FBE 545 - Applied Financial Modeling

This course has been awful and I completely regret taking it. The professor has structured the course around an online Excel prep course where he just has students doing excel assignments. There's no real lecturing, just sitting in class working. I don't see how this course has any real value to students in the way it's structured. Save yourself the money and just sign up for an online excel class. I've learned very very little from this course and it's been probably the worst course I've ever taken in my university career.

His class dont provide much. Mid terms and assignments are the major avenue to learn.

Wild dude, very funny. Classes themselves don't provide much, but his mid-term assignments give you real hands-on and immersive work. I think this is his last semester teaching, so who cares!

Amazing course. Great foundational and practical knowledge taught under a learning environment that fosters diverse ideas in investment approaches. Professor is very patient, and engages with students in a friendly yet technical manner.

The professor is very engaging in lectures and shows care for students. I would agree with my peers that a lot of this class is what you make of it from a homework perspective. The assignments in the beginning are misleading as this class' midterms are very involved and difficult, even for those with a history operating in excel. This class could be a nice stepping stone for some exposure to basic excel modeling, but nothing surpasses on-the-job training in this stuff from what I can tell.

Professor cares about students but his concept of what an IB associate/analyst does day to day is outdated. Training the Street gives more real world application for modeling. Many concepts taught in this class will never be used on the desk

This is a class for IB or P/E, as stated above. As you might imagine from the name (though I didn't sufficiently get this before enrolling) it is very heavy on the finance concepts and details. Less about the excel modeling of it, though those tricks are shared somewhat. My main criticism is that for those who have less experience in finance, it can go quite quickly as he'll pick up on the understanding of the IB kids in the class and think that they speak for everyone. He also will lecture about what we're going to do, without actually showing it in action, and then we go and do it, whereas a more helpful structure might to be to lecture as he's doing it. All this being said, if you're going into a finance-heavy workplace and really do concentrate and work at the material, I imagine it would be helpful.

A very unique class, which is extremely exercise based. The course is useful for those targeting a P/E / Investment Banking career. It is not quite what I thought it would be when signing up for the course, in the sense that it is not the type of course to teach you spreadsheet tips and tricks necessarily, although these are sprinkled in. The course truly does aim to provide you the IB internship experience, so if that is what you want, the course is a must take.

This class is what you make of it... sounds very vague, but 100% true. The solutions for the homework assignments are already given so you can basically copy/paste answers. However, if you go through and rebuild the models he has taught, you gain extensive modeling knowledge. Additionally, his lectures are very engaging. He dives into interesting financial concepts then ties the concepts to the models so you get academic and practical knowledge. Additionally, he is hilarious with his stories... makes the learning environment that much more engaging.

I would not recommend this professor at all. He spends way too much time going over simple, straightforward aspects of Excel. He also spends too much time explaining what he's going to teach on a given day and not enough time actually teaching that topic. I'm not sure how this class would be with a different professor, I'm sure a bit better cause it'd be tough to make it worse than it currently is.

This class is really practical and helpful if you want a good handle on financial modeling, whether or not you want to pursue banking (I am though). And there's really not a lot of homework and never any pre-work.