Hereby I would like to caution anyone who is thinking of taking Michael Hlinka CFA level 1 course at University of Toronto. It’s a complete rip-off and a big scam.
reasons:
the promised passing results on their website is not a true results of the actual registered candidates and who took the exam, only a sample of what Michael likes to take.
Michael Hlinka, makes you sign a No refund form at the beginning of the course and ask you if you are not happy you should drop out before the third lecture and you would get a full refund. However, since it’s only ethics in the beginning and he is just talking, you have no clue what you have been signing for…his lectures are only talking and talking, he doesn’t use any projector or blackboard To visually explain anything…imagine someone explaining quantitative by just talking…extremely fast- he looks like he has ADHD .
I doubt whether he is actually a fully registered CFA charter holder, sometimes even when students ask him questions out of the box, he seems not knowing the answer and skipping the questions…last lecture he was even refuting a Q/A from the book regarding simple Modes from a graph !, while after a few minutes, he admitted he was wrong lol l
-This course is not a CFA approved course and you have to wonder why !
for 3600 dollars, you can have so many other options, I as a current student, deeply regret why I was skimmed into taking a fake course with a complete incompetent wanna be teacher… please please don’t make the same mistake and just go with Kaplan, IFA, Fintree or something that is verified by CFA Institute:…
last thing, he doesn’t promote the UoT course Survey to current students, while he should had done so , according to the survey, guess why !!! How come otherwise he was so pushy to get the No Refund form immediately signed??
If Michael Hlinka is a CFA member, they should seriously revoke his membership, everything this guy is doing is so unethical…misleading current CFA members with fake results and representing just a sample of sample results…unbelievable…
Note; to UoT: this course by Michael Hlinka is hurting the reputation of University of Toronto, please have a closer look at what this guy is doing…
then there are other people who really like the guy. This is why I don’t rely on other people or even 3rd party books - I went with the bulky CFAI books and read them cover to cover by myself at my own pace for 8 months. Some fellow CFA candidates laughed, chuckled etc but at the end of the 3rd year, i got my cfa. Just study by yourself and trust your brain and figure things out on your own. It
To semi counter my first sentence here, OP, you’re not the first to complain about the instructor on AF.
Also OP, none of the 3rd party providers are approved by CFAI.
Some lecture types just don’t work for people, some are highly effective for other types of learners. It is shocking to me that some people after 16 years of formal education still do not know what kind of learners they are, never mind drop 3.6k on a prep course that may or may not be effective to them.
If you’re paying 3.6k, I hope work is covering it because that is an astronomical amount for something that can be done on your own time. I went also went cover to cover and avoided any study guides for all three levels. For level 2 I signed up for a competing study course but found it ineffective and dropped it. I also explored OP’s instructor, going to two classes but I was quite sure it wouldn’t work for me - people just learn in different ways. Just because his style isn’t compatible with you, doesn’t mean he’s fraudulent. Anyway, moot points, your post doesn’t exude any credibility.
Well, I’m just trying to warn others not making the same mistake. His is not teaching anything, just reading summaries and just talking n talking extremely fast ( I mean ADHD style)…at minimum , 30 minutes of his lectures are about hockey and other sports he covers at @CBC…
If reading summaries makes you a teacher, then sign me up lol…if I knew better, I wouldn’t had signed his no refund form…this is a complete scam…on top of that…his stats and the ones that are on UoT website are clearly not credible…the results are taken from only 20 students while there is on average 100 +/- victims lol