Wallstreet Training Vs. Breaking into Wallstreet
Has anyone taken any of these courses? Are they worth it, or would I be better off figuring stuff out off of random websites/ youtube?
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You can find pretty much the whole WST program online for free (torrent) and see for yourself if this is something you want to buy (although if it is already free, why not just do the program that way). I would opt for BIWS though, it gets a lot of love here on WSO and it seems like a quality product (although I personally have no experience with it). I did do the Wall Street Prep self study and recently AMT's in-person modelling training for work and will attest to the usefulness of these programs. While they may not have all that much value as a resume line item, you can learn a significant amount from actually doing a model beginning to end and you get a feel for whether you can picture yourself doing this as a job, not to mention improving your technical knowledge.
There are excellent free resources though, that can provide much of this benefit to you. I would recommend that you check out macabacus.com, asimplemodel.com, and learnaccountingforfree.com if you need to brush up on some basic accounting stuff. There are also books you can find online for free that cover a lot of these subjects such as Rosenbaum's Investment Banking book (found the first edition online anyway).
If I were you, I would check out all the free resources available to you, and then decide if you want to commit financially to going a bit deeper. Also, it varies but some of these modelling programs will assume you have basic finance/accounting knowledge and thus it is a good idea to do some review in this regard so that you can hit the ground running. Best of luck!
I know some basic modeling and whatnot. I guess I'll go through macabacus and then move on to BIWS after that. Thanks for your opinion and the extra resources! Much appreciated!
I ran into the "free" WST program coughtorrentcough when I was researching for financial modelling lesson. Did two lessons, one on basic financial modeling and the other on advanced financial modeling, and found that the pace was really fast. I'd pause and rewind a few times and it truly felt like as if I was in actual military boot camp learning financial modeling. IMO it's geared for people with some experience or have intermediate skills.
Picked up BIWS just because it has a "lifetime access" and because they have "12-Month money-back guarantees" if you're not satisfied. I figured if he has so much confidence, worth taking a look.
I've never tried Wall Street Prep though.
If you can swing it monetarily, I'm a huge advocate for BIWS. It was informative, made me seem smarter in my interviews, and was comprehensive. I purchased the premium package and loved it so much that I ended up also buying the interview guide and haven't regretted it for a second. The advanced modeling is beyond what you'll need to know for interviews but I'm sure it will be useful down the line. I especially enjoyed that I could speed up Brian's videos as I'm comfortable listening at 1.5x speed.
I have some experience with competitors like WSP, TTS, and the FactSet (Dealmaven) training programs. I actually also liked Dealmaven. It really made sure I knew how to build the models during my certification process.
As a resume builder, they aren't extraordinary, but they do help show you are serious about finance. At the very least you can put them at the bottom of resume, with skills, other activities, and interests.
I downloaded the free WST. It was pretty difficult to understand for me and I though it did go pretty fast. On top of that, the free WST does not have some parts of it working (mainly the .swf files which I could not get to work even with a .swf opener). Overall, it is a good resource if you don't want to buy anything, but I didn't like it and stopped pretty early.
With WSP, I was kind of disappointed. Although the year doesn't matter (unless it's something major like M&A accounting rule changes), I was hoping for a more up to date case, but that is trivial. WSP is very thorough and teaches you how to build a model from nothing. This is great if you want to learn excel short cuts fast, but slows down the pace unless you skip through the process. I also thought the program was really overkill compared to some of the other things I've seen. They go into great detail about macros and stuff, but I had a different perspective in that I just wanted to get a better understanding of translating finance concepts onto Excel.
Don't know anything about BIWS.
I also have Training the Street from Udemy which is decent so far. You can get it at a discount usually since Udemy seems to have constant 50%+ off sales.
In all honesty, the best way to go is just to reuse someone's Wall Street Prep. There is no unique code. It's a bunch of large booklets and a cd with all the filings and workbooks. Just ask to borrow someone's WSP for a few weeks and crank the work out.
FYI some of the swf files (the handouts) can be opened with internet explorer.
I also considered TTS, but it does not have a lifetime subscription.
which one is better for a starter : asimplemodel or macabacus ?
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