I am VERY disappointed in not only just this capstone course but the entirety of the Wharton Business and Financial modeling certificate courses. The classes always seemed to have an incorrect or inaccurate answers and information on how to calculate or do something from the instructors. For example (and most recent) on this Capstone week 3 a 'Tip' from the teacher says that the formula to calculate daily return is formula used : return = (today's-price/ yesterdays_price)/yesterdays_price but in week 2 we were provided a spread sheet (assuming from a different teacher?) with the daily return for AAPL calculated showing the totals as well as previous course material from the module 3 showing to calculate the daily return is actually (today's price-yesterdays price)/yesterdays price so we knew if we calculated them right for week 2's quiz. If you were to use the formula provided in week 3 your entire spreadsheet would have been incorrect for the week 2 quiz. I've submitted SEVERAL requests for help, clarification, (not just to Coursera, but also Wharton Online) and several Discussion forum questions that I've been told are monitored regularly by the teachers, but no one will answer my questions or respond to my discussion board questions. I just get sent youtube links and Investopedia articles that I had already found by googling the question myself. I have spent at least 10 hours of research, rewatching previous course modules, and following everything they said and provided and yet none of my quiz 3 answers for it are correct.

I've been stuck on the Capstone's week 3 getting incorrect quiz answers unable to continue on for going on 3 weeks now and not a single person at Coursera or Wharton will do a damn thing about it to try to help me (Other than send me youtube links and investopedia articles). What's worse is I made the mistake of paying for a 1 year membership and I have zero interest now of continuing on with Coursera for the remainder of the year doing these stupid certificate modules only to reach the capstone project, get stuck, and not have a single resource available to help when the course material isn't helping me except for Google or Youtube.

I am more than capable of using Youtube and Investopedia as free services, so why am I paying for premium content that's FREE on the internet? To anyone reading my review thinking about learning with Coursera, please do yourself a favor and avoid the headache and find a better learning option, or google the information yourself and self learn. If you're looking specifically at the Wharton Business and Financial Modeling Certificate on Coursera I'd recommend skipping the coursera part and just paying for the degree from Wharton (or honestly ANY other institution online) with real dedicated teachers and tutors who can and will actually help you so you can learn the information you're paying good money to instead of just resenting youtube clips.

Coursera/Wharton if you're reading my review all I have to say to you is, Do better. Don't put a course up for 5-6 years and never check it again because you're getting money still every week. Make sure someone BESIDES STUDENT'S PAYING TO LEARN FROM YOU is checking content and links all work at least once a year

I had been told such great things from a former co-worker about Coursera and all I have to say is the only thing it's accomplished for me is being $400 poorer with as much help as Googling and Youtube can give me.

If you doubt me, check out Coursera's 1.43 stars out of 5 and "F" rating on Better Business Bureau https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/mountain-view/profile/online-education/coursera-inc-1216-355709

The course lacks compatibility with the rest of the Specialization. It is tremendously hard and there is no orientation or guidance. Thanks to the support of some colleagues I might be able to finish it. But I ask myself if the extra work was really worthy.

2 stars because of the relevance and deepness of the subject.

It certainly doesn't represent other courses from the same university.

This course was the worst of the 5. It was interesting actually applying the concepts we learned but there was no new material. Also I think that it is unfair to have only peer grading on the assignment as some students will grade stricter than others. Every one should be able to be graded on a level playing field. I completed the assignment and accounted for all deliverables and it seems like other students just took off points because they felt like it. I got 100% on all the quizzes for the class so it is annoying that my grade is essentially decided by my competition.

Seemed like the Capstone was rushed and turned into an Investment Management course...I signed up to practice business finance modeling not investment management. The instructors did not present any further information and referred students to third-party resources (ie, Investopedia and Youtube). Many students in the forums voiced their frustration. Disappointing course with little added value, and in my opinion, hurts Wharton's image.

Overall, the Wharton Online Business Finance Modeling Specialization is not worth the ~US$550. If I could I would ask for a refund.

As mentioned by many in the comments section, week 3 was severely lacking as there was either insufficient guide or irrelevant course materials. The task was extremely difficult and I would have not been able to complete the course had it not been with the help from peers. This should not be the case for a self-learning module/course by a respectable institution such as UPenn, Wharton.

Material and the course are not related! I would suggest if you wan to make it this complex please have instructors on hand!

I did markowitz inundergrad and masters too, and i did my Masters from LBS and undergrad from LSE i had to ask my professors to help! This is quite strange.

