Student-run investment fund earns Top 10 distinction

The highly ranked Student Investment Fund (SIF) operates out of the new Peter & Mary Lee Jones Trading Room in the new Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence. The room is equipped with Bloomberg terminals and other technology used by leading Wall Street firms.

The Student Investment Fund (SIF) at Florida State University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Business ranks among the Top 10 student-managed investment funds at public schools nationwide, according to recently released rankings published by The Center for Investment Research.
The Wertheim College's SIF secured the No. 10 spot for its 2025 performance among the nation's public schools and ranked No. 23 among all schools in North America. It is the only Florida business school listed in the Top 25.

Completely student driven, the FSU SIF is now valued at $11.5 million, said Steve Perfect, vice chair of the SIF oversight board and associate professor of finance. That marks significant growth from the combined $1.3 million in private donations and Florida State University Foundation funds that kickstarted the SIF in 2008, he said.

“The SIF offers our students an incredible opportunity to gain hands-on experience as portfolio managers and analysts under the guidance of faculty experts,” said Don Autore, Dean L. Cash Professor of Finance and chair of the Department of Finance. Select master’s students carry out the role of portfolio managers, while top students in the college’s Undergraduate Investment Group (UIG) serve as the fund’s analysts.

“The Master of Science in Finance (MSF) program as a whole really values experiential learning, and managing the student investment fund is one of our most impactful opportunities,” said Andrew Schrowang, MSF program coordinator and associate lecturer. He said students learn to pitch investments, build financial models and defend their investment strategies – skills that finance professionals rely on every day across the investment industry.

“The experience also helps our students stand out in interviews, as they can speak to real investment decisions they've made with actual capital at stake, focusing on what worked, what didn’t and what they learned,” Schrowang said. “Many master’s graduates have leveraged this experience to land roles in institutional asset management, investment banking, equity research and wealth management.”

The center surveyed over 500 schools with student-managed funds and ranked them based on each fund's verified AUM (assets under management) as of Dec. 31, 2025. Funds in the Top 25 range from a high of $85.5 million at the University of Dayton, a private university in Ohio that has operated a fund for more than 25 years, to the $9.27 million fund at Oklahoma's private University of Tulsa.

The Wertheim College’s SIF closed last calendar year with $11.23 million in managed assets. That total also includes the college’s Real Estate Investment Fund (REIF), which the college added to the SIF portfolio in 2022. Now valued at $2.7 million, the REIF is managed separately by top real estate students under the direction of faculty advisor Mariya Letdin, Kyle Riva Associate Professor of Real Estate, and an investment committee of industry representatives. SIF and REIF share an oversight board chaired by the dean and comprised of both faculty and industry professionals. In addition to good investment decisions, the SIF portfolio’s base fund, including the REIF, benefited over the years from $ 3 million more from the Foundation and an additional $320,000 in philanthropic investments.

Finance continues to be the No. 1 major chosen by undergraduate business students at the Wertheim College and the No. 1 major selected by all undergraduate students at Florida State. The Wertheim College ranks No. 1 among all public schools, No. 5 overall, on Niche.com’s 2026 Best Colleges for Accounting and Finance in America. Also, the finance master’s program at FSU consistently places in the Top 25 at public schools nationwide in annual rankings by the TFE Times.

Learn more about FSU’s SIF and finance department at wertheim.fsu.edu/finance.

—Melanie Yeager