FAQs

At this time, the program is only open to current Penn undergraduates.

Yes. Students who have not yet taken FNCE 1000 and ACCT 1010 can either take them during their fourth year or, if they cannot fit them into their remaining undergraduate courses, take them during the summer between their third and fourth years.

Visit the Prerequisites page for more details.

Ideal applicants will be undergraduates across Penn’s various schools with solid quantitative training. The most competitive applicants are likely to have backgrounds in computer science, math, or other analogous disciplines.

Check out the Candidate Profile/Eligibility page for more information.

No. We will assist students in finding internships for the summer between their fourth year and their Jacobs MSQF program year.

No. The goal of the program is to provide training and expertise in finance to students that have strong quantitative backgrounds.

Prior to admission, students must have completed MATH 2400 Calculus Part III or ESE 2030 Linear Algebra with Applications to Engineering and AI (or an equivalent course with permission of the Faculty Director).

Courses required pre-admission or by the end of the fourth year are FNCE 1000 Corporate Finance and ACCT 1010 Accounting and Financial Reporting.

There are six required courses. Students must take FNCE 5050 Investment Management by the end of their fourth year. They also have the option of taking FNCE 5170 Financial Derivatives and/or FNCE 5250 Fixed Income Securities in their fourth year (schedule permitting).

NOTE: Students who took any of FNCE 2050, FNCE 2170, and FNCE 2250 before their fourth years and received at least a “B-” grade can waive the requirement to take FNCE 5050, FNCE 5170, and FNCE 5250, respectively, toward the Jacobs MSQF degree. Any student waiving one of these courses will need to replace it with an elective to get to 10 CUs.

Visit the Prerequisites page for more information.

We seek students who are prepared to handle and benefit from the Jacobs MSQF coursework; thus, proficiency at coding and coursework in math, statistics, and economics are preferred.

While there is no required statistics course, the most competitive applicants will likely have a statistics background. Students who lack a statistics background should take STAT 1010 and STAT 1020 during their fourth year. Similarly, students should have coding skills and are advised to take a course (e.g. OIDD 4770) during their fourth year, if needed.

No. Given that most undergraduate students would not have prior work experience in the industry, we emphasize the importance of an internship after the fourth year to gain real-world skills and experience.

Explore the Candidate Profile/Eligibility page for more information.

The Vice Dean of Graduate Student Affairs oversees admissions to the Jacobs MSQF program.

Applicants must have a current GPA of 3.0 or above at the time of application.

Tuition for Jacobs MSQF courses will be charged by the CU. Estimated tuition per CU for the degree would be approximately $8,500. Assuming a student takes 8 CUs during the Jacobs MSQF year, tuition for the year would be $68,000. A general fee would be added, based on any required university fee amount. There are no additional fees.

Visit the Admissions page for more information.

An internship in quantitative asset management is encouraged but not required.

Students will benefit from gaining real-world skills and experience through an internship during the summer between their fourth and fifth years.

• What tools and resources are available to help students secure summer internships?
  For help with internships, practicums, and career placement, the program will work closely with its Advisory Board, which represents a wide range of practitioners and diverse perspectives on financial markets.

• Will Jacobs MSQF students compete with MBA students who are also looking for internships?
  Many of the quantitative asset management firms that are target recruiters for Jacobs MSQF students do not currently recruit our MBA students.

• What impact does completing an internship have on securing a full-time position after graduation?
  Completing an internship in the quantitative asset management sector allows students to showcase practical, real-world experience and skills to be competitive for jobs after graduation.

Our Career Management team is dedicated to connecting students with a wide range of employers from the Fortune 500 to start-ups. Wharton graduates are in high demand because they create immediate and sustainable value for organizations around the world.

Visit the Career Resources page for more information.

The target recruiter for the Jacobs MSQF program is a quantitative asset management firm that values training in the economic fundamentals of securities, the companies that issue them, and the markets they trade in. Quantitative asset management skills are in high demand around the world — not only at hedge funds but across the whole spectrum of asset managers.

Graduates will gain the skills required for professional entry into quantitative asset management firms, hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, endowments, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and related quantitative asset management employment. These same skills are also transferable and valuable to careers as securities regulators, in central banks, and at other institutions overseeing the markets.

Foundations: Calculus III (or equivalent), Introduction to Corporate Finance, Accounting and Financial Reporting

Required Courses (6 CUs): Investment Management, Financial Derivatives, Fixed Income Securities, Data Science for Finance, Foundations of Asset Pricing, and Applied Research Practicum

Electives (4 CUs): Selection from over 30 Wharton courses and 13 Penn courses

Visit the Courses & Electives page for more information.

The program is designed for students to take up to 4 CUs per semester at the 5XXX+ level.

The Jacobs MSQF degree requires 10 credit units (CUs) at the graduate level (5XXX or above), which comprises 3 categories: Foundations, Required Courses, and Electives. It is designed as a distinct graduate degree and requires a full fifth year of study. The additional year is integral to the curriculum, particularly for the practicum and internship components that are central to the program. The 10 CUs required for the program cannot be double counted toward any other program. Each CU must be earned specifically for the Jacobs MSQF degree.

At this point, the Jacobs MSQF program does not have concentrations within the degree.

