Successful businesses rely on people with the knowledge and experience to invest assets wisely. By earning your Graduate Certificate in Investments—in just four or five courses—you'll learn quantitative tools and best practices, empowering you to make smart investment decisions for your organization.

Graduate Certificate in Investments Program Overview

  • Program Structure: 4–5 courses
  • Class Schedule: Monday–Thursday evenings at 5:20 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
  • Time to Complete: 1 to 3 years
Graduate Certificate Part-Time Timeline

Unique Features

12 or 15

Credits may be applied toward a future MBA

Top 50

Among national universities (U.S. News & World Report)

  • Learn cutting-edge theories and quantitative tools for making sound investment decisions
  • Specialize your studies with electives that are relevant to your goals, such as real estate investing, personal financial planning, or risk management and insurance
  • Build your confidence and experience through project-based coursework and case studies—key components of Northeastern's practice-oriented approach to learning
  • Access expert career guidance from an experienced counselor at Northeastern's office of Employer Engagement and Career Design
  • Complete your certificate in as few as four courses, with the option for one additional elective to deepen your knowledge
  • Build the foundation for a future master's degree from Northeastern—you may be able to apply your earned certificate credits toward an eligible master's program

'Stackable' Credentials

'Stackable' Credentials Opens in Modal

'Just In Time' Learning

'Just In Time' Learning Opens in Modal

Admissions

  • GMAT Required? No.
  • Where do I apply? Apply using this application.
  • Interview required? Upon request.
  • Pre-requisite for admission? Undergraduate degree in accounting or finance.

Helpful Guides

Application Checklist

Need guidance on completing your application? The application checklist provides step-by-step instructions and tips from our admissions team.

Download PDF Application Checklist
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Personal Statement Guide

Need guidance in composing the personal statement for your application? The essay guide will help you organize your thoughts and draft your copy.

Download PDF Personal Statement Guide

There are three entry terms each year in January, May, and September.

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Deadlines & Decisions

Find the deadlines and decision dates you need to know. Submit your application by the earliest date possible for priority consideration.

Please visit the Northeastern Student Financial Services page. Click the dropdown under “Graduate Programs” and you'll find the cost per credit listed next to “D'Amore-McKim School of Business Programs.”

At Northeastern, we value and celebrate diversity in all its forms and strive to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds community, which is vital to learning and discovery.

Clubs and Organizations

Northeastern has many opportunities for you to be engaged with our community. Examples include the following:

Graduate Students of Color Collective

The purpose of the GSCC is to build community for graduate students of color at Northeastern University by promoting education, professionalism, and civic duty. The GSCC fosters student, staff, and faculty relationships to establish a campus home for higher education at Northeastern. Through civic engagement with surrounding communities, the GSCC recognizes the continued struggles of marginalized populations, and the need for those who have succeeded to give back.

Grad Q

Grad Q is a student organization for LGBTQ+ graduate students at Northeastern. Grad Q is focused on building community, social events, advocacy, and mentoring undergraduate students.

Campus Resources

We have a number of cultural centers on campus to support our campus community by providing programs, lectures, and events for students with a range of affiliations and interests including the LGBTQA Resource Center, Office of Global Services, Latinx Student Cultural Center, Asian American Center, and many more.

Curriculum

Your coursework for the Graduate Certificate in Investments will teach you strategic skills for tackling complex financial challenges in domestic and international financial markets.

Through your required coursework, you'll learn valuation techniques and quantitative tools that will allow you to build models for any investment instrument you want to analyze. The electives you choose allow you to dive deeper into the topics that support your career goals, including real estate investing, personal financial planning, or risk management and insurance.

