If you expect to come out of the class feeling confident about investing in the stock market, it would not happen. This class can be very confusing at times, most of the time we focus on the concepts and rarely the application or how to do it yourself or how to use that knowledge to help you invest. It just felt like a waste of time, validating the very rudimentary investment intuition that most accounting students develop, and barely teaching you anything beyond that. This class is pretty low stress due to how unorganized it is; it's fine if you're just taking it to fulfill CPA requirements, but it won't really be a fun or helpful class.

Borman? More like Bor-ing. I was trying to give at least a mediocre review, but the results of the Memo and the exam scores were...disappointing. This class was disorganized because he makes us participate way too much. We were behind a lot because of the participation questions and I'm sure he spent at least 15 minutes of class time either trying to help people get to a very obvious answer to his question or on calling the names of people who didn't show up, which isn’t necessary and cut into large chunks of class time while making it a huge obstacle for us to learn.

The material wasn't terrible and a lot was just a surface level review of intermediate accounting, but a lot of us were expecting actual unique knowledge on financial statements. You learn how to build basic financial models and there's a heavy usage of Excel for the homework and a project on analyzing the financials of his choice of companies, but most of the choices were extremely boring since a lot of those were heavy value companies. In my opinion, Borman is too risk averse and doesn't talk much about growth stocks and innovation, which is a disadvantage when that's what makes the markets exciting. He doesn't include much about current news related to growth stocks, and he won't add knowledge about things like Benjamin Graham's value investing theories or Berkshire Hathaway and their strategies. Ultimately, this is just another accounting class that doesn't do much to improve your investment philosophy.

Both the midterm and final questions were horrible and I’m sure his graders just gave us random grades. A large chunk of people were using Google, chatgpt, and texts to cheat which made it look like a lot of us understood everything to get an A. I sat in the back and I saw entire rows of people behind the projector just copying and pasting from chatgpt which is very discouraging.

The grading and instructions for the Memo were also ridiculous. He wants you to fit all your insights and interpretations of things like turnover ratios into 1 page, Times New Roman 12 font. There is almost no way to fit your ideas concisely into the model, which you will get points off since he will ask you to "elaborate" despite there being no flexibility too due to the restrictions. You won't get any recognition if you more than exceeded the requirements. The grading for the Memo is harsh and slightly unfair, unlike what the COVID review said. The people who got an 100% on the Memo probably sucked his dick, so if you want to get an A in this class, be ready to get on your knees. Also, for some reason when he is grading, he forgets how to read.

Overall, try to take this class P/NP if in excess of accounting minor units. And try to suck his dick early on.

I'm taking the time to write this review because when I took this class the Bruinwalk was totally misleading and it made me judge the professor and the class unfairly. I took Borman's class after taking Ravetch for 1A and 1B, and I have no idea what anyone in the review section is complaining about in terms of difficulty. He may have restructured the class this quarter, but there were 2 quizzes, 1 memo assignment and 2 homeworks. He expects you to read the textbook before class, but if you're smart and participate in class - you can get away without it. Quizzes were easy, open note and text, and pretty much the same as the practice midterms. The material is made considerably easier because he doesn't expect you to do any hard calculations, and lets you use Excel for quizzes. You have to be certifiably stupid to do badly on this class. It may get a little boring at times because he does rely solely on the lecture slides, and his lectures can get a little monotonous - but honestly, what else do you expect if you're taking an accounting class?
The most important part of this review is that Borman is the nicest professor I've had at UCLA, mainly because HE. CARES. SO. DAMN. MUCH. Absolute gem. Literally helped me with any and every thing. Took appointments during his lunch hour. Let me confirm my answers to the homework during office hours, and even showed me how to do the things I couldn't understand. He told us at the beginning of the class that he doesn't care about grades, and is more than happy to give us credit for problems we get wrong on the midterm if we can demonstrate an understanding of the concept fairly. Take my word for it, and take this class. You won't regret it.

DO NOT EVER TAKE MGMT 120A WITH HIM! Just wait until your next quarters to find better professor to teach you Intermediate Financial Accounting. You will never be ready for your exams, although he is pretty nice by having extra office hours before the quizzes and final. You will not understand anything about the material, and now I don't know if I should continue to MGMT 120B or not because I feel like I don't learn anything for the past 10 weeks with him. Even, accounting materials from Youtube are more helpful than him. He is actually a very nice guy who is willing to help his students, but I don't think he is capable of being a lecturer despite of his amazing career outside of the academic world (former hedge fund manager etc)

Take this class with Professor Borman. The class is absolutely manageable. Grading is fair. Lots of great topics are covered. A great option for non accountants. We had two open book open note quizzes. Four one page homework assignments. Midterm and final are open book. Genuine and approachable. Has great stories he applies to class. He also expects participation and challenges the students to look at the issue from different points of view. Most importantly he doesn't make you feel dumb if you get it wrong, instead he helps you through it. In other words, take him.

Prof Borman was super engaging and it was clear that he was very passionate about teaching his students the content so that it was truly understood rather than memorized. The only annoying thing about his class was that he calls on people in alphabetical order for participation questions and if you get the question wrong he assumes you were not paying attention when often times it might just be something you do not understand or you get nervous and say the wrong thing. I do, however, think this participation method is a sure fire way to get a solid participation grade so overall this class is super worth it.

This class is the first class that I took after being accepted into the entrepreneurship minor and it did not disappoint! The class is very informative and professor Borman talks about his own experiences a lot, which I thought was super interesting and fun to listen to. It shows that he is passionate about what he does and is coming from an industry expert perspective to lecture. I found it super easy to engage in the class material if you’ve done the pre-lecture readings assigned. The midterms and final can be stressful because there are no practice exams posted so I didn’t know what to expect. But really, this is not one of those courses where even if you show up to every single lecture you still have no clue on the exam. All exam questions came straight from the lectures and the readings. In my opinion, in-person attendance > zoom for this class 100%. The exams are such a time crunch tho, especially the midterms, so definitely know the materials well. Also, I’d recommend taking notes on a doc where you can control-F to find keywords during exams, since the exams are super time constrained you don’t have time to flip through all the notes. Finally, since this is a finance and accounting-related course, having taken mgmt 1a and 1b did help me a lot in the first half of the course.

Professor Casey openly provides students with professional development help which help them acquire internships. He is strict on that students must attend class in person but offers an open zoom for those who face emergencies. Casey Borman is well networked, has plenty of experience in investing as an Angel investor and invites colleagues as guest lecturers which are always valuable. After taking this class, I feel more equipped with skills to begin an entrepreneurial venture.

My thoughts below

Easiness: The class and homework was very doable. Professor Borman emphasizes attending class, engaging with the lecture slides, taking notes, and participating (iclicker). I believe this is most important to being successful in the course. I rated easiness to be neutral because the test does require studying, remembering the lectures, and working fast on the exam. I think the tests are manageable if you do the things mentioned above.

Workload: The workload was completely manageable. There were weekly assigned readings, and four 1-page single spaced written assignments (over the entire course) that connected real world events to course content.

Clarity: The class was very straightforward. Although some topics might feel abstract due to the nature of an ethics course, Professor Borman maintained a well-structured approach using the textbook and lecture slides.

Helpfulness: Professor Borman was consistently available during weekly office hours and was a great resource both academically and professionally. During the fall quarter when I was interviewing, he was very helpful in answering my technical finance/ accounting questions.

Additional: This class is great if you are looking to fulfill the CPA requirements. Professor Borman does a good job blending accounting and ethics concepts that accounting / non-accounting students can understand.

First of all, his lecture is very dry and he just reads off from the slide. Do not expect him to teach you every details of accounting in the class. Basically, you have to teach yourself by memorizing all the concepts in the text book and do all the problems in the book. Hes exams made absolute no sense to me since most of his questions required to write an short essay. Even the simple questions like calculations or entering journal entry, he made it impossible to get a full credit because you have write your own statement to justify your answer. If he didn't like your explanation of the answer, you will get only a partial credit even though your answer is correct. His grading scheme is not clear and fair since most of the test questions were asking you to write an answer that would result in subjective grading. I wouldn't recommend any of his classes he teaches in UCLA.