BUFN403 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Anonymous 05/28/2024	I would give 0 stars if possible. This class was the worst course I’ve taken at UMD, and would single handedly deter me from doing the minor all together. Pros: If she likes you/your group you will get an A. Cons: The entire class consists of constantly revising/editing one assignment. Her feedback isn’t consistent. She will want something one week, and not want that the next week. There is no guidance or assistance in selecting a topic. The first ~4-5 weeks of the class are guest lectures that are interesting to be fair. But after those five weeks, she expects you to have made significant progress on your project. She interrupts everyone, students, guest lecturers. You will be disrespected, called out, and interrupted. Assignments/tasks/feedback are purely given over elms email.
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/27/2024	Ambiguous grading, always talks over you in group discussions, and is very rude with giving feedback. Also super disorganized, half of the things mentioned in the syllabus don't end up being a part of the course
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/17/2024	Utterly disorganized Professor, with very little structure to the class. To be fair, we are the first cohort of this class, so we're the guinea pigs. Completely disregards the class time, frequently exceeding it by 30 minutes, and everyone must conform to her schedule. I think the one comment said it best that "She grades off her emotions alone." She also expresses extreme group favoritism, and your grade is pretty much determined early on. The other comments are also right to say that "Professor is very self-centered and spiteful.". Had an overall awful experience in this class, and almost wholly due to the terrible professor. Worst professor I've had in my three years so far at UMD. This is barely a capstone class, and It's a shame that 403 is the last required class of the Computational Finance minor. It's a stain in an otherwise incredible minor.
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/23/2024	No structure in the class, plays favorites, ambiguous grading, always cuts you off, only positive is the class meets once a week
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/03/2024	First half of the course is several unorganized guest lectures on topics that can be barely considered research (is a 90 minute zoom demonstrating how to fine-tune a premade language model on financial data really that groundbreaking?) Which is not bad in terms of workload, because all that's expected of you is coming prepared with questions on the topic. Until halfway through the semester when she expects you to have been working on a capstone project behind the scenes with no expectations, guidance, or feedback. Then you'll get to hear a lot of backhanded remarks insinuating that your group has been lazy and unproductive, and needs to be more proactive. She'll go back and forth about what she looks for in a project; this consists of making you ditch your current approach in favor of something that she believes (knows?) will be substantially better, then backtracking a week later to tell you that approach doesn't make sense and that you should've never followed it in the first place. When she asks you to explain yourself (why did you follow the idea she gave you?), you're allotted roughly a dozen words before she talks over you and dismisses anything you had to say. Getting talked over is a main theme of this course, so if you're the type of person that likes to voice their opinion, you'll probably have a rough time. The syllabus ends up changing every week so it's not worth reading (e.g. you will have a presentation due on a certain week but she will never bring it up again after assigning it, even when you were supposed to present it. So save yourself the effort). But if you don't keep up with the ad-hoc scheduling changes that come in the form of a Canvas announcement between 4am and 5am you'll fall behind, because that's how most things are assigned. At least it'll catch your eye, because she won't hesitate to openly call you out by name in these class-wide announcements (because everyone needs to know that you submitted an assignment in the wrong format!) There's 1 or 2 homework assignments but you'll have to do them 4 times each. The first time will be with the initial instructions she gives you, and some part of it won't work. Then you'll have to email her to update the assignment accordingly and do it a second time. Then she'll throw in a few extra things she wants out of the assignment after thinking about it some more, and you'll have to do it again, but soon realize that her expectations were impractical. Finally, she'll send out an announcement a night or two before the due date with a much simpler assignment, but with most of it being open ended. So you get to do it a fourth time. This is the most interesting out of all of them because you don't know how much of the 3 pages of "suggested additions" you should implement. But by this time you'll be used to not knowing what's expected of you in the class, so you'll handle it. The class doesn't even have a scheduled time. There's a Zoom meeting at 5:15 and depending on how many tangents she goes on it could go until 6 or 7:30. So try not to make any plans on Tuesdays. She is very unaccommodating and assumes everyone else operates on her schedule (Our group was grilled the class after spring break because we didn't have any progress to show for the past week) Of course if you're lucky your experience may be different. The review below me (based on the name mentioned) is most likely part of the group that includes the TA for the class (yes the TA is also taking the class) and obviously she has some favoritism towards that group (they receive a 95 for project check-ins, while every other group gets a 75 because they "weren't clear enough"). So take it with a grain of salt. But if you happen to personally know (or be) the TA you'll have a much better time! The other courses in the BUFN program were very insightful and worthwhile, despite being disorganized (which is understandable for a new course). This "capstone" takes the disorganization to another level. Unless computational finance is your natural passion, this course by itself makes the program not worth taking.
Louiqa Raschid BUFN403 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/26/2024	A wonderful professor. Great projects. I was lucky to be put in a group with the god Sashwat himself. Now I am interning at Vanguard with a full time offer from Blackrock. BUFN Rocks!

