Finance: VU University Amsterdam

Course Description

The Master's programme in Finance is an intensive yet flexible programme which is geared towards corporate, institutional and governmental financial management, focusing on the functioning of international financial markets. After an advanced and comprehensive introduction to the various areas of finance, the student can specialise in his own field of interest, ranging from corporate financial management to quantitative asset management. After completion, the student will have developed into an academic financial specialist with a keen interest in financial economics, solid analytical skills, and a multidisciplinary outlook.

Career prospects

There is a wide range of career opportunities open to you with a Master's degree in Finance. You can join national or multinational companies, banks and insurers or go into consultancy, government or the academic sector. Jobs prospects include financial specialist, risk manager, treasurer, banker, financial consultant, fund manager, investment expert and financial analyst.

Admission requirements

• Applicants must have completed courses in corporate finance, investments, quantitative methods and statistics, witnessed by thorough knowledge of the standard literature listed below (or its equivalent). Students should clearly indicate how Finance courses, followed in their previous program, have brought them up to the level of the textbooks below.
• As a Master's student in Finance, you need to have a genuine interest in the area of finance, an inquiring mind, the capacity to cope with the rapid pace of work, an aptitude for picking out key points from large volumes of material, the ability to work accurately under pressure, good communication skills and a critical attitude towards your own results and those of others.
• Applicants must have completed the following subjects:
  • Corporate Finance
  • Investments
  • Mathematics
  • Business Statistics
• Experience in writing a financial research paper, for example in a seminar class or thesis project. For VU-students this entails the Corporate Finance Tutorial or Bachelor Thesis.