MITx MicroMasters Program in Finance
The Comprehensive Final Exam (CFx) is the culminating exam for the MicroMasters Program in Finance. The CFx is offered twice annually (Spring and Fall) and consists of two 180-minute, online, virtually proctored tests covering material from all five courses. To qualify for the CFx, learners must earn certificates in all five courses by the eligibility cutoff date. Refer to the program overview for upcoming CFx and eligibility cutoff dates.
Program Information
Certificate Track
Learn for Free
About this Program
The skills and expertise required for a career in finance are in high demand across countless industries. From asset management, to corporations, to official institutions, the career opportunities for qualified finance professionals continue to grow and evolve. For example, demand for financial analysts is predicted to grow at a faster than average rate through 2030 (Source). And according to Glassdoor, the median salary of a quantitative financial analyst was $106,575. (Source)
The MITx MicroMasters® Program in Finance offers recent graduates, early to mid-stage professionals, and other individuals interested in pursuing a career in finance, an opportunity to advance in the finance field or fast-track an MIT Sloan Master of Finance through a rigorous, comprehensive online curriculum, delivered by the world-renowned MIT Sloan School of Management.
Drawn from the STEM-based curriculum taught on campus, all five online courses in this program mirror on-campus graduate-level MIT coursework and cover the following topics: modern finance, financial accounting, mathematical methods for quantitative finance, and derivatives markets. Learners who complete and pass each course in this online program, as well as the proctored Comprehensive Final Exam, may earn a MicroMasters program credential in finance, and are considered affiliate members of the MIT Alumni Association. Those learners are eligible to apply to the MIT Sloan Master of Finance and upon acceptance, earn credit for the work performed online.
What you'll learn
- Comprehend the foundations of modern finance.
- Perform applied computational techniques in R and apply advanced mathematical topics in financial engineering and quantitative finance using linear algebra, optimization, probability, stochastic processes, and statistics.
- Understand the basics of corporate finance, capital budgeting, real and financial options, capital structure, yield curve analysis, and corporate risk management.
- Apply financial decision making, the theory of efficient markets, valuation theory, financial securities, risk analysis, portfolio theory, derivatives pricing, hedging strategies based on duration and convexity, and asset pricing models.
- Identify the basic structure of financial reports and the process of recording transactions. Understand how investors, creditors, and other users analyze financial statements to assess corporate performance.
Courses
To complete this program, you must take 6 required courses.
Required Courses
How you'll learn
Real-World LearningLearn from MIT faculty and experts who ground their teaching in real-world cases rather than mathematical models, making the material approachable for all.
Learn From OthersConnect with an international community of professionals working on real-world projects.
- Learn On Demand
Access all course content online with complete flexibility to study at your own pace.
Meet your instructors
Deborah Lucas
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Finance
Deborah Lucas is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the Director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy.
Her recent research has focused on measuring and accounting for the costs and risks of government financial obligations. Her academic publications cover a wide range of topics including the effect of idiosyncratic risk on asset prices and portfolio choice, dynamic models of corporate finance, financial institutions, monetary economics, and valuation of government guarantees. An expert on federal credit programs, Lucas has testified before Congress on budgeting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, student loans, and on strategically important financial institutions.
Previous appointments include assistant and associate director at the Congressional Budget Office; Donald C. Clark Professor of Finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office; senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers; and member of two Social Security Technical Advisory Panels. Lucas also has served as a director on several corporate and non-profit boards.
She is on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Financial Economics , a coeditor of AEA-Policy , and a co-organizer of the group Capital Markets and the Economy at the NBER. Lucas is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a research associate of the NBER, a member of the Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee, and a member of the Academic Research Council for the Urban Institute Housing Finance Policy Center.
Lucas received her BA, MA, and a PhD in economics, all from the University of Chicago.
Current Research Focus: Lucas's current research lies at the intersection of finance and policy, with a focus on economically meaningful cost measurement of government financial activities. Some current projects include measuring the capital subsidies to state-owned enterprises, analyzing the risk-sharing potential of collective defined contribution plans, creating a world atlas of government financial institutions, measuring the subsidies and risks associated with development banks, and analyzing reverse mortgages.
