Quite an easy unit if you are good at TVM mathematics! Lectures are question-solving based rather than content-based which is much less boring.

I enjoyed this unit more than I expected. It starts off with a revision of first-year finance and builds from there. Most of the content is similar to other finance units. Definitely, a course where if you complete the tutorials and lectures, you'll definitely pass. Colin Zhang (lecturer) and Gail (tutor) were a great help too.

The lecturer was great at explaining and engaging with students! Contents were fine to understand. However, the final was way harder than we expected. Of course, they had to make it harder to compensate for the fact that there would be the possibility to cheat, but it was nearly impossible to balance out the content and time limit. So be prepared if you are going to take online.

I enjoyed this unit much more than I expected. Fyi I have quite a good background in maths so if it's not your strength, you will need to work really hard to do well in this unit. but you have to be serious and study to pass

Ok this unit is deceptive in the wording. It is not financial modelling. It should be called actuarial modelling. Where you price risk using present value calculations. It is surprisingly heavy on mathematics and the formulas change depending on the question. I wish this unit was actually building financial models on private/ listed companies. Instead we pay $1.3K (domestic) for a slightly watered actuarial unit. When I did the unit, I did not use Excel heavily and that was really disappointing as employers look for that in financial professionals. I am not sure if there is a technical training requirement nowadays but they really should do that. Building financial models based on assumptions is essential in IB, Investment management and property sectors. Unfortunately this unit does not cover that. In terms of doing well in the unit, practice your weekly practice questions. If you do around 40 problems that should be enough for a credit.

ACST201 is not a fun unit, I really didn't enjoy this. I thought the idea of 'workshops' as lectures was an appalling decision. I would have rathered them explain the concepts THEN work through examples, rather than examples and explaining theory in between. The excel work was tedious and annoying. The content itself was not too difficult, the only challenging bit for me was arbitrage pricing at the end. The rest was pretty ok. Do the problems and past papers, they are almost carbon copies of each other.

If you're decent at algebra and time value of money skills you'll find this unit really easy. The lecturer Colin does a decent job at working through the practice problems in the lecture rather than reading off lecture notes. It doesn't really touch on the applications to the financial markets but some of the skills acquired are necessary for any finance student.

Sachi is a brilliant teacher who explains thoroughly and accurately. Great subject.

terrible unit convener (sachi purchal). nonsensical assessments