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Master of Science in Finance

Propel your business career by earning your online Master's Degree in Finance from a top-ranked public research university and an AACSB-accredited business school.

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Next Start Date: May 15

Online Master's in Finance

With UMass Lowell's 10-course online Master's in Finance (MSF) Degree, you will gain a deeper understanding of how financial markets work and expand your career opportunities in the realms of corporate finance and financial management. Earning a graduate degree in finance will build your expertise in such areas as capital strategy, statistical analysis, global financial markets, financial modeling, risk-return frameworks and corporate decision-making. With this flexible and affordable graduate business program, you will position yourself for success in the multifaceted field of finance.

Offered by UMass Lowell's Manning School of Business, the M.S. in Finance provides a strong foundational knowledge of a variety of finance topics, including quantitative and qualitative financial models, derivatives, investment analysis, asset allocation and advanced financial theories.

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No GMAT/GRE Required

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Earn Your Master's Degree in as Little as 18 Months

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Variety of Financial Aid and Scholarships Available

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Earn a Top-Ranked Master's for Under $20k

Career Outlook

1.17M
Jobs (2020)
+11.6%
% Change (2020-2021)
$105.2K/yr
Median Earnings
177,144
Annual Openings
Source: Lightcast, 2022

Occupations

  • Banker
  • Corporate Financial Manager
  • Financial Analyst
  • Financial Consultant
  • Fund Manager
  • Investment Banker
  • Portfolio Manager
  • Private Equity Analyst
  • Risk Manager
  • Security Analyst
  • Valuation Analyst
"Employment of financial managers is projected to grow 15 percent from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations. Several functions of financial managers, including cash management and risk management, are expected to be in high demand over the decade."
— U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2020
AACSB Badge This program is offered through UMass Lowell's Manning School of Business, which is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) — an elite distinction earned by less than five percent of business schools worldwide.

Learn more about AACSB accreditation »

Best Online Graduate Business Program in the Nation by U.S. News & World Report Ranked as One of the Best Online Graduate Business Programs in the Nation by U.S. News & World Report
Success Story

"I can't say enough good things about UMass Lowell's MS Finance faculty. They were always helpful and encouraging and really wanted their students to succeed. I also want to thank Professor Kim, who started a class to prepare us to become Chartered Financial Analysts, a designation I earned in July 2020."

Albert Marsocci, MS Finance, 2017 | Junior Quantitative Analyst, DebtX.
Albert Marsocci

Albert Marsocci

Learn from Leaders Who Strive for Real-World Results

AACSB accreditation represents the highest standard of achievement for business schools around the globe. Manning School of Business faculty and instructors are dedicated to excellence in teaching and research, and the M.S. in Finance's challenging, relevant curriculum is aligned with current industry trends and employer needs. Graduates of AACSB-accredited schools are considered to be highly skilled and are more desirable to employers.

Curriculum Outline

- 10 courses total

Required Core Finance Courses (5 Courses / 15cr)

Elective Courses (5 Courses / 15cr)

Finance Concentration Elective Courses (Choose 3 to 5)

Non-Finance Elective Courses (Choose Up to 2)

Course Descriptions

Prerequisite: Student must be matriculated and must have completed foundation core courses. Focuses on the manager's view as opposed to the accountant's view of the decision process and related quantitative and qualitative information needs. The course material examines accounting information that will achieve faster, better, and cheaper operations. New strategic cost management models, such as ABC and target costing, are explored and contrasted with traditional cost approaches. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.
Prerequisites:

Pre-req: MBA; Foundation Core.

This course provides coverage of gross income and business deductions, and provides a comprehensive overview of the taxation of corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships. This course will also cover the history of federal taxation, estate and gift taxes, and how the taxation of business entities fits into the entire tax system. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MSA or MBA;found.core;60.601

Topics to be covered in this course include managing and leaning data, building and evaluating models, visualizing the results of data analyses, and drawing conclusions from the analytics. A series of accounting topics with data analytics application will be discussed, such as fraud and earnings management detection, and financial statement analyses. Students should leave this course with skills necessary to understand data and manage data, to translate accounting and business problems into actionable proposals, and to present data/results to managers and data scientists. 3 credits.

This course focuses on strategies for financing innovation and new technology ventures both within a firm and on a stand-alone basis. Topics covered will include: different types of business organizations; different sources of funding including internal sources and external sources such as angel investors, venture capitalists, etc.; short-term and long-term financial planning and forecasting; business valuation; term sheet negotiation and exit strategies including mergers and acquisitions and IPOs. Each aspect of the course will be covered within the context of a business plan and venture life-cycle. 3 credits.

Relates working capital strategy, capital investment analysis, long-term financing, and capital structure decisions in a risk-return framework to the dynamics of the firm and the market in which it operates. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.
Prerequisites:

MBA, MSA, MS ITE or MSF.

This course covers advanced topics of financial decision-making concepts such as financial restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, different forms of debt and equity financing, leasing, and real options. The course includes techniques to incorporate uncertainty in financial analysis, to hedge corporate risk, and to restructure a firm through leveraged buyouts or under bankruptcy protection. It also includes advanced topics such as real options, theories of behavioral corporate finance, and the process to navigate extraordinary financial situations such as financial restructuring and liquidation. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.