Required course

Familiarizes students with domestic and international financial markets and the securities traded therein. Discusses a variety of techniques for valuation of financial assets and relies heavily on quantitative methods. Critically analyzes such qualitative concepts as market efficiency, intrinsic value, and risk. The contents of this course, descriptive, theoretical, and applied, should provide students with the ability to build unique valuation models to suit the particular investment alternative they wish to scrutinize. Also provides students with an understanding of how investment theory and investment practice relate. 
FINA 6203 | 3 credits

Complete 3 or 4 elective courses from the following

Provides an overview of all of the hedging markets and hedging instruments. Explores specific hedging use of options, forwards, futures, swaps, and options on futures. Focuses on advanced financial risk management of interest rates, currency rates, equity returns, and fixed income returns. Students use readings and case problems to study when and how to use hedging instruments to alter a portfolio's risk exposure.
FINA 6211 | 3 credits
Exposes students to theory, applications, and evidence concerning highly sensitive interest rate products. Discusses recent developments in pension fund management, asset/liability management, duration matching, “gap” management, concurrent interest rate and exchange rate management, and other important issues now confronting domestic and international financial and corporate management. Studies how to customize a risk management program.
FINA 6212 | 3 credits
Discusses policy, strategy, and administration of financial services firms. Topics include issuance of securities, the service function within financial services, pricing a negotiated issue of common stock or competitive bid issue, and meeting capital requirements of a securities firm. 
FINA 6213 | 3 credits
Provides students with a comprehensive understanding of real estate finance. Emphasizes factors affecting real estate investment. Topics include valuation (appraisal), market analysis, development, taxation, ownership types, short-term financing, mortgage markets, and investment strategies. Designed for students interested in a general overview of real estate finance, as well as those intending to pursue a career in the real-estate field. 
FINA 6217 | 3 credits
Emphasizes the development of personal financial management knowledge by applying the techniques and perspectives of financial planning professionals. Examines the various aspects of financial planning, exploring how individual characteristics, such as age and economic circumstances, as well as the macroeconomy, impact decisions. Offers students an opportunity to develop a financial plan and identify how that plan changes with age and life circumstances. Note that while this course is not designed to prepare students to take the Certified Financial Planner exam, many of the topics, such as retirement planning, investment and securities planning, and estate planning, are among those discussed.
FINA 6218 | 3 credits
Develops portfolio construction, revision, and performance measurement. Highlights portfolio construction in an efficient capital market. Topics include risk-return analysis, the effects of diversification on risk reduction, and the costs of inflation, taxes, and transaction costs on fixed income and equity security portfolios. Examines financial models of capital asset pricing as the basis for the analysis of portfolios from the institutional investor's viewpoint. 
FINA 6219| 3 credits
Introduces the concepts of risk and risk bearing in the business firm. Topics include risk identification and analysis, measurement of loss possibilities, and the principal methods of managing such contingencies. The focus is broad enough to include some nontraditional areas, such as speculative risk and foreign operations. Discusses insurance in detail as a major method of managing certain types of risks. Emphasis is on aspects that directly relate to the financial management function, such as insurance markets and products, selecting insurers and insurer intermediaries, legal frameworks involved in the transfer of risk to insurers, pricing of insurance contracts, and principles followed by insurers in selecting risks.
FINA 6222 | 3 credits
Provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to assess the underlying economic condition and strategic direction of a firm through the analysis of its financial statements using a case-based approach. Identifies potential distortions contained in financial reports using techniques such as operating, financing, and investing cash flow analysis and through the examination of financial statement footnote disclosures. Performance measures are derived that eliminate distortions and improve the quality and comparability of financial information. These measures enable effective firm comparisons to key competitors and historical performance. Forecasted financial statements are utilized to make estimates of firm value.
ACCT 6210 | 3 credits

The curriculum is subject to change by D'Amore-McKim faculty. Course offerings may vary by semester.

The student experience

“The coursework in investment analysis, portfolio management, and risk management filled in lots of gaps in my knowledge, and taught me formulas and models that I now use all the time. My technical skills have also greatly improved.”

Get in touch

Mary McNamara

Director, MBA Admissions

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