Advise for financial accounting for incoming students [Please read]

Hey guys,

On the basis that I ended up with an A in the class, I want to give some advise regarding financial accounting course at Rutgers.

TLDR: I attended class, did hw, and reviewed slides + hw for exams. That's it. Suggest you do the same and do not be tricked by ratemyprofessor reviews.

First off, the math behind this course is very simple. You are only going to know addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. That is it. No more than that, that being said, considering that this is a number crunching course. Exams permit the use of having four function calculators.

Now on to the content of the course, before I talk about this, I would like to give a personal background. Over the summer of 2024, I was doing a lot of financial research. Something like analyzing 10-K (annual financial reports) of semiconductor or biotech companies and making independent projects out of that. I'd say that because I was able to do this, on a surface level, I knew what financial accounting was, except for knowing debit/credit or other stuff, but it is easy when you learn in class.

That being said, the course content is very simple. You talk about different types of assets (what you OWN) vs different types of liabilities (what you OWE) vs different types of stockholders' equity (ownership of company + retained earnings). The golden accounting equation is Assets = Liabilities + Stockholders' Equity. Majority of chapters were talking about different types of assets, liabilities, interest rates, bond pricing, stockholders' equity etc and how to make journal entries with each transaction. If you actually go to the class every single day and take notes, you will understand everything given that you do homework. Many aspects of this course is common sense. For example, if you lend someone money, then you not only demand the payment back but +interest. I will say this, make sure you have a firm/strong understanding of the earlier chapters because the future chapters rely heavily on journal entry stuff which is what you learn in the first 4 weeks.

The homework was pretty simple. You just had to put what you learned from slides into practice. Honestly, the homework was just common sense after just experiencing what the chapter really talks about. For exams, there were 33-34 questions, hw prepped me well for this, especially doing some challenging questions which taught about the entirety of the course. I'd say doing those types of questions will not only save you time but also expand your thinking to understanding the chapter at a strong level.

I had never spent more than 2 hours per week on this course. Just attending classes + doing hw per each week. Maybe during exam waves, I can put my hourly commitment to about 4 hours or 5 hours, but that is only pre-exam week that's it. The math is simple in this course. I was scared before fall 2024 semester started, and I ended up with an A with no concerns at all. Do not listen or believe into ratemyprofessor ratings, turns out that majority of the bad ratings are from bad students who did the opposite of what I did and ended up with a bad grade, and blame professor for their own consequences. Same thing applies for reddit too. Keep your head up, work hard, be practical in thinking, and you will be fine.

Ask any questions below! Happy to answer!