Students must meet the following admission requirements : 1. Academic requirements Your previous education needs to be deemed equivalent to at least a Dutch academic Bachelor’s degree ( wetenschappelijk onderwijs, WO ) obtained at a research university (nominal duration 3 years). Please find more information about your admissibility with a non-Dutch degree here . Professional certificates in finance (CFA, FRM or CF1) are not accepted as a substitute for a qualifying academic degree. In combination with a qualifying academic degree in another field, those certificates may be accepted for meeting some of the programme specific requirements below. 2. Programme specific requirements The Honours Programme in Quantitative Finance is a highly selective and challenging program for those students who have a strong quantitative focus which they want to apply in all areas of quantitative finance and risk management. You are fascinated by the way financial markets operate. All students should possess sufficient mathematics, econometrics, statistics and probability theory knowledge, as well as knowledge of basic investment theory and programming. Also: students should be familiar with a theorem-proof type teaching style for some of the more mathematical courses. It is an 84 credit honours programme , which makes it more challenging than the regular programme. We expect you to have successfully completed courses based on the following literature, or equivalent: Calculus - Edwards, C.H., and D.E. Penney, Calculus with analytic Geometry. Prentice Hall, recent edition Investments - Bodie, Kane, Marcus, Investments, recent edition Statistics - Rice, J., Mathematical Statistics and data analysis. Duxbury Press,, recent edition Probability - S.M. Ross, A First Course in Probability, Prentice-Hall, recent edition Econometrics - Stock & Watson, Introduction to Econometrics, recent edition Programming - Training (or verifiable experience) in a programming language equivalent to 6 ECTS (for example, Python, R, Matlab, C++) Furthermore: This is an honours programme, which means that students are admitted on the basis of their motivation letter, their grade point average for the Bachelor’s degree, their CV and a sample of academic writing GPA of at least 7.0/10 (based on our conversion to the Dutch grading system) for the Bachelor’s degree and relevant courses If you do not fully meet all criteria regarding the completed courses, the Admission Board might offer you the opportunity to follow an online course in finance, statistics or programming to help you fulfill the admission requirements. How to demonstrate that you meet the above requirements You are required to indicate in the course description section of the Application Form how you meet the programme specific admission requirements. Whether you meet the admission requirements, is determined by the Admission Board based on your complete application. 3. English-language proficiency requirements You will have to demonstrate sufficient English language proficiency. You can find an overview of relevant information to demonstrate your English language proficiency on the language requirement page .
To apply you are required to provide the following documents: Scan of your passport or national ID card (ID for EEA students only) valid at the start date of the programme Master Application File please download the correct file from this page . In this file you can see which documents are required to apply for your programme. Proof of English language proficiency (if already obtained): upload your proof of English language proficiency or English language test results. Please find the English language requirements here . After having prepared the required documents, please follow the online application procedure . Do you want to check your admissibility for more than one specialization? Please apply for Finance and complete your application for one specialization in your personal VU dashboard. For the other specialization(s) you want to apply for please get in touch with us per specialization including Application Form via the online form .
All students seeking admission to an international Master’s programme with an international degree are required to pay a non-refundable €100 application fee. Only after you have paid this fee will we be able to start the evaluation of your application file. If you are applying for more than one programme, you will only need to pay the application fee once. Your application fee payment is valid for two years. Information on how to apply with an international university degree and deadlines can be found here .
This demanding programme attracts students who like the intersection between finance and quantitative techniques – the study load is 84 EC compared to the regular 60 EC, which means you’re learning far more than you would at equivalent programmes elsewhere. Are you up for the challenge?