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Anonymous
05/28/2024

I would give 0 stars if possible. This class was the worst course I’ve taken at UMD, and would single handedly deter me from doing the minor all together. Pros: If she likes you/your group you will get an A. Cons: The entire class consists of constantly revising/editing one assignment. Her feedback isn’t consistent. She will want something one week, and not want that the next week. There is no guidance or assistance in selecting a topic. The first ~4-5 weeks of the class are guest lectures that are interesting to be fair. But after those five weeks, she expects you to have made significant progress on your project. She interrupts everyone, students, guest lecturers. You will be disrespected, called out, and interrupted. Assignments/tasks/feedback are purely given over elms email.

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/27/2024

Ambiguous grading, always talks over you in group discussions, and is very rude with giving feedback. Also super disorganized, half of the things mentioned in the syllabus don't end up being a part of the course

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/17/2024

Utterly disorganized Professor, with very little structure to the class. To be fair, we are the first cohort of this class, so we're the guinea pigs. Completely disregards the class time, frequently exceeding it by 30 minutes, and everyone must conform to her schedule. I think the one comment said it best that "She grades off her emotions alone." She also expresses extreme group favoritism, and your grade is pretty much determined early on. The other comments are also right to say that "Professor is very self-centered and spiteful.". Had an overall awful experience in this class, and almost wholly due to the terrible professor. Worst professor I've had in my three years so far at UMD. This is barely a capstone class, and It's a shame that 403 is the last required class of the Computational Finance minor. It's a stain in an otherwise incredible minor.

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/23/2024

No structure in the class, plays favorites, ambiguous grading, always cuts you off, only positive is the class meets once a week

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/03/2024

First half of the course is several unorganized guest lectures on topics that can be barely considered research (is a 90 minute zoom demonstrating how to fine-tune a premade language model on financial data really that groundbreaking?) Which is not bad in terms of workload, because all that's expected of you is coming prepared with questions on the topic. Until halfway through the semester when she expects you to have been working on a capstone project behind the scenes with no expectations, guidance, or feedback. Then you'll get to hear a lot of backhanded remarks insinuating that your group has been lazy and unproductive, and needs to be more proactive. She'll go back and forth about what she looks for in a project; this consists of making you ditch your current approach in favor of something that she believes (knows?) will be substantially better, then backtracking a week later to tell you that approach doesn't make sense and that you should've never followed it in the first place. When she asks you to explain yourself (why did you follow the idea she gave you?), you're allotted roughly a dozen words before she talks over you and dismisses anything you had to say. Getting talked over is a main theme of this course, so if you're the type of person that likes to voice their opinion, you'll probably have a rough time. The syllabus ends up changing every week so it's not worth reading (e.g. you will have a presentation due on a certain week but she will never bring it up again after assigning it, even when you were supposed to present it. So save yourself the effort). But if you don't keep up with the ad-hoc scheduling changes that come in the form of a Canvas announcement between 4am and 5am you'll fall behind, because that's how most things are assigned. At least it'll catch your eye, because she won't hesitate to openly call you out by name in these class-wide announcements (because everyone needs to know that you submitted an assignment in the wrong format!) There's 1 or 2 homework assignments but you'll have to do them 4 times each. The first time will be with the initial instructions she gives you, and some part of it won't work. Then you'll have to email her to update the assignment accordingly and do it a second time. Then she'll throw in a few extra things she wants out of the assignment after thinking about it some more, and you'll have to do it again, but soon realize that her expectations were impractical. Finally, she'll send out an announcement a night or two before the due date with a much simpler assignment, but with most of it being open ended. So you get to do it a fourth time. This is the most interesting out of all of them because you don't know how much of the 3 pages of "suggested additions" you should implement. But by this time you'll be used to not knowing what's expected of you in the class, so you'll handle it. The class doesn't even have a scheduled time. There's a Zoom meeting at 5:15 and depending on how many tangents she goes on it could go until 6 or 7:30. So try not to make any plans on Tuesdays. She is very unaccommodating and assumes everyone else operates on her schedule (Our group was grilled the class after spring break because we didn't have any progress to show for the past week) Of course if you're lucky your experience may be different. The review below me (based on the name mentioned) is most likely part of the group that includes the TA for the class (yes the TA is also taking the class) and obviously she has some favoritism towards that group (they receive a 95 for project check-ins, while every other group gets a 75 because they "weren't clear enough"). So take it with a grain of salt. But if you happen to personally know (or be) the TA you'll have a much better time! The other courses in the BUFN program were very insightful and worthwhile, despite being disorganized (which is understandable for a new course). This "capstone" takes the disorganization to another level. Unless computational finance is your natural passion, this course by itself makes the program not worth taking.

Louiqa Raschid
BUFN403

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
03/26/2024

A wonderful professor. Great projects. I was lucky to be put in a group with the god Sashwat himself. Now I am interning at Vanguard with a full time offer from Blackrock. BUFN Rocks!

Reviews for BUFN403