good luck charlie. if you don’t finish business finance packets each day they come out from study edge, you. are. behind.

very useful content tbh

nice guy. shitty exams and extra credit

do study edge packets, banks exam review problems

I love studying finance and math. The concepts that the course teaches are useful. Unfortunately, Banko has turned a finance class into a math class. The whole class is geared to set you up for failure. He makes incredibly difficult exams, which if you’re aspiring to get higher than a 70, are the only grades that count. Extra credit is available for scores under a 70. This is the hardest class I’ve taken.

The concepts are very useful. You’ll have to do you’re own research if you want to understand what it means or how it’s used. The class really only focuses on the math.

Banko is lazy. He takes a very hands off approach, and the the review sessions/videos are ran by TA’s and full of mistakes. He definitely wants students to struggle.

Get study edge if you want to pass. Do all the quizzes and homework. Be prepared to spend a minimum of 15 hours a week on this class. If you don’t start the class at 110%, you won’t do good on exam 1 and likely get a C for the class.

This is the toughest weed-out course in UF's business school. It teaches basic finance concepts that all Americans will contend with at one point or another in their adult lives. From gambling (arbitrage) to deciding the best terms for a 30 yr mortgage, this class explores the concepts of risk and return on investment.

It covers the same amount of material in a single semester that other colleges cover over the course of two or three semesters. That means if you choose to take this course over Summer A (7 weeks instead of 15), expect the material to be even more condensed.

Professor Banko is a very knowledgable teacher, but he lacks the compassion for his students that most professors at least portend to have. Further, he does not present instruction in the same format as you would use to practice. He teaches nearly EVERYTHING in Excel, so, unless you are well versed in excel, you may need extra instruction. Also he does not release the answers to his Exams, so do not expect any constructive feedback outside of his or the TA's office hours.

GET STUDYEDGE. Read that again and again and again until it sticks. David @ Studyedge teaches the course the way it is supposed to be taught (with a pencil, not excel) and gives you every tool to succeed in the class. Also do ALL the practice exams. Banko's exams have identical questions with altered numbers.

Banko is the only Prof for this class.

Super Hard

If you're a finance major, you need an 80 (B) average on the 3 exams. If you are not a finance major, getting a B- is fairly easy since you can boost your grade with the MyFinanceLab and practice exams he provides.

You learn all the concepts you will use in other finance courses. As a finance major, I do not know why this course is required before courses like Debt/Equity, as you actually learn about the concepts in those courses, whereas in Business Finance, you just grind practice problems without really knowing how it applies to finance.

He seems nice and is willing to help clarify things if you ask the right questions (I know sometimes you don't even know what to ask).

Do practice problems daily. It is very easy to get left behind and get lost. Concepts from earlier parts of the class come up later. Do all the extra credit, especially if you are not a finance major. Finance majors, just focus on getting an 80 average on the 3 exams. For each exam there are about 1-2 questions that are specific to his live lecture, and as long as you watch them they are pretty easy. The prerecorded lectures are pretty confusing, I would look over them but do not worry if you do not fully understand them - the point of the course is to get the right answer on the exams and not much else (unfortunately).

Study Edge. If you are finance, you need study edge. Don't try doing it normally. Not sure how the course will change now that Dolinsky will take over for Banko.

Very time-consuming course. It’s very tough and the only way to do well is to either get StudyEdge or to power through Banko’s past exam problems packet, which contains hundreds of questions.

Banko is passionate about finance but he doesn’t teach you how to do well in exams. Having said that, I would recommend watching his lectures because he did walk through the example problems, which were much more basic than his exam questions but you have to know how to do those easy questions very well.

Get StudyEdge if you can afford it, otherwise take a very light course load and be prepared to be solely focused on this class