Assessment
Final capability assessment
The program ends not with a quiz but with a demonstration. You sit a timed, closed-notes exercise that tests whether you can build, stress, and defend a full valuation or LBO on your own.
What is assessed
Eight capabilities, each mapped to the modules that built it. You are scored on the artifact you produce and the defense you give, not on memorized answers.
Financial statement fluency
Reconcile the three statements and build a bridge from net income to unlevered free cash flow without notes.
Cost of capital
Estimate WACC from first principles and defend every input, including the beta adjustment for leverage.
DCF construction
Build a complete DCF with a defensible terminal value and walk cleanly from enterprise to equity value.
Relative valuation
Build trading comps and precedents, justify the peer set, and reconcile the implied range with the DCF.
LBO modeling
Build a three-statement LBO with a debt schedule and compute IRR and MOIC under multiple exits.
M&A analysis
Run an accretion/dilution analysis and identify the synergies a deal must realize to justify its price.
Case judgment
Take a landmark deal, form a view on the price, and defend it against the strongest counterargument.
Model hygiene
Deliver a model that balances, traces, and documents itself under the program's six-rule standard.
The exercise
A timed, closed-notes build. You are handed a company and a prompt, and you have a fixed window to produce a model and a one-page defense.
- 1. You receive a company, its recent statements, and a prompt (build a DCF, an LBO, or an accretion/dilution analysis).
- 2. You build the model from scratch under the program's six-rule standard.
- 3. You write a one-page defense: the thesis, the key drivers, and the three risks that would break it.
- 4. You defend the work under questioning, including the strongest counterargument to your own conclusion.
Scoring
Each capability is scored 0-10 and averaged. The levels below tell you where you stand and what the next step is.
| Level | Score | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | 0-3 | Can follow a model someone else built and explain the outputs, but cannot construct one independently. |
| Working | 4-6 | Can build a clean model from a template and defend the standard formulas, with occasional help on judgment calls. |
| Independent | 7-8 | Builds models from scratch, makes sound assumptions, and defends the output under questioning. |
| Front-office ready | 9-10 | Builds, stress-tests, and defends a full valuation or LBO under time pressure, with the judgment to know what matters. |
A score of 7 or above means you are ready to sit front-office technical interviews with confidence. Below that, return to the modules and cases that map to your weakest capabilities and rebuild them before retaking the assessment.