I'm taking the time to write this review because when I took this class the Bruinwalk was totally misleading and it made me judge the professor and the class unfairly. I took Borman's class after taking Ravetch for 1A and 1B, and I have no idea what anyone in the review section is complaining about in terms of difficulty. He may have restructured the class this quarter, but there were 2 quizzes, 1 memo assignment and 2 homeworks. He expects you to read the textbook before class, but if you're smart and participate in class - you can get away without it. Quizzes were easy, open note and text, and pretty much the same as the practice midterms. The material is made considerably easier because he doesn't expect you to do any hard calculations, and lets you use Excel for quizzes. You have to be certifiably stupid to do badly on this class. It may get a little boring at times because he does rely solely on the lecture slides, and his lectures can get a little monotonous - but honestly, what else do you expect if you're taking an accounting class?
The most important part of this review is that Borman is the nicest professor I've had at UCLA, mainly because HE. CARES. SO. DAMN. MUCH. Absolute gem. Literally helped me with any and every thing. Took appointments during his lunch hour. Let me confirm my answers to the homework during office hours, and even showed me how to do the things I couldn't understand. He told us at the beginning of the class that he doesn't care about grades, and is more than happy to give us credit for problems we get wrong on the midterm if we can demonstrate an understanding of the concept fairly. Take my word for it, and take this class. You won't regret it.

DO NOT EVER TAKE MGMT 120A WITH HIM! Just wait until your next quarters to find better professor to teach you Intermediate Financial Accounting. You will never be ready for your exams, although he is pretty nice by having extra office hours before the quizzes and final. You will not understand anything about the material, and now I don't know if I should continue to MGMT 120B or not because I feel like I don't learn anything for the past 10 weeks with him. Even, accounting materials from Youtube are more helpful than him. He is actually a very nice guy who is willing to help his students, but I don't think he is capable of being a lecturer despite of his amazing career outside of the academic world (former hedge fund manager etc)

Take this class with Professor Borman. The class is absolutely manageable. Grading is fair. Lots of great topics are covered. A great option for non accountants. We had two open book open note quizzes. Four one page homework assignments. Midterm and final are open book. Genuine and approachable. Has great stories he applies to class. He also expects participation and challenges the students to look at the issue from different points of view. Most importantly he doesn't make you feel dumb if you get it wrong, instead he helps you through it. In other words, take him.

I haven't received a grade yet in this class (still waiting for it to be posted). The class has been fine overall. Sure, the slides and his presentations aren't the most engaging ones. However, he gives a disclaimer at the beginning of the class that since this is a very straightforward and dry topic, we students cannot expect much of an engagement during class. He really appreciates it if students go for OH because he really cares about us and so is willing to re-explain concepts. But yes, his quizzes are very very time-constrained and so you will definitely not finish the test. He knows that his tests are super long so he does curve the class sufficiently. Also, the tests are open book so that is a major blessing. His slides are useful in the sense you know what are the topics that are important and will be on the test (and you know what exactly to read in the book) but the content of his slides is a copy paste from the textbook. He basically follows the book word to word - this has its own advantages and disadvantages. Overall, I would recommend this class if you are willing to read a textbook and are good at extracting information from your laptop during a time-constrained test because you can definitely do well on the test if you attend his lectures (to catch the minute details that won't be in the books but he will definitely ask on the test) and read the chapters at least once. Also GO TO HIS OH!! HE LOVES THAT!!

Classic case of great person but not-so-great professor. He is very accessible outside of class as he will even allow you to make appointments if you can't make it to his office hours. However given that this was his second year teaching, he has a lot to improve, particularly on transferring knowledge into his students. It would also be great to have a clear grading structure as his graders often graded many students' exams pretty unfairly. I've heard he's at least better than Ravetch so there you go.

Overall I though Professor Borman was a solid professor, he seems like he really wants to help students and while the material is pretty dry he does well of relating it to the real world. The tests are pretty challenging and time consuming but as long as you read, take good notes and do the suggested practice problems you should be fine.

I have never written a review on bruinwalk but I feel that Professor Borman deserves one so here it is:

First of All, I would like to note that this class is not an "easy A." You will need to read the book and pay attention in lecture if you want to do well. I would suggest reading the assigned chapters before lecture as he tends to expand on the ideas from the book rather than simply regurgitating the main ideas. Also, pay attention to what he emphasizes in class; often, he will test on topics he emphasizes heavily.

