MBA careers
How To Become A Financial Analyst
Jobs nationally
361,980
$63,720 to $180,860 across them
Ranked MBAs in this field
31
Finance concentration
This is the entry point rather than the destination: BLS names a bachelor's degree and no prior experience. An MBA matters here for the step after it, since the financial manager job it feeds is the one BLS says needs five years or more in an occupation like this one.
What Financial and Investment Analysts Do
The Occupational Outlook Handbook describes the work this way: “Financial analysts research and evaluate financial data, forecast future trends, and prepare reports containing recommendations for businesses and investors.” That is the occupation BLS surveys for the pay figures on this page, so the job description and the wage belong to the same definition. The Handbook page is the source, read on September 22, 2026.
How To Become A Financial Analyst
BLS sums the route up in one sentence: “Financial analysts typically need a bachelor's degree to enter the occupation.”
This is the only job on the site the Handbook says needs no prior experience at all. It is where people start, which changes what a degree is for: taken here, an MBA is a bet on the promotion rather than a condition of the offer.
What this site can add to that is the price of the degree and what its graduates earned. Across the 31 ranked online MBAs reporting a finance concentration, whole-program tuition has a median of $33,600, and their graduates' median earnings a year after finishing were $78,816. The BLS median for financial analysts is $102,740, $21,828 above the $80,912 median a year out of these programs, which is the distance experience covers rather than the degree.
What Financial and Investment Analysts Earn
The May 2025 wage survey reports 361,980 jobs nationally, with these figures:
| Percentile | Annual pay | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 10th | $63,720 | Lowest tenth of the occupation |
| 25th | $79,290 | Lower quarter |
| Median | $102,740 | Midpoint, half earn more |
| 75th | $133,340 | Upper quarter |
| 90th | $180,860 | Highest tenth |
The distance to the job above is the whole argument. Financial managers have a median of $166,570 against $102,740 here, and the Handbook names this occupation as one they are recruited from. MBA salaries by occupation sets all thirteen side by side, with what graduates of the ranked programs earned.
Online MBA Programs For Financial Analysts
Finance is the obvious concentration and business analytics is the useful hedge, because the forecasting the job description names is increasingly a modeling job rather than a spreadsheet one. Full profiles, prices and sources for each of these are on the concentration page; the score describes the whole MBA, because neither federal earnings nor AACSB tuition is reported for a single concentration.
| Program | Tuition | Graduate earnings | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Nebraska, Nebraska | $33,600 | $113,196 | 22nd |
| University of North Alabama, Alabama | $16,830 | $83,366 | 31st |
| Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma | $11,730 | $76,648 | 35th |
| University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Wisconsin | $26,000 | $87,090 | 55th |
| University of South Dakota, South Dakota | $16,980 | $76,293 | 56th |
All 31 ranked online MBAs in Finance ยท Online MBA in Business Analytics
Common Questions About Becoming A Financial Analyst
Do you need an MBA to become a financial analyst?
How much do financial analysts make?
Which online MBA concentration is best for financial analysts?
Is the job growing?
Other Careers An MBA Leads To
Sources For This Financial Analyst Page
- Accreditation, online MBA offerings, concentrations and tuition: AACSB's list of accredited schools, retrieved September 21, 2026. Program details on that list are reported to AACSB by each school.
- Graduate earnings and debt: U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, field-of-study file (Most-Recent-Cohorts-Field-of-Study_06102026.zip), business master's in CIP 52.01 and 52.02.
- Institution identifiers: IPEDS, used to match each AACSB school to its federal records.
- Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.