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Rank: Senior Student
Joined: 10/26/2011
Posts: 95
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I am currently deciding between on which university to go to like everyone else. I'm not really sure if I will go to waterloo's AFM program if I get in. I was just wondering about others' thoughts on the program. Anyone care to share their opinion on the program?
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Rank: Valedictorian
Joined: 5/27/2011
Posts: 565
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It's awesome. Really awesome.
What do you want to know?
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Rank: Senior Student  Joined: 1/15/2012 Posts: 111
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It probably is the best program for accounting if you want to be a CA or w/e, idk about finance. 16 months of co op work expereince? skip 2 of 3 ca exams? no university can beat that.
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Rank: Senior Student
Joined: 2/6/2012
Posts: 52
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Really great co-op recruitment, excellent focus on both accounting and finance, you learn key concepts from day 1 (no electives in first year, all courses are quite useful and some of them you don't get until 2nd/3rd year at other programs), tons of opportunities to get involved, good profs, and a sweet new building.
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Rank: Frosh
Joined: 3/2/2012
Posts: 23
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Can anybody comment on the cut-off average, and how heavily weighted ECs are for the program?
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Rank: Student Body President  Joined: 12/19/2010 Posts: 1,593
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If you know for sure you want to pursue the CA designation, it is a great program.
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Rank: Valedictorian
Joined: 5/27/2011
Posts: 565
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immaculatedx wrote:If you know for sure you want to pursue the CA designation, it is a great program. Even if you're not quite 100% sure, but are sure you're interested in accounting and finance (mainly focused on accounting) it's a great program. Sure Ivey and Queen's or McGill (and to a much lesser extent, Schulich) have great opportunities in investment banking and such, it's really only the best of the best that get it. For the majority of students these jobs are more or less unattainable no matter where they go. AFM has some decent finance jobs available through it. This is especially true if you aren't good at networking. The co-op process takes a good chunk of the responsibility on your part to network. If AFM wasn't so expensive, it would be a better choice overall. Obviously it's your best or one of your best bets for accounting regardless, but otherwise as long as you're mostly interested in accounting it's a decent choice if you're interested in Waterloo overall. Otherwise there's cheaper programs like Schulich located in a better spot where you should probably go to.
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Rank: Student Body President Joined: 12/19/2010 Posts: 1,593
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^ I wasn't referring to IBD or anything in high finance. I have a good idea of the career ambitions of AFM B&F students after being in SAF so I feel I have a somewhat accurate opinion on this. I assume OP is referring to the CA stream. B&F stream is not worth the costs at all atleast imo. Half the students in B&F are there because they think they can get CA jobs which is still pretty hard considering the limited number of spots. For the other half, the co-op opportunities don't get meaningful whatsoever at all until upper-year in which case if they went to a program like Schulich, they would have graduated already with full-time positions having paid only approximately 24K total in tuition fees (If they couldn't get full-time positions then they probably wouldn't have gotten co-op positions had they been in UW AFM B&F). So for AFM CA stream, if you don't pursue the CA, it is essentially the same as AFM B&F stream and I have made my point on that already.
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Rank: Student Body President Joined: 12/19/2010 Posts: 1,593
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For the CA stream, the AFM vs. Schulich argument is debatable and depends on the student so I would say AFM-CA is potentially as good as it gets for those pursuing the CA. If not, Schulich is pretty much better than B&F in almost every way. There are exceptions of course but this is my opinion in general.
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Rank: Valedictorian
Joined: 5/27/2011
Posts: 565
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immaculatedx wrote:^ I wasn't referring to IBD or anything in high finance. I have a good idea of the career ambitions of AFM B&F students after being in SAF so I feel I have a somewhat accurate opinion on this.
I assume OP is referring to the CA stream. B&F stream is not worth the costs at all atleast imo. Half the students in B&F are there because they think they can get CA jobs which is still pretty hard considering the limited number of spots. For the other half, the co-op opportunities don't get meaningful whatsoever at all until upper-year in which case if they went to a program like Schulich, they would have graduated already with full-time positions having paid only approximately 24K total in tuition fees (If they couldn't get full-time positions then they probably wouldn't have gotten co-op positions had they been in UW AFM B&F).
So for AFM CA stream, if you don't pursue the CA, it is essentially the same as AFM B&F stream and I have made my point on that already.
