schmeichung said:
After approaching to my last final exam for my undergrad degree (i major actuarial and finance), i can make a conclusion that finance being taught in UNSW is loads of rubbish which u cant learn anything. I studied 1612,1613,2624,3616,3635,3636,3640 but I hardly think they are useful at all
For people who still deciding which major u should do, I suggest you to do actuarial, or econometrics if you want to be a quant person (besides BSci in maths/stat).
Well, let me say this also after 3 years of actl/fins:
FINS1612- Kathy/Jerry combination was alright; was one of the better courses in my mind, albeit a difficult mid-session exam i remember; 7.5/10.
FINS1613- Zhien: not too bad (except English), liked the easy tutorial component, but the difficult and time-consuming final made a lot of ppl go from HD->CR in the end 7/10.
FINS2624- Henry/Julia: found the course interesting, but the lecturers were slow for actl ppls. (very ignorant, and Henry is too obsessed with his own textbook and hence his way of thinking) 5/10.
FINS3616- Alfred: similar to FINS1613; his english is not always perfect, (sWARRRPs) but he dropped a lot of hints here and there, so I enjoyed this course quite a bit- much more than FINS2624 when it was done together; probably 8/10.
Haven't done 3635/3636/3640, but I'll choose 2 of them probably since im doing bCom/bEc (which one would you recommend?) Li Yang seems to know her stuff on options, but another fob teaching it =P;
How about 3636 or 3640 with the actl background, recommend?
Alas, you should have done FINS3641, it was lectured by a weathered pro. By far the best and most practical finance course in the undergraduate selection. Professor Balzer knows his stuff, and teaches in a different style, and there is a tad more work such as working papers/theses to read, but nonetheless, it is undoubtedly my recommendation for any finance student to undertake (added bonus of no final exam). 9/10
As for actuarial courses--
ACTL1001- Sachi; haha, no need to comment there- in the end, it was good to give us a taste of how hard things got and can become; a real eye opener, and his imaginative nature has got me answering to his challenge! 8/10
ACTL2001- complete debacle and shambles! Randell, was fairly poor, and many heads were rolling throughout the Tuesday arvos in biomed. 5/10
ACTL2002- Having Sherris appeared to be the pinnacle of our actuarial major. It seemed a honour for him to teach us mere-humble 2nd years for stats. However, his tests were no means easy, and I still remember that weird inverse Jacobian Transformation in the final; There's just far too much content to stuff in this course, and with Sachi taking the reigns of ACTL2002, i don't know how much harder it could possibly get. 6.5/10
ACTL2003- Tom teaching us was strange and peculiar at times i rckn. He went as slow as a tortoise, and cut off about half the stuff on time series at the end since we lagged badly (no pun intended!) Sachi said it would be the hardest course, but in my mind, I'd enjoyed 2003 a lot more, similar to what Arlene (the tutor said 2003 easier than 2002) 7.5/10
ACTL3001- Bernard was a nice change for us. He was hard-working and enjoyable to listen to. He sets difficult but not impossible challenges to us. His methodology of lecturing is fairly smooth. Only downfall was the tutor, he was utterly hopeless... 8/10
ACTL3002- Emil was similar to Bernard in style, I don't mind his style either, and the course was slightly easier than ACTL3001 coz a lot of the stuff was already taught by Sachi back in first year; sad to see Emil leave for the States though. 8/10
ACTL3003- Sachi again, thought we wouldn't see him again, but alas! What a ghastly exam that was...not really in the mood to figure out whether I'll pass this one. I'll just put a plum 6/10
ACTL3004- finally, Changki, may I suggest
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... Barely audible and although he knows his stuff, he simply cannot lecture; which leads us to go and study for ourselves. Skipped a lot of the lectures, simply being, there is no point being there, when he rips the tests from the tutorial questions word to word. 4.5/10