Students will learn the latest research on how AI is used in financial modeling and quantitative analysis in their coursework. All Jacobs MSQF students will receive free access to Wharton’s ChatGPT license.

All coursework counting toward the Jacobs MSQF degree must be completed at Penn. Transfer, study abroad, or “credit away” courses are not permitted.

Credits earned in the Jacobs MSQF program cannot be carried over to the MBA program.  However, the courses taken in the Jacobs MSQF program may allow students to waive certain requirements in the MBA program, allowing them to take more electives.

Electives can span a variety of disciplines, including data science, behavioral economics, or macroeconomics, or focus on a particular asset class.

Beyond these pre-approved electives, students may take other courses as electives with the permission of the Faculty Director. Approval is given on a case-by-case basis and will depend on whether the course is sufficiently quantitative and relevant to a sector of Finance. In any case, at least three of a student’s four electives must be Wharton courses.

Take a look at the Courses & Electives page for more information.

The Applied Research Practicum is the signature, hands-on experience of the Jacobs MSQF program. Each student will join a small team (4-6 students) to work on a semester-long applied research project, guided by faculty and often inspired by real-world questions from our Advisory Board. At the end of the semester, teams will present their findings to the full cohort, faculty, and Advisory Board members.

To give you a sense of the type of work you might do, imagine this question:

Suppose you’re given satellite images of every Home Depot parking lot in the world, taken three times a day. How could you turn that data into something investors might care about?

The Applied Research Practicum is about engaging in the thought process behind questions from the quantitative asset management field: how to move from messy data to a hypothesis, test it rigorously, think about risk, and communicate insights clearly. You won’t just apply formulas — you’ll integrate what you’ve learned across finance, statistics, and data science to develop a relevant, real-world project.

Wharton established the Jacobs MSQF program starting in Fall 2026 to provide students with the analytical framework, economic intuition, and quantitative toolkit needed to succeed in the highly competitive and demanding quantitative asset management sector. Hiring preferences in quantitative asset management have shifted to Jacobs MSQF program graduates with the expertise to take on challenging coding and data analysis.

We have specifically tailored our Jacobs MSQF program to equip quantitatively minded students with technical skills and a deep understanding of quantitative finance to meet the increasing sophistication and technical demands of the quantitative asset management sector — launching careers as quantitative analysts, data scientists, risk managers, or in other finance roles calling for the latest in quantitative training.

Penn undergraduates (including Wharton students) with MATH, CIS, ESE, ECON, and/or STAT strengths and an interest in quantitative finance are all eligible. Students will apply in their third year, take some Jacobs MSQF program courses while finishing their undergraduate degree in their fourth year, and complete a post-graduation fifth year focused solely on Jacobs MSQF program courses.

For single-degree students, the undergraduate degree must be completed in no more than eight semesters or the student will not be eligible to continue with the Jacobs MSQF degree.

Yes. However, in order to ensure students are part of a cohort, senior applicants may be asked to take a gap year before starting the program.

The program is focused on financial economic theory, price and risk modeling, portfolio theory/hedging, machine learning and AI, financial markets and regulation, and business analytics. You will be trained in asset pricing through courses on Investment Management, Financial Derivatives, and Fixed Income Securities and can broaden your expertise by taking accounting and data science, building toward specialized coursework and applied research practicums.

Additionally, presentations and other opportunities to interact with practitioners will allow for students to stay informed of industry changes throughout the year and maximize visibility into the market through the experience of seasoned professionals.

Explore the Courses & Electives page for more details.

The new Jacobs MSQF degree and the existing QFNC MBA major share some courses but serve different goals. The QFNC MBA major prepares students to contribute to the quantitative asset management industry, while also preparing them for management in general with the rest of the MBA curriculum.

The Jacobs MSQF program builds skills specific to executing quantitative asset management rather than building out general management skills. These specific skills include coding, data science, and advanced asset pricing theory and technique, and students will hone them through application in the practicum. The QFNC major is intended for students aiming for one of the many roles in or near the quantitative asset management industry, while the Jacobs MSQF degree is intended for those aiming to design and execute quantitative trading strategies.

The Jacobs MSQF program builds skills specific to the quantitative asset management sector, which values training in the economic fundamentals of securities, the companies that issue them, and the markets they trade in.

Quantitative asset management firms include: Citadel, DE Shaw, Jacobs Levy Equity Management, Jane Street, Millenium, Point 72, Renaissance, Susquehanna, and Two Sigma.

Jacobs MSQF program students will take courses on our Philadelphia campus, often learning alongside students from other Wharton programs. All coursework counting toward the Jacobs MSQF degree must be completed at Penn. Transfer, study abroad, or “credit away” courses are not permitted.

The class size for the inaugural cohort is expected to be approximately 40 students.

No. The Jacobs MSQF program is a full-time program.

If a student has a family, health, or financial issue during the program, they can speak with the class manager about options for taking a leave.

Students should speak with the class manager about options for deferring enrollment.

There is the potential for interaction with students in the Wharton PhD and MBA programs. For any cross-listed courses, seats will be allocated to Jacobs MSQF program students. FNCE 5570 Foundations of Asset Pricing and FNCE 5900 Applied Research Practicum are restricted to Jacobs MSQF program students only.