He assigns memos which allow you to apply concepts from class to real-world situations. As long as you begin early, you can go to office hours and he can help you if you're struggling. He is very approachable and certainly the most helpful professor I had the opportunity to learn with. As long as you give yourself sufficient time (3-4 days at least), these memos should only help your grade and not hurt you.

He is a very fair professor. When I took the class with him, many students struggled with the second memo. Because of this, he actually assigned an extra-credit memo. He cares about students' success more so than many other professors at UCLA.

His exams are pretty tough but, as long as you go over the problems at the end of each chapter and review your lecture notes/slides, you can do well. His exams are also open book/laptop but no internet is allowed. I would have received an A in this class had I not slacked off after the second midterm and bombed the final; learn from my mistakes.

I had such a good experience in this class that I actually signed up to take MGMT 126 - financial statement analysis with Professor Borman over the summer (I highly recommend this class as well as there are very few students and the learning experience is more personalized.). I also took MGMT 127A with him.

A few months after taking MGMT 126 with Borman, I reached out to him to ask for slides as I was trying to independently-study certain finance topics that were covered in the class and he got them to me in a timely manner. I've had other accounting professors refuse to do this. He also is always willing to speak about possible career-paths for his students.

In my opinion, professor Borman is the best the accounting department has to offer.

Borman is a nice guy with real-world experience in the industry and is also a bad professor. He knows it since he prefaced it in the first class with “I am not an academic” (it’s okay, neither am I). In regards to the older reviews, it looks like he's becoming better at teaching, since the midterms weren't that difficult (if you attended his review sessions) and we only had to do one memo (which I somehow got a passing grade on despite BS'ing it at the last minute). I’m still glad that I took this class since it made me realize how I’m really not meant for accounting.

Because of the craziness that happened at the end of our quarter, I believe he gave us a generous curve (just did the math and I should've gotten a C+ instead). This proves that he really /is/ a nice guy! Thanks Casey!!

Here’s the grade breakdown (out of 1000 points):
- Homework: 70
- Participation: 70
- Quiz 1: 145
- Quiz 2: 175
- Memo: 230
- Final Exam: 310

Professor Borman is a great professor and highly engaging. He cares a lot about his students learning -- especially during covid times -- and is very flexible and open to scheduling additional one-on-one office hours, answering questions in class and via email, and making sure you can catch up on class recordings/notes should you occasionally miss class. Overall, he is very understanding and approachable. During class, he will call on people to offer answers, which at first might seem daunting but overall he cares about engagement and learning more than getting it right during class (and he will not mark you off for incorrect answers given during class, but rather will help you figure it out). He always adhered to the class times, and often would end early. Sometimes he would upload a 15 minute video lecture on the more mundane stuff and ask you to watch it before class, then start the live class 15 minutes after the regular start time and only lecture for an hour in order to not go over the allotted class time of 75 minutes in total. Very considerate!

The class consisted of a midterm, final, two homeworks, and a final project. The homeworks were exceptionally easy, by design. The midterm and final were very doable if you attended class and participated in the discussion; many of the test questions are based closely on examples from class discussion. Helpful, too, are reading CNBC or MarketWatch or other similar websites to improve your financial statement literacy overall. The final project which is a financial model of a public company is very interesting, appropriately tough, but graded very fairly. Everything mentioned above about his approachability apply extra around the time of the final project. Professor Borman made himself more available than usual during the weeks leading up to the submission date, he would spend time at the beginning of each class answering questions, and the examples in class would be from the companies that the project was on. So everything tied together.

For anyone interested in learning and who is tired of the high-stress, low-support accounting professors at UCLA... take this class with Prof. Borman for a supportive and low-stress experience that really teaches you a lot!

Casey is helpful and approachable most of the time, you can easily make an appointment with him or simply go to his OH. His lecture is super boring, basically just reads off the slides, which come from the textbook almost word for word. Exams are really time-consuming (except for the first midterm, it was alright) and difficult, but I guess that's part of the reason why it's open book; yet it barely helps as you would not even have time to look anything up if you wish to finish the exam. In order to do well in this class, I think you need to have all the basic concepts memorized to save time in the exam and do LOTS of practices from the book assignment to get familiar with the materials even though he does not assign any. There's also a Memo assignment which I would highly recommend you to go to his OH to get his opinions on your draft b/c the neither instruction nor the rubric is clear and it's heavily based on his perspective on the project instead of the accurateness of your work even though you follow the textbook closely. (btw, the line before the memo is due is INSANE, come early) Finally, Casey is a nice guy but not good at teaching.