COMM 3720

This class is just ironic. Basically she tells you a bunch of corporate finance theory since she is an academic not a practitioner. Every other corporate finance class you take the professors basically ask you to set aside what she told you and just do it the way it's done in practice. I found her to be a poor teacher, and hard grader. Somehow got an A even though the final was a killer 200 questions. Take with Smith if given the chance.

Really disappointing class. Wish I had been able to take Smith. My grade in the class was in no way a reflection of my knowledge of the material. Tough grader, hard to understand because of her accent, unclear about things during lecture. She seemed really apathetic about our class during the semester as well. Had a bunch of guest speakers where she wouldn't even bother to show up.

Take Smith if you possibly can.

Professor Schenone is by far the worst professor at the Comm School. If you can help it, DO NOT take her class. It doesn't matter how much you study, the exams are mostly unrelated to what she taught you. Awful. She shouldn't be allowed to teach at such a prestigious school.

Everything said here is true. Worst professor in the comm school. Period. Avoid her if possible if you want to learn and not get a shitty grade

Seriously the worst professor I've ever had. She does a poor job of teaching us anything relevant to her tests because she does 0 practice problems and everything is so theoretical/does not set us up well for the tests at all. Worse than that, she is a horrible listener in office hours- she won't even listen to your question long enough to understand you before cutting you off and going into a tangent of an unhelpful explanation. Very impatient and very rude person. Avoid her at all costs- this was my worst grade I've gotten at UVA.

Great teacher, makes the lectures interesting. She is easy to understand and is fun. Great class. Grading is pretty solid.

I'm not sure what all the negative reviews are about... she's a total sweetheart and really flexible and always wanting to work with you. She keeps class entertaining and lively, and her quizzes are generally straight from the homework. Tests can be challenging and not directly related to class/homework problems, but since the class is curved to a 3.2 no matter what (up or down - this policy is consistent across sections), you're looking at a B+ if you can keep up with the class average.

This ended up being one of my easier classes of the semester. Schenone breaks things down and teaches as if you have no finance background which was generally helpful. The quizzes and tests were almost identical to the homework problems (which were optional) so doing those was an easy way to study. She prints out notes so you don't have to write anything down during class and is a nice person who is good at engaging with her students. I'd definitely recommend her over Chen or Parham or even Erwin based on what I've heard from friends. One challenging thing was that there were frequent typos on quizzes which were confusing but normally someone else would figure it out first and then she would explain to the class and it'd be fine.

Fairly easy and straightforward class. As other reviewers have said, this class is very theoretical and felt pretty useless to me in terms of real world takeaways. Lectures are interactive and Schenone tries to make sure everyone is on the same page. I found the lectures to be slow at times, as it felt like she was just repeating the same point over and over again, but that could be a good thing if you're feeling confused on a topic. Don't know much about the other professors that teach this so I can't say whether or not this is the one to take, but I will say that quizzes and exams are very straight forward. Problem sets are optional, but essentially necessary if you want to do well on her assessments. She models most of her questions from them, and usually includes 1 problem copied and pasted from the problem sets. So make sure to do those and you should be set. As others have said, probably the most frustrating thing about this class is the amount of typos and errors in the problem sets, quizzes, tests, and answer keys. There are so many and sometimes it can be confusing to understand what the problem is saying. That being said, just ask her and she'll tell you what it's supposed to say. Schenone is also very available to answer any questions and is super accommodating. Overall, an easy class.

Carola is an awesome lecturer who kept the entire class focused and engaged the whole hour and 15 minutes, which is rare. She knows what she is talking about and teaches the class as if nobody came in with any prior knowledge which can make it slow at first but it picks up. A ton of the course material is super theoretical which I did not like as much. Realistically, you are going to be pulling betas from a Bloomberg terminal as going on with your valuation in the real world, but I can see how it is good to know the theory behind calculating those betas using projects and D/E. Anyways, the only flaw in this course was the way she writes the quizzes/exams. Many of the questions throughout the year either had typos or were not worded clearly enough to understand exactly what she was asking and she leaves the room during the assessments so it is hard to ask her for clarifications. One time this year she included a quiz question that was unsolvable and that made the entire class focus all their efforts on that one question, leaving not enough time to do the rest of the quiz. The midterm was very difficult, but I think other reviews are going to make it seem like it was impossible. The exam was curved and several people got over 90% raw scores on it, so it wasn't that bad. Anyways, great person and great lecturer, class had zero outside work except for studying; just might need to improve test-writing but not a reason to not take the course with Carola.