This course introduces to students a comprehensive financial statement analysis and valuation framework that integrates financial reporting, financial analysis and valuation, and the application of this framework to fundamental analysis. This course provides students with hands-on experience in financial statement analysis. Students will be introduced to general tools of financial analysis, theoretical concepts, and practical valuation issues. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable with using firms financial statements to develop an understand of their performance and to establish a basis for making reasonable valuation estimates. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MBA, MSF, or MSA & Core Pre-req

This course introduces the student to the main theories and practice of investments and portfolio management. The student will learn about various investment opportunities including real and financial assets; the investment environment including the money and capital markets; the investment process including identification of goals, data gathering and analysis etc.; and, decision making under a changing market environment. The material covered will include: selection of assets - with special emphasis on securities selection through technical analysis and fundamental analysis, computation of risk and return of individual assets, asset allocation and portfolio formation, computation of risk and return of portfolios, measurement of portfolio performance and rebalancing of portfolios. Also included in the material will be topics such as the "pyramid" approach, forecasting and the use of indicators and, market and industry indexes, models such as the CAPM, bond and stock valuation, mutual funds, domestic versus global investment etc. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.

This course develops investment theory as applicable to portfolio management and securities selection. Topics covered include identification of investor goals, identification of investment opportunities in real and financial assets under volatile capital market conditions as well as analysis and decision making under conditions of certainty and uncertainty. Related concepts include technical analysis and fundamental analysis, pyramid approach to investing, changing risk and return through asset allocation and portfolio formation, valuation of basic securities and rebalancing of portfolios. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.
Prerequisites:

MBA Found Core or MSA

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

Financial securities whose valuation depends on interest rates, such as Treasury securities, municipal bonds, and corporate bonds are called Fixed Income Securities. In this course, students will learn how to value and manage the risk of these securities. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MBA, MSA, MS ITE or MSF.

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

This course deals with the theoretical and practical approaches to effective financial risk management. It covers risk management techniques for corporations and for management of equity, bond, derivatives and investment portfolios. Topics include measurement of corporate risk exposure, portfolio risk exposure and value at risk (VAR) for financial institutions; risk and diversification, modern portfolio theory, concentrated equity positions, portfolio benchmarking, the importance of asset allocations; market risk management, currency risk exposures, credit risk management, interest rate risks, and operational & integrated risk management; and computer applications. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

FINA.6010

The description for this course is not yet available. 3 credits.

The primary emphases in this course are the valuation and practical application of derivatives for both hedging and speculation. Topics include the characteristics of options, forward contracts, futures, and swaps; arbitrage and the valuation of derivatives; creating value and profit diagrams; and the structure of the derivatives markets. Ethical and economic issues associated with the use of derivatives as reported in the current financial press are also covered. 3 credits. Matriculated MBA students with completed MBA Foundation Core; or permission of MBA Coordinator.
Prerequisites:

Matriculated MBA students

Topics of current interest in Finance. Subject matter to be announced in advance. For a current semester course title, please log on to ISIS, the Inter-Campus Student Information System. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.
Prerequisites:

MBA, MSA, MS ITE or MSF.

The international dimension of the finance function of the firm. Financial constraints of the international environment and their effect on the standard concepts of financial management. The techniques of adapting risk analysis to the international situation. Study of international currency flows, monetary systems, forward cover and international banking policies. 3 credits. If not currently matriculated in a Manning School of Business program, please contact the MBA staff at MBA@uml.edu or call 978-934-2848 for permission to take courses.
Prerequisites:

Matriculated MBA students

This course addresses the issues involved in doing business overseas, and how it differs form purely domestic business. It surveys the changing international business landscape, focusing on the opportunities and challenges that company decision makers face in the global marketplace, and the factors that influence their decision to internationalize. Special attention is given to the broad concept of globalization - of markets and production - multinational enterprises include: governments, central banks, financial markets, regional and multilateral institutions (e.g., World Band, IMF, WTO), and the role of individuals who shape the international environment. 3 credits.

This course provides students with in-depth knowledge for modeling, designing, implementing, and managing database systems for operational and decision support purposes. Topics covered include relational database model, entity-relationship modeling, normalization, SQL language, data warehousing, data quality and integration, data and database administration, and object-oriented database. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MIST.6010 Management information systems, and Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or Permission of Program Coordinator.

This Course introduces the concepts and technologies of business intelligence and data mining. The course studies how data-oriented business intelligence techniques can be used by organizations to gain competitive advantages, as well as how to design and develop these techniques. Topics include classification, clustering, association analysis, prediction, and text and web mining. Data-mining related ethical issues will also be discussed. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MIST.6010 Management information systems, and Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or Permission of Program Coordinator.

This course provides students with knowledge and skills to process data for business analytics. Topics include data quality requirement and data preparation for business analytics, impact of data quality on analytics, and methods for assessing and improving data quality in the context of business analytics. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

MIST.6010 Management information systems, and Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or Permission of Program Coordinator.

