Prerequisite courses

Have the following courses as part of your undergraduate degree?

• Foundations of Finance
• Financial Accounting
• Financial Derivatives
• Investments

If ‘YES’ to any of them; when applying, submit a copy of the official course outlines as part of your supplemental items.

If ‘NO’ to one or more of them:

• You can still apply! Completion of these courses is not required to apply. If your application is successful, you will receive an offer of admission that is conditional on your passing of the qualifying exam for each course that is missing. In fact, more than 50% of our most recent incoming class had to complete at least 1 qualifying exam.

The qualifying exams will be offered online prior to the program start date, and must be completed by mid-June. These will be closed-book, multiple choice exams, available only to conditionally admitted students. Students will be given resources to assist with their preparation, created specifically to help students focus their studying and successfully pass the exams.

You may be exempt if you have:

• Passed the CFA Level I examination within 3 years of your anticipated program start date
• Passed the CFA Level II or III examinations within 3 years of your anticipated program start date
• Successfully completed JRE300, Foundations of Accounting and Finance, as part of the University of Toronto Engineering Business Minor, within 3 years of your anticipated program start date

Preparation for the exams

• Admitted students will be given further information on the prerequisite qualifying examinations after they have been accepted into the program. Assistance will be provided in the form of suggested topics and reading lists, and access to slides and presentations.
• Follow our suggested books and topics to get a head start on your preparation.

The MFRM prerequisites: suggested books and topics

Financial Accounting

Weygandt, Survey of Accounting, 2nd Edition, Wiley, 2019

• Financial Reporting: An Introduction 
• Accrual Accounting Concepts 
• The Accounting Information System
• Understanding Balance Sheets 
• Understanding Cash Flow Statements
• Financial Statement Analysis 
• Understanding Income Statements and Statements of Retained Earnings

Foundations of Finance

Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, 12th Edition

Ross, Westerfield and Jordan, McGraw Hill Education, 2016

• Time Value of Money
• How Firms Finance Themselves: the nature of debt, equity and hybrid securities
• Corporate Decision Making: Choosing Projects
• Risk and Return

Investments

Investments, 12^th Canadian Edition

Bodie, Kane and Marcus

• Introduction
  • Financial markets, securities and trading
  • Computing risk and return
  • Historical patterns in risk and return
• The Stock Market
  • Markowitz portfolio diversification
  • CAPM
• The Bond Market
  • The term structure of interest rates
  • Managing bond portfolio risk: duration and convexity

Financial Derivatives

Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, 11^th Edition

Hull, John C., 2018

• What is a derivative?
• OTC vs Exchange-Traded Markets
• Forward vs. Spot Trades
• Futures Markets
• Swaps
• Options: Payoffs and Terminology
• Overview of Valuation Approaches and Greek letters