ACCT 581 - Financial Statement Analysis

Prof. Sloan is AMAZING. He really does his best to provide students with any and all materials they will need to be successful. He cares a lot and is always open to improving.

I didn't come in with a strong finance or accounting background before pursuing my MBA. This class was a great overview of both subjects in my second year with real world applications for evaluating companies. Also, Professor Sloan is a great teacher who know how to manage and plan a course to ensure learning.

Richard Sloan was a very well-respected professor at Berkeley, and this is his first semester teaching here at Marshall. I highly recommend taking his class. The course content focuses on how to use accounting principles to tell if a company is undervalued or overvalued in the market. What I like is that he acknowledges that there are many ways to do valuation and then makes a case for the accounting methods he teaches. He also brings in a lot of real world examples (with a heavy focus on Apple this semester) to show how the accounting and business decisions we see in the news impact their economic value. I'm not at all an accounting person, but I found the class fascinating.

Professor Sloan deserves a Golden Apple Award! This professor makes a seemingly complex topic for those not in finance simple. He covers current events, provides his own opinions (he has been cited in major investment publications and does his own investing), and understands how to communicate with students.He really puts effort in to make the course relevant instead of pasting bullet points on slides. I now feel confident reading 10ks and interpreting financial statements so that I as a marketing manager can hold conversations with executives and leadership about the health of the business, company, and competitors. Can't recommend this teacher and class enough.

Prof. Sloan is AMAZING. He really does his best to provide students with any and all materials they will need to be successful. He cares a lot and is always open to improving.

I didn't come in with a strong finance or accounting background before pursuing my MBA. This class was a great overview of both subjects in my second year with real world applications for evaluating companies. Also, Professor Sloan is a great teacher who know how to manage and plan a course to ensure learning.

Richard Sloan was a very well-respected professor at Berkeley, and this is his first semester teaching here at Marshall. I highly recommend taking his class. The course content focuses on how to use accounting principles to tell if a company is undervalued or overvalued in the market. What I like is that he acknowledges that there are many ways to do valuation and then makes a case for the accounting methods he teaches. He also brings in a lot of real world examples (with a heavy focus on Apple this semester) to show how the accounting and business decisions we see in the news impact their economic value. I'm not at all an accounting person, but I found the class fascinating.

Professor Sloan deserves a Golden Apple Award! This professor makes a seemingly complex topic for those not in finance simple. He covers current events, provides his own opinions (he has been cited in major investment publications and does his own investing), and understands how to communicate with students.He really puts effort in to make the course relevant instead of pasting bullet points on slides. I now feel confident reading 10ks and interpreting financial statements so that I as a marketing manager can hold conversations with executives and leadership about the health of the business, company, and competitors. Can't recommend this teacher and class enough.

The professor makes the accounting very easy to understand

The curriculum is beautifully crafted, and the workload is also balanced. On the other hand, the most of the concepts don't need explanation, can be studied remotely.

Jim is a former CFO of several companies. His class is run in a business like manner. There is no wasted time or effort. He is incredibly easy to learn difficult content from. You will be blown away with how quickly he provides feedback on homework assignments, exams, and presentations. Jim is one of the rare professors that can talk about a subject and provide personal experience and examples to make the content that much easier to grasp.

This course was very useful for someone interested in finance or accounting. You spend a lot of time reviewing 10k's and learning the in's-and-out's of how to read them. More importantly, you learn how to read between the lines to see what is really happening in an company's operations, investing, and financing. Workload and grading was average difficulty.

Terrible class, terrible professor. He taught directly from the text book slides so you can teach yourself by reading the book & slides. The professor is "older" and his lectures fail to connect with the class. Very monotone. I can't say I learned a lot from this class. If you can take with another professor.

The content is very useful if you want to learn how to understand a company's health just by looking at its account statements. But the professor is not useful in helping you learn that at all. You can learn better from the book, and if possible, the other professor.

The class is really fast-paced and the book is not great at all. It's too much content for someone who is not going into accounting. I wouldn't suggest this class as a "stretch" course.