The internal teaching staff said that they wantd students to be creative and look at the way to solve it for themselves however the onus of figuring out how to create a matrix and why its done in that manner should not be on youtube.

Thank! The other 4 are great but this one is really bad!

No lecture videos on relevant content. Curriculum is not curated. Methods for the quizzes are not taught and there is little instructor support.

The project is very interesting although I have already built several asset allocation models in the past. I do not like the session structure of the capstone. I have to wait 1 month to start and therefore pay another month's subscription just to wait. This is very annoying.

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The course capstone was very disappointing. it has nothing to do with business and financial modeling, it is nothing more than a very questionable portfolio construction exercise on optimized weights and parameters. Not only such a portfolio is pretty unrealistic, but it has nothing to do with business modeling!

The course was good, but lack of support when I needed. My questions were not answered and had to find out by myself wasting a lot of time.

Worst

The CAPSTONE is a disaster... the quizzes act as gatekeepers with many questions fill in the blank number questions. The problem is that there are many variables that can alter the final answer, this is finance, not arithmetic, remember? For example: some use 250 vs 252 trading days per year, some use arithmetic G4/G5-1 calculations for returns, others use LN(G4/G5-1) calculations, a logarithmic return. Some base the final results on a table of Excess Returns, vs Base Returns... After a couple of tries I saw that the Capstone was more Tombstone and will either drop out or wait a couple of days so my anger subsides. Also, there is practically NO new original material - the key elements are given in wikipedia or investopedia articles and links. It looks like someone got too lazy to think!! Maybe this course was done by a Harvard type... A true shame...Emilio [Lin} Giralt, WG'92

The exams are incredibly frustrating with zero actual, useful, feedback. I even got to the point AI and business finance peers were unsuccessful when I asked them to tutoring. Leads me to believe there is a data corruption or the Excel now calculates slightly differently than when the course was designed. But since there is no human in the loop I am left frustrated and suspicious (but un-educated and incomplete).

Excellent course and very good approach for a project to evaluate the learning of the other modules. This is probably the best course of the specialization, as is not only a test, but a simulation of a real life application to help make clients undestand the importance of diversification in portfolio management.

课程设置的很好，引导学生自主从公开信息渠道获取信息，并根据现代金融理论，以Sharpe ratio最大化构建自己的资产组合。最后的大作业可以锻炼学生的综合能力，包括数据、论点、论据的组织，展示材料的制作。另外，审阅其他同学的作业有助于帮助整理自己的知识点。非常感谢制作方和老师用心的制作，感谢审阅同学的辛勤劳动！

Very good course overall !!

Excellent course with an indepth understanding of financial modeling and optimal risk portfolios. The Capstone project created a challenge by introducing 10-stock covariance matrix and Portfolio Variance calculation, which threw some of us off, but ultimately managed to get it done.

Too easy, no direct feedback. But a good refresher, though

Disaster, the data provided is incomplete and no correct methods were shown in the lectures or quiz answers. Have to try every method I know to calculate daily returns and still got them all wrong in week 3 quiz, what a waste of time and effort. I suggest you stay out of this.

Successfully completed Wharton Online "Business and Financial Modeling" specialization program from the The Wharton School. Would highly recommend this program with full of real scenarios examples and a lot of a lot of technical content.

This course is very demanding and require high level of concentration with total attention to be able to complete the capstone assignments and project but will deliver practical capability in financial analysis for investment purposes.

good for practice and quick revision

I had some technical problems to upload the final project, but finally they were solved.

First of all, I tried to upload several times the file, because the file couldn´t be uploaded. I had to try with a different device to upload it after many tries.

After that, I uploaded the file but it could not be opened by the rest of students. At expiration date to be evaluated the projects, I entered into the course. Unfortunately I had failed because the students couldn´t read my file. In last call I contacted with technical support to upload again with very little room for manoeuvre to be evaluated my project.

I had to strongly follow up the issue during these last days to pass the course.

Apart from these problems, I have to say that the response of technical support via email was quick.

More support should be given to the students. Also, I didn't like repeating the videos from previous courses.

I went in expecting to learn about modeling, which I did to a degree, but more time was spent on stocks than I would have liked. Maybe that's useful for Wharton grads going to Wall Street, but I was looking for more of a general education. Course is a bit disjointed. The quizes are sometimes only tangentally related to the lectures. There's some leaps from what's taught to what's expected that seem a bit too far.