Build your finance career where groundbreaking ideas have shaped the field
From pioneering investment strategies to Nobel Prize-winning research in financial markets, Yale has helped redefine how the world understands finance. Develop the analytical skills, financial expertise, and judgment to pursue an ambitious career in investment banking, asset management, and beyond.
Career Paths
Sample Employers // Bank of America / Barclays PLC / Citi / The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. / IFC - International Finance Corporation / JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Start in an internship
Find your first job
Build an impactful career
Paula J. Volent ’97
Volent stayed on at the Yale Investments Office throughout her time at SOM and beyond, starting out as an intern and eventually taking on more substantive work. By the time she left in 2000, she had helped David Swensen, the legendary investor, write his first book, Pioneering Portfolio Management.
Meet Your Community
Connect with MBA Student Ambassadors to learn more about the Yale SOM community.
Student clubs
The Finance Club supports and prepares students for internships and full-time positions in investment banking.
The Private Equity and Venture Capital Club hosts a major annual symposium as well as events throughout the year that help prepare students interested in the field.
The Impact Investing Club educates students about the fast-growing field, combining social and financial return.
Finance Club at a glance
How a Yale MBA Can Help
Success in finance requires more than technical expertise. You need to understand problems in all their complexity, bring the sharpest analytical tools to bear, and see the broad impacts of finance decisions. A Yale MBA develops these capabilities in distinctive ways.
- See the problem from all sides. Yale SOM’s integrated curriculum trains you to approach complex problems through multiple stakeholder perspectives, challenge assumptions, and see what others may miss.
- Apply cutting-edge analysis. Yale has been the locus of breakthrough thinking in finance—including David Swensen’s Yale model of investing and Nobelist Robert Shiller’s founding work in behavioral finance—a tradition that continues with today’s finance faculty, who will teach you to leverage the latest in AI, machine learning, and other innovations.
- Get the whole picture. Draw on courses, faculty, and expertise across Yale—from law and medicine to engineering, global affairs, and the environment—to bring broader insight to complex problems.
- Build thriving teams. Yale SOM’s collaborative culture builds the ability to communicate across perspectives and align others around action.
Finance centers at Yale SOM
- International Center for Finance
Providing academic and financial support for research in financial economics. - Swensen Asset Management Institute
Furthering the study and practice of asset management. - Yale Program on Financial Stability
Creating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge about financial crises.
Expertise at hand
The “Yale Model” of endowment investing has set the standard in its field over the last three decades. The late David Swensen developed this approach as the university’s chief investment officer. He also co-founded the Master’s in Asset Management program at Yale SOM and mentored and collaborated with numerous SOM alumni. His legacy is sustained by the school’s Swensen Asset Management Institute, which supports research, teaching, and events.
Classes like Sourcing & Managing Funds and Basics of Accounting gave me a strong foundation and helped me feel much more confident walking into the technical parts of the job. Just as important was the Finance Club. Second-year students and mentors helped prepare us for all the things that are harder to learn in a classroom: how to navigate a new team, ask good questions, manage competing priorities, and understand what being a great associate actually looks like.
Get hands-on investing experience
Through the Meng Impact Investing Fund, students make real investments in real companies seeking to improve the world while turning a profit.
