Jian Cai

Not the greatest, not the worst. Learned a lot from the course and she was super kind. Much better than the second-half of the course taught by the other professor (Linda).

12/17/2025

Overall, very clear lectures and expectations. Good at explaining difficult concepts. Would definitely recommend.

12/10/2025

Very well-organized and did a great job explaining everything clearly. Offered many office hours and constantly sent out reminders/emails; truly cares about her students.

12/8/2025

Kind, really well-organized, pushy but in a good way. The exams were very hard but curved. I start appreciate her even more after experiencing how the other professor messed up everything.

12/3/2025

On the verge of falling down a building, I type these words to warn. Do not take the class of Prof. Cai, for it shall cast you down one cliff after another with no rope to grasp nor light to follow. My family ruined, my lover gone astray due to the grade I have received.

5/12/2025

Unfairly hard exams, which do not test student actual knowledge about the course. Learning will not help because the questions are way harder than the examples discussed in the coursework.

3/14/2025

Very good Professor who trully cares about her students! Do study hard and you will learn a lot from her course. However, the course content is very hard so I would recommend fixing it and don't put everything in a semester. However, a very great prof and highly recommended!

12/23/2024

Professor Cai is one of the best professors I have had at WashU. Although the content of her course is very challenging, she is genuinely the nicest professor I've met and cares about her students a lot. I never felt afraid to approach her with questions or concerns.

12/5/2024

One of the most kind, compassionate people I have ever met. She creates a space for people to feel accepted in a topic that can feel daunting and overwhelming. Glad to have had the privilege of knowing her and would recommend anyone to take her classes.

10/18/2024

Beautiful soul, wonderful person.

5/10/2024

jian cai was a very kind professor and cares about her students so much!!!

5/10/2023

Hard homework, quiz and exam. She just does not care because she said the grade will be curved. Terrible learning experience overall.

7/12/2022

Huge amount of workload. You always have homework and quiz due on the same day. Too many questions in the homework assignment. The quiz is not easy and you will not have enough time to do it. She said something like she made the quiz hard on purpose and the final exam is going to be tricky as well. Sometimes the slides can miss some specific steps.

7/12/2022

Lecture and homework can be overwhelming, tests are definitely hard: the final exam was a 3-hour open-note exam and the average was still low as 65. However, she did curve it in the end. She packed so much statistics modeling and formula derivation into the course that it looked like a stats course instead of a finance class. Hard but rewarding!

10/28/2019

Jian is one of the nicest people I know. She deeply cares about students' success and is always willing to help. Can't speak highly enough of her.

3/14/2019

I struggled in her class but she cares DEEPLY about the success of her students, so if you make any effort at all to ask her questions outside of class that prove you are trying she will make sure that you do at least fairly well in her class

12/11/2018

Professor Cai is always caring about her students and always available for her office hours. Definitely learned a lot from her class and would be useful for CPA exam. Lectures could be a lot but homework is a few questions. Liked her case studies for IPO and LBO.

12/10/2018

More than 40 slides for one class with very heavy loaded slides reading, confusing lectures and hard homework (though it could be doable if discussing with other groups). Very hard to prepare for final and lost in tiny calculation and countless details Not recommended

12/10/2018

Best professor during my four years at WashU. Learnt a lot in Finance.

5/7/2017

Really cares about her student's success inside and outside the classroom. Show up to class and you will easily get an A

11/5/2016