a submitted application, visit this page.

For technical issues with your application, email gradapphelp@princeton.edu or you can call (609) 258-3034 during office hours only. Please allow 48 hours for a response, and please include your user name or order ID number, full name, email address, and phone number.

 

What Our Master in Finance Students Say

Finally, for those looking for insight from Master in Finance students, enjoy this video of Judy Mao (’23) sharing her thoughts on the program and why she chose Princeton BCF.