Imagine A Simulation Where Students Run A Bank
Introducing Rate the Loan, an economic mini-game where students approve, deny, or price every loan that crosses the desk. Rapunzl tasks students with building a loan book by starting at the teller window and climbing the ranks of the bank to CEO.
- ~6 hours
- Personal Finance or Economics
- Built into Rapunzl
Build a Loan Business
Every application is a person: a first-time car buyer, a family hoping for a mortgage, a shop owner who needs inventory before the holidays. Students weigh credit score, income stability, and debt-to-income, then make the call: deny, approve, or price it against a live fair-rate meter.
Students are constantly prompted to price loans fairly so that they can cover their risk while earning a profit for the bank.
Grow Your Banking Empire
Students quickly learn that good underwriting compounds. As the bank grows from a teller window to a company headquarters, students climb seven ranks, from loan clerk through underwriter and all the way to bank president.
Each chapter unlocks new loans to sell: mortgages, small-business lending, commercial real estate, corporate credit. Then the downturn hits, and the book they built either holds or it doesn't.
Bank President — Running the Bank
In-Game Lessons About Underwriting
Rate the Loan teaches the lender's side of credit, the side most personal-finance classes skip. Students come away knowing why their credit score changes the rate they're offered, what banks actually do with deposits, and why diversification protects a loan book the same way it protects a portfolio.
Debriefs after every quarter tie decisions back to concepts, with pacing guides and assessments in the curriculum.
Fair price
Cost of funds
Capital cushion
Diversification
Two Games, One Economy
Rate the Loan pairs with Run the Fed in our High School Economics course. Students set rates as the Fed, then feel those same rates hit a bank's loan desk.
This provides students with insight into monetary policy from both sides of the counter and makes economic concepts such as inflation and unemployment more tangible.
See the Economics Course
Bring Rate the Loan to your classroom
Request access and we'll show you the game, the debriefs, and where it fits in your course.