I'm going to detail these as it applied to my interests and background. I am a direct from undergrad applicant, where I did a Bachelors of Commerce, and I am heading into Investment Banking. Thus I am biased against foundation courses as they are repeats for me, and I selected more banking courses than modeling courses.
All ranks are out of 5.
Content - Is the content itself interesting and at a masters level of comprehension.
Pace - How fast do you move through the material.
Real World Applicability - How likely will this class prepare you for your interviews and job.
Workload - Is it a 7 day a week grind?
Difficulty - How much re-tracing do you do on homework. How often do you not 'get it'.
Exams - How hard are the exams.
Cohort - How good are the classmates you are competing on the curve with.
Engagement - How pumped was I to be in class.
Professor: Who taught me.
Summer: 5 weeks, August to September
Corporate Budgeting - Mandatory
Content 3
Pace 5
Real World Applicability 3
Workload 4
Difficulty 2
Exams 3
Cohort 4
Engagement 5
Professor: Irfan Safdar
Bottom line: A good warm up for a challenging year ahead, it takes some getting used to Sunday nights at Simon!
This course is a total review of 2nd and 3rd year undergrad finance taught at breakneck speed. Although nothing's new it is useful to have it all put together in a short period, and is an excellent refresher for anyone doing a the fall banking recruitment push. The exams were challenging primarily because the midterm was a take home and several students grouped up so the curve was extremely competitive.
Core Statistics - Mandatory
Content 2
Pace 2
Real World Applicability 1
Workload 1
Difficulty 1
Exams 2
Cohort 2
Engagement 2
Professor: PhD Student
Bottom line: A baseline 'to little to fast' stats course that is mind numbing for ex stats grads and too fast for first timer's.
All the basics, t tests, regressions, binomial distributions, bayes theorem. It was almost comical to be taught time series econometrics in 5 slides after taking two entire courses on it in undergrad. This course is the vegetables you have to eat before the steak is brought out.
Core Economics - Mandatory
Content 3
Pace 1
Real World Applicability 1
Workload 1
Difficulty 1
Exams 3
Cohort 2
Engagement 3
Professor: PhD Student
Bottom line: Micro, Macro in 5 weeks.
A five week course somehow still felt painfully slow. However economics is always interesting, and these exams were surprisingly challenging, they really spread the curve out.
Communications - Mandatory Continues Until Spring
Content 1
Pace 1
Real World Applicability 4
Workload 1
Difficulty 1
Exams Nil
Cohort 1
Engagement 3
Professor: Dan Struble, Bob M.
Bottom line: Public speaking, business writing, leadership.
It seems fruitless but being video taped and critiqued on your presenting skills is an activity that can only happen in school.
Fall, 10 weeks, September to December
Investments - Mandatory
Content 3
Pace 2
Real World Applicability 3
Workload 3
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 4
Engagement 3
Professor: Anzhela Knyazeva
Bottom line: It's Rochester so Investments means EMH.
This investments class does not extend beyond undergrad investments, but has some useful case based homework. Beware the Knyazeva sisters can get pretty tricky on their exams.
Institutional Finance - Mandatory
Content 4
Pace 3
Real World Applicability 5
Workload 4
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 4
Engagement 5
Professor: Diana Knyazeva
Bottom line: Banking
I really enjoyed this class because it was the first departure from curriculum I had already received in my undergrad, and it cowed very closely to real world applications.
Corporate Financial Accounting - Or Financial Accounting 1
Content 2
Pace 1
Real World Applicability 2
Workload 1
Difficulty 1
Exams 1
Cohort 2
Engagement 2
Professor: Heidi Tribunella
Bottom line: Intro accounting.
Taking this class was a mistake. If you have any undergraduate accounting you definitely need to switch into the upper accounting course. This course does intro accounting, intermediate 1 and intermediate 2 at a surface level.
Corporate Finance - Mandatory
Content 3
Pace 2
Real World Applicability 2
Workload 4
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 4
Engagement 4
Professor: Wei Yang
Bottom line: Stakeholder Game theory
This is Corporate Finance as you probably haven't been taught it before. You discuss all the different stakeholders, things like bankruptcy costs and debt overhang, but you do it all in a game theory framework. Homework, exams, and lectures are all structured around multistep games, with payoffs and NPV's. This added complexity makes the tuggle war between debt holders, shareholders, and management more interesting as you can quantify their actions and then the firms value as a result.
