How is a prospective financial planner supposed to determine which of the now 179 CFP Board-accredited financial planning programs offers the best preparation for success? The results of the FPA Financial Planning Challenge point students to an answer.
Since 2010, the Financial Planning Association has invited colleges with CFP Board-registered financial planning programs to compete in the FPA Financial Planning Challenge each year.
Each year, the FPA selects the eight highest-scoring college teams based on three rounds of evaluation to compete at the FPA’s national conference for top honors. The top three finishers go home with scholarship prizes, bragging rights for the school’s financial planning program and enhanced career prospects for the students on the winning teams.
The FPA Financial Planning Challenge serves as a natural experiment to identify the most successful college programs preparing undergraduate students for careers in financial planning. Aggregated over a decade, the Financial Planning Challenge outcomes yield a dataset that displays remarkable validity.
Based on the aggregate results of the Financial Planning Association’s Financial Planning Challenge from 2010-2023, the nine highest-performing undergraduate financial planning programs are:
