This class has been my most useful, most practical, and one of my favorite classes at UCLA so far! I highly recommend this class to any student as Professor Shawn teaches useful personal finance topics, and the assignments are actually relevant to your everyday life, very eye-opening, and relatively short (less than 1 hour per week of work). Each assignment is due by the beginning of the next class (you have an entire week to do it), and he is totally chill with you showing up late to class. Attendance and participation are counted toward your grade, though I was very interested in the material, asked a lot of questions, and therefore got a good participation grade in the class.

Professor Shawn himself is a private wealth manager and went to UCLA for both his undergrad and his MBA. Therefore, he has a lot of relevant and relatable experiences as a UCLA student, and frequently brings in and uses these experiences in his teachings, such as when we learned about credit cards, insurance, and financing/leasing cars. He is a very friendly and approachable dude and was always open to meeting outside of class to talk about anything. When I mentioned I was interested in PM, he introduced me to his business school friend and paved the way for me to have a great conversation with him. Professor Shawn really cares about his students!

The only downside of this class is that was one 3-hour long seminar each wee, which was difficult to focus in during the end. He would teach for an hour, then give up a 15-minute break to do whatever we wanted (I usually went on a walk outside during this time). We would then return with him teaching for the two hours remaining. It was difficult to focus during the second hour, especially when I was tired from little sleep the night before.

In terms of enrollment, he is very generous in giving out PTEs. Don't be fooled by the strict enrollment standards on myUCLA, anyone can take this class! I actually reached out to him on LinkedIn (since he is a private wealth manager, he has a very detailed LinkedIn) and messaged him about joining the class. He said he didn't have any space in the room but takes as many people as fit in the classroom. A month later, he messaged me out of the blue saying he got a bigger classroom and offered a PTE code to me! Here was the LinkedIn connection message I sent him that eventually got me the code. Feel free to use it!

"
Hello Shawn,

I heard about your personal management class at UCLA, MGMT 168, from my accounting TA and am very interested in taking it this upcoming fall. Besides personal interest, I'm a member of UCLA MoneyThink (where we teach high school seniors financial literacy), so taking this course would help me be a better mentor. However, I'm a rising sophomore and have not yet entered the entrepreneurship minor (I plan on applying in Fall 2022), so I am unable to enroll in the class currently. Can I enroll in the course later if there are spots available? Thanks!

Best,
[my name]
"

Here is a breakdown of the course material and assignments:
Week 1: Budgeting and Cash flow → Create a monthly budget based on your past year of expenses, then track your expenses against your budget for the next 2 months (report to be done at the end of the quarter)
Week 2: Time Value of Money, Credit, and Debt → Research three credit cards and savings accounts, then recommend one for yourself based on your personal life factors (also run a credit report)
Week 3: Auto financing → Research financing and leasing the exact same car, then write a report about what you learned
Week 4: Home financing → find a home in your planned living location in the future, analyzing the mortgage and other expected costs of home ownership
Week 5: Equity investing → Choose a stock and predict its price after its upcoming earnings report based on factors learned in class (correct predictions equal extra credit!)
Week 6: Debt investing (bonds) → no assignment
Week 7: Insurance (you apparently can insure pretty much anything) → no assignment
Week 8: Retirement Planning → no assignment, though can begin working on the final project
Week 9: Life Insurance/Estate Planning → research term vs universal life insurance and write a report about what you'd recommend for yourself and what you learned
Week 10/Finals: The final project is a 40-year financial plan, from the beginning of your career until your retirement. You should use all of the knowledge, skills, and tools you learned during the course. The professor is very helpful in completing this if you reach out. The project is worth 35 points, with the presentation to the class being another 15.

Each assignment is graded from 6-10/10, with the following distribution:
Bottom 10% of the class on the assignment: 6/10
10-30th percentile of the class on the assignment: 7/10
30-70th percentile of the class on the assignment: 8/10
70-90th percentile of the class on the assignment: 9/10
Top 10% of the class: 10/10

Therefore, the class is curved relative to other students, but ~50% of the class ends up getting A's. I got 9s and 10s on every assignment with about an hour of work per assignment, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. It's easy to get an A in this class if you actually care and put in some effort.

Overall, I would recommend this class to every UCLA student!

I've never written a review on bruinwalk but felt like I had to for this one. The one thing that I got out of this class is that Shawn Patt just wants to make money, even from his students who already pay tuition. The textbook he makes you purchase, he wrote with ChatGPT and proudly talks about it. Since he wrote the textbook, he makes $40 from every student in an 100 student lecture every quarter. I would say 40% of the class is actually learning entrepreneurship, and 60% is him talking about AI and how awesome it is (I wish this percentage were an exaggeration—it really was an unnecessary amount of AI talk that wasn't useful). Everything in this course is made by AI. Your exams, assignments, and the syllabus. EVERYTHING is made by Ai. There will often be mistakes/errors because of this.

Shawn Patt is a hardass about tardiness, so if you have to walk across campus and end up being 5 minutes late, do not take this class because he cares. I'm honestly very disappointed after taking this class (especially since this was my first one in the entrepreneurship minor—I was so excited!) All the guest speakers that come in and companies that he has direct involvement with/he invested in + these companies really try to market themselves to us, so it still feels like he wants to make money from us one way or another. BTW, one of the guest speakers he brought on justified a makeup business that fully did a racist makeup campaign that they helped start up. He really does not care about his students, and it's honestly disappointing and discouraging the way he prioritizes his cash flow (haha) and AI. Anyways, I learned very little, mostly everybody did badly on the exams (but he does a crazy curve on it, making it seem like ppl did okay on it) bc the way he lectures is just reading off slides, nothing more engaging than that. Pretty disappointed, and more disappointed at the fact that there are people like Shawn Patt in the world who get fulfilled from making money from students. Lastly, every word that comes out of him is discouraging; he is not a positive lecturer/person.

Shawn Patt, if you're reading this, rethink the way you teach, speak, and really think about who's in the lecture seats. I know that little brain of yours may not think as well as it used to because it's plugged into ChatGPT and gemini 50% of the time, and the other 50% is thinking about how you can make your income bigger every month.... but maybe, JUST maybe (just an idea)—put down the Ai. Go outside (a golf course in calabasas doesn't count) and think outside the box for once :)

Felt like the professor was just preying on students to make a profit. You have to buy his own text books on a monthly subscription, and then the “guest lecturers” were just companies he had invested in and they were there just trying to get students to sign up. He even had his young daughter sell some toy to students, which was cute but still lol you don’t have to make money on everything. Grading took forever and the test questions were pretty random. He also had an attendance sheet and gave participation points by talking in class but then there was a super chaotic line to actually get ur attendance and participation written down at the end of class, and I had another class right after so sometimes I just left. It’s important info so it’s unfortunate that this class is taught in this manner.

I LOVE SHAWN PATT!! He was genuinely so willing to help students learn, and had a lot of humor (though he scared me a bit at first). Was always willing to answer questions, and a really chill guy.

Some of the concepts were a little harder to grasp, as this course extended across all financial concepts. A lot of detail about wealth management and how to plan your life, which was pretty interesting and gave a holistic view (though a lot of information).

A lot of assignments were graded a bit wack, because grading for both assignments and participation were heavily curved. Seriously, a lot of grading did not make sense as my friend and I both believed that we should have gotten full marks for that, but the TA graded it down just because of the curve.

Selling required textbook for this class: "The Wealth Compass" by Shawn Patt for $25 (normally $40) Great Condition. **********

Lot of reviews say this class is very helpful, but I don't think it's the best use of your time at UCLA because everything taught is easily available on Google and isn't explained clearly enough in class either to where I'd recommend coming to class instead of Google. I wish I had taken a course with a well-known professor with content that is not easily available everywhere else and made more use of the UCLA name. The rubrics are made from ChatGPT in this class. Grading is unclear and curved unfairly from what a few of my classmates and I discussed. He makes you buy his textbook "so you know what's on the midterm" so he makes money from it, and he said the whole book is written by ChatGPT. Kind of ridiculous. Much of the test is not covered in class or very clear in the readings.

Professor Patt is easily the most impactful professor I crossed paths with in 4 years at UCLA. His MGMT 168 course teaches genuine, actionable strategies that help students achieve personal financial success in the real world. In class, Professor Patt presented information clearly, simplified difficult concepts, and always made sure everyone was on the same page before moving on. He's exactly the kind of lecturer you hope for — I looked forward to his class every week. After finishing his class, I often find myself looking back to my MGMT 168 assignments; they're still providing useful guidance that I'm using outside of life as a student.

Professor Patt is a great teacher, but he's an even better person. I haven't encountered another professor that goes out of their way to help their students in the way that he does. He took the time to meet with me outside of class on several occasions to discuss my career goals, brainstorm possible roadmaps, and recommend specific industry contacts to help me progress in my career after graduation. I've heard similar stories from several of my classmates.

Professor Patt clearly teaches because he wants to pass his personal and professional knowledge to as many young people as possible. He wants his students to succeed, and goes the extra mile to make it happen. If you have the opportunity to take a class with Professor Patt, do it — you'll leave his class better equipped to handle financial life as an adult, and you'll gain an awesome mentor in the process. I have only the most positive things to say about Professor Patt. I just wish I could have taken more of his classes.

Professor Patt made the class way harder for Winter 2025 than previous quarters because the department said he was making it too easy. The tests were difficult and there are no discussions with a TA as part of the class. He brings in a lot of guest speakers, which are interesting to listen to, but it was hard to know what we were even going to be tested on because so many lectures were guest speakers and not content or review. Wouldn't want to take this class again.

You're going to learn a lot in this class, but be aware there is a decent amount of work. This class is great if you are willing to put in the work and do assignments, if not, then it will be a little tougher. Grading is a little abstract but as long as you follow the instructions you should be fine. This was the quarter he made his tests more difficult to prevent too many people getting A's so take what you want out of that. Overall, if you are interested in business/entrepreneurship, then this is the class for you. Would recommend this professor because he genuinely cares about students, wants them to succeed, and is a great and engaging lecturer. I would reccomend.

Probably the most useful class I've taken at UCLA, but not a super easy A unless you are an econ or biz major.