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A course in corporate finance is a required prerequisite for FIN5515 Investments, a class you will take either in your first or second Fall semester. You are encouraged to take a course in corporate finance before arrival at FSU. It is also possible to take this course at FSU (FIN3403 Financial Management of the Firm) during the summer term before beginning the program (contact the Director for details). If none of these options is possible, then you must take FIN3403 in your first regular semester (1 credit, Pass/Fail), in addition to the other required courses.

The prerequisite Corporate Finance course should cover the following topics:

		Financial Statements
		Corporate Finance, Time Value of Money, Interest Rates and Bond Valuation, Stock Valuation
		Options
		Investments, Securities Markets, How Securities are Traded

See Resources for Corporate Finance for books and a detailed list of topics.

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Computer Programming Background

A working knowledge of computer programming, especially in C++,  is very important and is required before the start of your second semester. Students are strongly encouraged to take classes in computer programming in their undergraduate studies. If you have no or little background in C++ programming, then you will take a C++ programming class in your first semester at FSU.

You should understand the following topics before the first Spring semester:

		Structure of C++ programs
		Primitive Built-in Types
		Variables: definition, scopes, casting
		Primitive expressions, statements and operators (arithmetic, relational and logical)
		Control Statements (if, switch, while, for)
		References
		Standard Library and library types: iostream, fstream, vector, algorithm, cfloat, cmath, cstdlib, time, numeric, etc.
		Pointers and Arrays
		Functions
		I/O library
		Classes

See Resources for C++ programming for books and lecture notes, compilers, libraries, editors, etc.