Smith Master of Finance Rises to No. 2 in U.S.

The Master of Finance program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business climbed to No. 2 in the United States in a Financial Times report published on June 18, 2018.

The Smith School debuted in the ranking at No. 4 in 2017. Overall, the school improved from No. 38 to No. 30 in the Financial Times annual report, which assigns scores in 17 performance categories. Only MIT Sloan School of Management ranked higher among U.S. programs.

Smith finance professor Liu Yang, academic director of the school’s Master of Finance and Master of Quantitative Finance, said the biggest draw for both programs is the world-class faculty. “They are the leading experts in their field or top practitioners coming from the real business world,” she said.

Smith finance professor Steve Heston, who teaches in both programs, said students gain access to the latest research and techniques used by companies such as Goldman Sachs.

“A good reason to come to the Smith School is to learn the models and formulas from people who invented them,” Heston said. “You can learn from the source instead of learning from people who learned it from textbooks.”