Wall St. training

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sternwolf

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I've notice some people mentioning this program (and apparently pleased with it) and am wondering if it is worth the four grand to learn advanced modeling for only a few days??

Anyone has done it? Thoughts about it would be greatly appreciated. thanks. It would seem kinda funny to see a guy with that on his resume....
 
Well, four grand sounds like a lot, but if you want to feel confident in an interview for a 100+ grand job (total comp here, since base might not be 100), and be able to say "I can do that," while feeling that you're being entirely truthful, it will deliver results faster than doing the CFA (which doesn't actually force you to model a company), and be much cheaper than an MBA (which also takes a lot longer and probably doesn't model in as much detail).

So my guess is that it could be worth it. Note that they also have web streaming programs which have the advantage that you can use them/review them for 6 months after you purchase them, and you can do just the sections that most interest you. I don't think the boot-camp course includes that, but maybe it does.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Saturday, May 5, 2007 at 03:04PM by bchadwick.
 
$4k is way too much. I did the Deal Maven class for $300ish and it was a great compliment to CFA studies (especially level 2). You really don't learn accounting, you just learn some basic structures for translating accounting values into economic values... make them easy to read, pretty and meaningful. To compare it to the CFA program is not fair. Building models comes down to knowing details (whether they're important or not, how they effect valuation, etc.). CFA program fills in a lot of cracks just because it's a LOT of material and it was put together by some pretty smart dudes.

Also, the deal maven class has a money back guarantee if you don't like the class. And it has all the same blue chip clients (or they're liars, who knows?).
 
virginCFAhooker Wrote:
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> Also, the deal maven class has a money back
> guarantee if you don't like the class. And it has
> all the same blue chip clients (or they're liars,
> who knows?).


I know from experience that several bulge bracket banks use Deal Maven, including some that aren't on their list of clients site. That gives them little reason to lie about the client list.

Its a good program if you don't know much about modeling. If you've already done extensive modeling, it won't teach you anything new.
 
So deal maven is considered the most popular modeling source?
 
sternwolf Wrote:
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> So deal maven is considered the most popular
> modeling source?


Don't know if its the most popular, but it is used by some big banks to train employees.

I've used it, and if I didn't have prior experience, I could see how it would be very useful. I haven't used any other products.
 
I think Wall St. Prep gets mentioned here much more often than Deal Maven so I'd guess that's a little more widely recognized.
 
I took Wall St. Training's video courses and as a graduating senior it was extremely helpful in getting my investment banking job. The modeling exercises were very clear and easy to follow - plus they have a lot of other stuff that helps you learn in addition to the videos. When I was researching the different training options, I spoke with all three firms (WST, DM, WSP) and Wall St. Training's content was a lot more detailed - some of my friends in college had done Deal Maven and Wall Stret Prep and their feedback was that DM and WSP's courses weren't detailed enough and didn't go into enough details. I wanted to master my content and knowledge before starting and I"m really glad I did Wall St. Training's program.
 
thanks, how much did the video courses cost you and how many hours did it take? Did you include it on your resume?
 
I don't work for Wall St. Training, and I took one of their advanced Excel courses. My employer covered the cost, and I generally found it helpful. The instructor gave us a brief glimpse at some of the material from the LBO course, and it looked a) incredibly complicated and b) interesting. If you want to become an Excel keyboard (no mouse ever) whiz, it was a good course.
 
no, i don't work for Wall St. Training. I work at a boutique investment bank. and yes, I definitely included on my resume - that was a key selling point b/c my boss wanted to actually hire an associate with a couple years experience so they wouldn't have to train as much. i don't remember exactly how much, but the videos cost me in total a few thousand but I learned how to model real fast. i did a bunch of their courses - accounting, 10k, modeling, m&a. of course, i still have a learning curve, especially on writing those damn memorandums (it would be great if they had a course on that!!).
 
Wall Street Training has some courses here every now and again, and even though I've never actually attended a session (for some reason breaking news ALWAYS comes out in our coverage space whenever there's something else that's useful or interesting happening), people here have had some very positive reviews about them.

I did training on DealMaven and thought it was good for basics. However the thing you have to realize is that whether you go with WST or DealMaven or some other thing, ultimately the models you build will be in the format of your analyst's preference, so it doesn't necessarily do that much good to try to memorize how they piece together each model template. However, they are useful in understanding how the different financial statements feed off each other, and there are also some shortcuts you can learn so eventually you don't need to use a mouse anymore (major timesaver). As things go, I rarely use my mouse for anything other than web browsing, and your potential employer would be pretty impressed if you can show facility with Excel even without any prior finance background.
 
yea, my MD thought he was pretty good at excel until i showed him some pretty cool shortcuts i learned from the videos. at school they never teach you this stuff (well if they did, i feel asleep). it was pretty embarassing - a college grad knowing more than the MD. i barely knew excel and now i get frustrated whenever someone uses the mouse now. the shortcut list and macros from Wall St. Training also helps alot - stunned my MD silent. ahahahaha
 
rwang - I actually bought Hamilton's intro to modeling edu-pak, but haven't really been able to rip into it yet. Pass or fail in a couple weeks, I will be making the most of my summer and trying to learn modeling with WST's package in combo with some guidance from a new analyst friend. I'm looking forward to it; great to hear the positive reviews on it. Cheers!
 
I must say since taking Hamilton's training my models are much, much better, and I rarely use the mouse anymore.
 
thanks rwang.

sorry,
I was only suspicious because an obvious advertiser recently try to fool the users on this forum with a bogus service.

It's great that wall street training is so good! I'll definitely look into it after the CFA.....
 
hmm, so you did the 6-month WST self training set? very expensive, almost five grand...
 
that's ok.

it was more like a couple of weeks - but i was graduating college so i was able to spend most of my days on it and what hooked me was that i didn't fall asleep and it was actually fun. use their hotspot thing or whatever it's called - it's a cheat sheet to all the formulas on the models. when i was doing last minute prep for interviews, i didn't want to rewatch all the videos, so u get a pretty good refresher on what you did. that was pretty cool.
 
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