Many applicants still search for the “emlyon MSc in Finance”, whereas the programme is now called the Master in Finance on the school’s website. Older names still circulate in forums, ads and résumés, which makes preparation confusing: what are the entry requirements, what must the file contain, how much weight should the résumé and letter carry? This article relies on the school’s official pages at the time of writing. Conditions change from one intake to the next: check every point on the emlyon website before sending your application.
What the programme offers and who it is for
According to emlyon business school’s Master in Finance admissions page 🔗, the programme is taught in English, full-time, on the Lyon campus with international experiences. It prepares for careers in investment banking, financial services and corporate financial performance, and ends in a master’s degree accredited by the CEFDG.
The programme is open to two profiles:
- Holders of a three-year bachelor’s degree, who enter the first year of the master;
- Holders of a four-year degree or a validated first year of a master’s, who can enter directly in the second year.
The programme stresses hands-on practice: projects, internships, financial simulations, including mergers and acquisitions simulations, and study trips. If your goal is investment banking, our article on becoming an M&A analyst describes the job this type of master’s often leads to.
💡 Worth knowing: older school pages or third-party sites still mention the “MSc in Finance”. When the information differs, the official admissions page prevails.
Selection criteria and profile of admitted students
The official admissions page gives the following requirements, to confirm for your intake:
- A bachelor-level degree for first-year entry, or a four-year degree (or the ECTS equivalent) for second-year entry;
- An official English test (TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS or Cambridge), except for native speakers or those who studied in English in higher education. The school recommends a level equivalent to C1;
- An optional management test: GMAT, GRE, TAGE MAGE or CAT are accepted;
- Administrative documents: résumé, ID, certified copies of degrees, transcripts and proof of enrolment if you are still studying. Recommendation letters and the motivation letter are listed as optional.
These criteria are admissibility conditions, not the description of a winning profile. The school does not publish a scoring scale, and there is no point hunting for a cut-off average in unverifiable testimonials. What you can do is build a coherent file: a background that leads logically to finance, solid results in quantitative subjects, an experience (internship, club, project) that shows interest in the sector.
⚠️ Warning: an “optional” letter is not a useless letter. When files are reviewed on a rolling basis, a precise, personal text can help explain an atypical background or a change of field. If you provide one, it must add something the résumé does not say.
Building a suitable academic résumé
A master’s applicant often has little professional experience. The résumé must therefore tell a readable academic and personal story, on one page.
- Education first. Degrees, institutions, dates, honours or ranking if they help you. Detail the courses that matter for finance: accounting, mathematics, statistics, economics, programming.
- Useful experience. A finance, audit or banking internship, but also a student job that proves rigour or client contact. Describe what you did and the result, not the title. Our guide to landing a finance internship gives example wordings.
- Verifiable skills. Excel, Python or VBA if you really use them, English with the test and score. No decorative progress bars.
- Certifications under way. If you are preparing a CFA level or another certification, say so without exaggerating. Our comparison of CFA and FRM certifications helps you choose, and CFA or finance master’s places the value of each route.
- Commitments. A club, sport, volunteering: one line, with a concrete achievement.
On form, a sober layout without complex columns is better read by tracking systems that pre-filter some files. For a complete finance résumé, see the financial analyst résumé example. Our guide to writing an investment banking résumé details rules that also apply to an academic résumé.
Nailing the motivation letter and the interview
The letter, if you send one
It must answer three questions: why finance, why this programme, why you.
- Why finance: a precise fact (an internship, a course, a project), not a phrase about passion for markets.
- Why this programme: two concrete elements drawn from the emlyon site, such as the format, the simulations, the specialisations, the international dimension or the practical projects. Do not copy the brochure.
- Why you: an achievement that proves you will see a demanding programme through.
One page is enough. Avoid sentences that could appear in any applicant’s letter to any master’s. For business schools that ask for a motivation letter at admission, our example motivation letter for emlyon’s parallel admission 🔗 shows the logic of a letter adapted to a school, even though the programme and procedure are different.
The interview, if the school offers one
The official pages do not describe how an interview unfolds: do not count on a fixed script. Prepare answers that work in most cases:
- Your background in two minutes, with the thread leading to finance.
- A financial news item you can explain without notes: a takeover, a central bank decision, a company result.
- Technical notions: financial statements, company value, risk and return. Basic questions are likelier than very complex cases.
- Your career plan, with a realistic target and a plan B.
- English, since the programme is taught in that language.
Our guide to investment banking interviews offers a preparation method usable for this kind of exchange.
Calendar and application documents
The official page indicates that applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, over a period running from the autumn before the intake to the summer. Exact dates, application fees and the targeted intake change from year to year: check the admissions page before organising yourself.
A good way to proceed:
- Check the intake and opening dates on the official page.
- Book the English test early enough: slots and result times can be long.
- Gather the documents: transcripts, certified copies, proof of enrolment. Foreign-language documents may need a translation.
- Apply early in the period: as review is rolling, a file sent earlier is examined with more places available. This follows logically from the process described; it is not a guarantee.
- Keep a copy of everything you send, including the résumé, to prepare for a possible interview.
Common mistakes and a plan B
Common mistakes
- Relying on old information: name, length, admission conditions or fees from a previous intake.
- Confusing “optional” with “useless” for the letter or management test.
- A generic résumé: the same document sent to every school, without adapting the headline or the order of sections.
- Undemonstrated English: without a test, the school has no assurance.
- Waiting for the last date when review is rolling.
A plan B
Do not apply to a single programme. Compare it with other finance master’s degrees in France and abroad: our guides to applying to HEC Paris’s Master in Finance, ESSEC or EDHEC’s finance MSc programmes describe comparable approaches. If you are turned down, a finance internship followed by a new application, or another training route, remains possible.
On the tool side, FinanceCV handles layout for you, and the PDF it produces is read correctly by applicant tracking systems, which discard poorly structured résumés before a human opens them. You can therefore put your energy into the content of your file.
Ready to create your finance résumé? Build your academic résumé, adapt it to each programme, then export it as a PDF. Create my résumé for free