Winter, 10 weeks, January to March
Economic Theory of Organizations - Mandatory
Content 3
Pace 3
Real World Applicability 3
Workload 2
Difficulty 2
Exams TBD
Cohort 3
Engagement 3
Professor: Michael Raith
Bottom line: MBA course in an MS degree
I'm not entirely sure why we are learning this material in an MSF degree, but I think it's because Simon has been a research powerhouse in this area. It's all about incentive plans, intrinsic motivators, and org structure, all through economic maximization's.
Cases In Finance - Optional
Content 4
Pace 3
Real World Applicability 5
Workload 3
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 3
Engagement 5
Professor: Gregg Jarrell
Bottom line: Story time with some investment banking and cut throat 'negotiations'
The prof for this class is a riot, lots of great finance stories about half of which have a useful takeaway message. So far I've learned: never mess with the government, the best clients are billionaire's facing jail time, always act innocent even if your not, and bankers aren't really financiers, they are salesmen. Aside for the war stories, I have picked up some great 'things to remember' nuggets on the major valuation models. Jarrell is full of pointers on what mistakes professionals always make in their modeling and how to avoid them. For instance the much loved, beta unlever-lever technique for comparable valuation is flawed at it's core because it ignores the bankruptcy effect on the cost of equity. The negotiations are a great game theory experiment, grades from 60 to 100 need to go out, and it all depends on what 'deal' you get from your peers. Every winner is matched with a loser, great class politics!
The test's are not hard however any mistakes are costly. Jarrell drops many useful hints in class, and non-Finance MBA's are nice to have on the curve come test time, because negotiations can be bloody and indiscriminant in their grade split ups.
Investment Management & Trading Strategies - Optional
Content 4
Pace 4
Real World Applicability 5
Workload 4
Difficulty 3
Exams 2
Cohort 3
Engagement 5
Professor: Daniel Burnside
Bottom line: A current mutual fund chief economist shows where EMH bends and where it breaks.
The prof for this course is very good. Down to earth, but extremely bright, lots of class engagement. The course starts a bit slow as you rehash EMH, but soon you are talking about anomalies, alpha creation, and I think the last half of the course is market structure and trading strategies. You are worked, but its mostly qualitative assignments.
The midterm is very similar to the practice midterm.
Financial Statement Analysis - Optional
Content 5
Pace 5
Real World Applicability 5
Workload 5
Difficulty 5
Exams 5
Cohort 4
Engagement 5
Professor: Charles Wasley
Bottom line: The hardest and most worthwhile course I have ever taken in my university career.
Do yourself a favor and sign up in the evening class with MBA's to make the curve a little easier because this class will punish you. The prof is a slave driver, and extremely strict (extra case assignment for anyone whose cell phone rings). I write the exam tomorrow morning, and after studying all week for it I can easily say it will be very difficult. The takeaways are huge though, FSA is an absolutely crucial skill for anyone who wishes to be an analyst, and this guy is the best I've seen. If you come to Simon for one course, make this it.
Be very weary as to how Wasley answers his qualitative questions on practice solutions, if you are not giving his 'right answer' on the exam to qualitative questions credit is very hard to come by.
Spring, 10 weeks, March to June
Fixed Income - Optional
Content 4
Pace 3
Real World Applicability 3
Workload 3
Difficulty 3
Exams 4
Cohort 3
Engagement 4
Professor: Wei Yang
Bottom line: A Fixed Income class that quickly moves beyond bonds and into structured products. Yang's exams always extend beyond the material and can have some very challenging questions.
Accounting For Management and Control - Required
Content 3
Pace 2
Real World Applicability 3
Workload 3
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 2
Engagement 2
Professor: Jerold Zimmerman
Bottom line: A required managerial accounting class that can easily be switched out for another elective if the student wishes. The prof is good, but the class is almost entirely geared towards corporate management problems.
Entrepreneurial Finance - Optional
Content 5
Pace 4
Real World Applicability 4
Workload 3
Difficulty 3
Exams 3
Cohort 4
Engagement 5
Professor: Boris Nikolov
Bottom line: A very good follow up to Cases in Finance. The prof is young and the content covered in class is refreshingly technical. The class picks up after the business plan has been completed and goes all the way to IPO, focusing on forecasting and financing stages.
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