This course introduces statistical methods and techniques for predictive analytics. This is part of the business-analytics umbrella of courses. The main focus of this course is on regression, a powerful and widely used predictive method. Topics covered include simple linear regression, multiple regression, variable selection, model diagnostics, and systems of regression equations. The course also covers classification techniques using statistical methods such as linear discriminant function and logistic regression. Spreadsheet software, such as MS Excel, and statistical software, such as SAS and R, will be heavily utilized. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

POMS.6010 Operations Management, or Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or matriculated MS Engineering Management, or permission of program coordinator.

This course covers the three main facets of business analytics: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Students will gain the knowledge of managerial decision-making (commonly referred to as data analytics, decision support systems-DSS, data mining). Some of the business analytic topics covered include neural networks, decision trees, support vector machines, k-means, association rule mining, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Data Envelopment Analysis, expert systems, optimization, and simulation. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

POMS.6010 Operations Management, or Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or matriculated MS Engineering Management, or permission of program coordinator.

This course covers principles and techniques of applied mathematical modeling for managerial decision making. Emphasis is on the methods of prescriptive analytics, including optimization models, decision analysis, simulation modeling, and risk analysis. Problems studied will include applications in finance, health care, marketing, operations, and management. Cases studies will be used extensively to demonstrate the practical use of models to improve managerial decision making. In addition to developing and applying models, emphasis will be placed on explaining the models and interpreting their results. 3 credits.
Prerequisites:

POMS.6010 Operations Management, or Matriculated MS Business Analytics, or Business Analytics Certificate, or matriculated MS Engineering Management, or permission of program coordinator.

Program Requirements

To be recommended for a University of Massachusetts Lowell master's degree, candidates must satisfy all of the general requirements below, plus any additional requirements that may be required by the department through which the program is offered. Any additional requirements for this program are either listed below or may be found in the University's Graduate Program Catalog.

General Requirements:

  • Students must complete the program of study designed by the Department in which they are enrolled and approved by the University.
  • Satisfactory grades in all subjects offered for the degree must be earned. See Academic Standing.
  • All financial obligations, including tuition, fees and expenses, must be satisfied as evidenced by completion.
  • Upon completion of all their courses, graduate degree candidates must submit a signed Declaration of Intent to Graduate (DIG) form to their coordinator. The coordinator will apply them in SIS, Graduation Tracking.

Graduate Program Policies

In applying for a degree program or registering for courses, each student assumes full responsibility for knowledge of and compliance with the definitions, regulations and procedures of UMass Lowell as set forth on our website. For additional information, please refer to the Graduate Program Policies found within the UMass Lowell Graduate Catalog.

Tuition & Fees

Tuition at UMass Lowell is typically half the cost of private colleges, and our online tuition is among the lowest in the nation. Tuition for online programs offered through the Division of Graduate, Online & Professional Studies is the same whether you live in-state, out-of-state or outside of the U.S.

Summer 2023 Tuition

 Cost Per Credit Cost Per 3-Credit Course*

Graduate
Online† $585 $1,755
Online Business** $655 $1,965
On Campus View Here View Here
*If the number of contact hours exceeds the number of credits, tuition is calculated by multiplying by the total number of contact hours.
**Applies to ACCT, BUSI, ENTR, FINA, MGMT, MKTG, MIST and POMS courses.
†Rate will increase slightly in Fall 2023

Additional Costs
Term Registration Fee $30
Late Fee $50
Graduate Engineering and Business Degrees and Certificate Applications $75

Please note: Tuition and fees are subject to change.

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Undergraduate Prerequisites

Undergraduate non-business majors who have not previously taken and earned a grade of B- or better in undergraduate courses in Financial Accounting, Business Financial Analysis and Microeconomics must do so prior to applying to this program. This requirement can be satisfied by taking the following three UMass Lowell courses: ECON.2010 Microeconomics, ACCT.5010 Financial Accounting and FINA.5010 Business Financial Analysis. Please note: These prerequisite courses cannot be counted towards the master's degree.

Admission Requirements

  • Undergraduate Degree: Please provide official transcripts. A minimum overall GPA of 3.0 is required.
  • No GMAT/GRE required.
  • TOEFL for international students: (600+ paper-based, 250+ computer-based, or 100+ Internet-based).
  • Successful completion of all other University admissions requirements, including a statement of purpose and two letters of recommendation. See UMass Lowell's Graduate Admissions Requirements for details.

Graduate Program Admissions Requirements

Admission to all graduate programs at UMass Lowell is contingent upon successful completion of a bachelor's degree. In many cases, applicants may register for a course before formally applying to the program; however, students requiring financial aid may want to wait until they have been formally accepted into the program to ensure that their course(s) will be covered. Contact UMass Lowell's Office of Graduate Admissions if you have questions about the application process.

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Questions Regarding Your Graduate Application?

Email Graduate_Admissions@uml.edu or call 800-656-4723 (for U.S. students) or 978-934-2390 (for international students).

For General Assistance:

For general questions about registering for courses or to find out who the advisor is for your graduate program, call 800-480-3190. Our admissions and advising teams are here to help!

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