Hey everyone, this goes out to all commerce grads or those that have taken the commerce capstone recently (4PA3).

I 'm currently on exchange and I have the option of taking the course abroad. However after doing some research into the course at Mac it actually seems like it's a lot of fun...so I just want to make sure because I'm basing this off a 2007 outline. Apparently you get to play this business simulation game, and then you do these crazy presentations at the end that look like they're just for fun (there's a bunch on youtube). So yah any opinions or comments about the course would be much appreciated. Thank you!

I absolutely hated capstone. I didn't feel like it was relevant at all to what the course aimed to do which was (if I remember correctly) to culminate everything that you've learned over the past four years of commerce and apply it. I didn't do this at all during the simulation. Nor was any of the theory being taught during the course of any use whatsoever to the simulation.

For my group, it was basically about making educated estimates about all the data that needed to be inputted into the simulation every round based off of the reports the simulation generates after every week. Maybe I wouldn't have hated the simulation so much if I had the time to thoroughly investigate everything but I didn't. The course itself was already barely manageable with all of the reading that you had to do and cases you had to prepare for, on top of the assignments that you get every once in a while. That part of the course I actually enjoyed though, I loved the discussions we had in class.

Some people really enjoyed the simulation though, it seemed to me that they were those who were specializing in finance so they really understood the numbers coming out of the reports generated by the simulation. For others it was super simple as they just split up different sections of the simulation to different members of the group to complete for every round, I never understood how that was possible though :S The simulation consisted of several modules like finance, production, finance, HR, etc. It would also make it a lot easier on the group if you come up with a reasonable strategy from the very beginning. BTW, investing money to make everything top notch is never a good idea in the simulation!!!

The crazy presentations at the end were fun though!! But I think we only had like one week basically to get it done as a group. O_O

Overall, I think if you don't have a full course load or other extracurriculars that would keep you busy, this is a great course to take at mac. But if you have a lot of time constraints, I can easily see someone failing this course!

Originally Posted by melodicdream

I absolutely hated capstone. I didn't feel like it was relevant at all to what the course aimed to do which was (if I remember correctly) to culminate everything that you've learned over the past four years of commerce and apply it. I didn't do this at all during the simulation. Nor was any of the theory being taught during the course of any use whatsoever to the simulation.

For my group, it was basically about making educated estimates about all the data that needed to be inputted into the simulation every round based off of the reports the simulation generates after every week. Maybe I wouldn't have hated the simulation so much if I had the time to thoroughly investigate everything but I didn't. The course itself was already barely manageable with all of the reading that you had to do and cases you had to prepare for, on top of the assignments that you get every once in a while. That part of the course I actually enjoyed though, I loved the discussions we had in class.

Some people really enjoyed the simulation though, it seemed to me that they were those who were specializing in finance so they really understood the numbers coming out of the reports generated by the simulation. For others it was super simple as they just split up different sections of the simulation to different members of the group to complete for every round, I never understood how that was possible though :S The simulation consisted of several modules like finance, production, finance, HR, etc. It would also make it a lot easier on the group if you come up with a reasonable strategy from the very beginning. BTW, investing money to make everything top notch is never a good idea in the simulation!!!

The crazy presentations at the end were fun though!! But I think we only had like one week basically to get it done as a group. O_O

Overall, I think if you don't have a full course load or other extracurriculars that would keep you busy, this is a great course to take at mac. But if you have a lot of time constraints, I can easily see someone failing this course!

Any tips for success?

I hated capstone, couldn't figure it out, could never make any money. fights with group members about decisions. I took the course last year, the year prior students complained so much that it was removed from the coursework