I mostly agree with this (especially the part about half the B&F students wanting CA jobs- probably 70-75% of AFM students are taking the public practice co-op prep course). My point was that as long as you are mostly interested in becoming an accountant, AFM is a good option as long as you like the school (you already made the point that if you are 100% sure you want to be a CA AFM-CA is about as good as it gets, which most people will agree with). If you prefer Schulich overall obviously it's the better option. But if you're mostly interested in becoming an accountant but you end up deciding that finance is better for you (I would still suggest following the accounting-route through) you're not screwed at AFM. Ideally at that point you'd rather be at Schulich (especially if you can network and if money is a concern), but if you do stick with your accounting-dreams you're in AFM-CA which is your best bet. There's students in the program who can get some pretty good jobs still. I'm not saying that everyone should choose AFM, just that if they like the school and want to come here, I think there's a legitimate decision to be made between AFM(CA) and Schulich. I think AFM B&F is kind of like CFM- it's a decent program, but it's not as good as some other programs (for CFM it would be DD or just CS, etc.) and for the amount of money you pay and the high average it requires there's better options for you (I don't know CS-type programs too well beyond the Waterloo ones).
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Rank: Student Body President Joined: 12/19/2010 Posts: 1,593
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caveman wrote:immaculatedx wrote:^ I wasn't referring to IBD or anything in high finance. I have a good idea of the career ambitions of AFM B&F students after being in SAF so I feel I have a somewhat accurate opinion on this.
I assume OP is referring to the CA stream. B&F stream is not worth the costs at all atleast imo. Half the students in B&F are there because they think they can get CA jobs which is still pretty hard considering the limited number of spots. For the other half, the co-op opportunities don't get meaningful whatsoever at all until upper-year in which case if they went to a program like Schulich, they would have graduated already with full-time positions having paid only approximately 24K total in tuition fees (If they couldn't get full-time positions then they probably wouldn't have gotten co-op positions had they been in UW AFM B&F).
So for AFM CA stream, if you don't pursue the CA, it is essentially the same as AFM B&F stream and I have made my point on that already.
I mostly agree with this (especially the part about half the B&F students wanting CA jobs- probably 70-75% of AFM students are taking the public practice co-op prep course). My point was that as long as you are mostly interested in becoming an accountant, AFM is a good option as long as you like the school (you already made the point that if you are 100% sure you want to be a CA AFM-CA is about as good as it gets, which most people will agree with). If you prefer Schulich overall obviously it's the better option. But if you're mostly interested in becoming an accountant but you end up deciding that finance is better for you (I would still suggest following the accounting-route through) you're not screwed at AFM. Ideally at that point you'd rather be at Schulich (especially if you can network and if money is a concern), but if you do stick with your accounting-dreams you're in AFM-CA which is your best bet. There's students in the program who can get some pretty good jobs still. I'm not saying that everyone should choose AFM, just that if they like the school and want to come here, I think there's a legitimate decision to be made between AFM(CA) and Schulich. I think AFM B&F is kind of like CFM- it's a decent program, but it's not as good as some other programs (for CFM it would be DD or just CS, etc.) and for the amount of money you pay and the high average it requires there's better options for you (I don't know CS-type programs too well beyond the Waterloo ones). So basically this goes back to my original statement. If you know for sure you want to pursue your CA, AFM-CA is a great program. Even if you decide you want to pursue something else (i.e. finance), it should still make sense to go through with the whole CA and leverage that later. Also good analogy using B&F to CFM, didn't even think of that.
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Rank: Senior Student
Joined: 10/26/2011
Posts: 95
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AFM is really expensive. The problem is, I didn't apply to Schulich. I should have but I didn't.
Also, What kind of Co-op jobs are available for students in AFM-FM stream?
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Rank: Valedictorian
Joined: 5/27/2011
Posts: 565
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sascer520 wrote:AFM is really expensive. The problem is, I didn't apply to Schulich. I should have but I didn't.
Also, What kind of Co-op jobs are available for students in AFM-FM stream? What kind of jobs are you looking for? There's a few smaller accounting firms that hire, there's some industry CATOs, there's some non-industry CATOs, and there's some finance jobs available (banks, insurance companies, large companies, pension funds, etc.) and you could even apply to some of the business jobs available to students. You just don't have access via JobMine to CA firm jobs.
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