Most folks considering an MFin are also considering an MBA, so let’s take a moment to compare them directly.
Which is better for you? It depends on a lot of personal factors, including your age (MFins are generally younger), target region for future employment (MFins go father in Europe than the U.S.), and financial resources (MFins are cheaper). But there are a few cases where the choice may seem tough, but is in fact easy:
• If you don’t care about management and soft skills, you just want to be the guy expertly crunching numbers and making as much money as possible from that skill—go for the MFin. You don’t need an MBA to get to the top of the quant side at a bank, and the MFin will go a lot deeper into the fascinating and esoteric details of financial mathematics. Traders beware, though. An MFin is typically not paired well with trading. Traders grow on the desk, not through quant/finance degrees.
• If you want to make a career in management consulting, get an MBA. Many MFins go into consulting, but they are generally providing focused, technical support on projects led by MBAs. If you want to make a career change or are attracted to the strategic problem solving and varied projects consultants tackle, the MFin is not the best choice to get you into that part of the management consulting business.
• If you’re an aspiring FinTech entrepreneur, go with the MBA. Founders face a wide array of challenges, and the MBA’s generalist curriculum is a much better fit. While many MFins go into FinTech, they usually join already-established firms rather than launching their own businesses as employee #1.
Sometimes, of course, the decision is simply not easy. If you’re not sure about your goals, it’s very hard to tell which degree will get you closer to them. You can always wait and see, knowing that the MBA is available to older applicants. Alternatively,
there’s no rule that says you can’t apply to both. MBA and MFin adcoms are great at evaluating a candidate’s suitability for their programs—it’s literally their job. If you’re willing to put in the work on two types of application, your acceptances may help make the MBA vs. MFin question more concrete. If you end up weighing HBS versus a middle-ranked MFin, your decision is suddenly very simple.
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