BU8201 BUSINESS FINANCE (3.0 AU)

Business Finance is a critical aspect of managing a company’s financial resources effectively. It involves making strategic decisions on investments, financing, and managing day to day financial activities to ensure the business remains profitable, solvent, and capable of achieving its long term goals. Understanding and applying the principles of business finance enables businesses to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and drive sustainable growth.

Year Taken: AY 16/17, Sem 2
Grade: S

Class participation (10%)
Group Presentation (10%)
Online quiz (20%) – 7/10
Finals (60%)

For this module, lectures are delivered online and there are subtitles in the videos!! Good for people who are bad in auditory learning. I would say it is quite a content heavy course as I spent most of my studying time watching the lectures and doing the tutorials yet it wasn’t enough. My experience for this mod is very confusing. ( I think it is just me, or maybe I just cannot do business related mods )

It is highly recommended to buy the textbook and most of the chapters will be covered in the course, the lecture notes do not include everything that is tested in exams, so study the textbook. Reviews for this course from other websites say to draw mindmaps, so I think you should do it if you want to score an A. Having a financial calculator would be good for this course, although it is not required, but if your Graphing Calculator has the finance app then it’s fine too. While this course is mainly on calculations, there would be some questions that require your understanding of the financial market. Like conflicts between stockholders and bondholders and managers, different types of markets, the significance of the gradient of the security market line etc.

As I said above, I was really confused for this mod cos there is no way I could cram everything last minute HAHA. So for the quiz which is held 3 weeks after recess week, I was panicking and the first thing I did was to read the textbook and tried to write out everything (Like what I did for CM8002). Unfortunately it didn’t work as the textbook is too thick!! Then I tried doing the past year papers BUT answers are not provided omg. And being the person with no friends and too embarrassed to consult teachers, I was unable to tell whether my answers were correct, and I ended up spending a crazy amount of time doing questions that are no longer in the syllabus -.-. Yeah don’t be like me. In the end the quiz was quite straightforward but I didn’t memorise all the formulas needed. Stupid me! That explains my marks for the quiz.
For the presentation, we had to form groups and a different group would present the set of tutorial questions for the week. My group was the first group to present and it was SCARY. Ok all presentations are scary to me hahaha, the tutor will decide which question you are presenting so you have to know how to do all the questions in the set of tutorial.
For final paper, I spent like 4 whole days out of the 1 week study break to study for it by doing MCQ questions online. There is one very cool blog with hundreds and thousands of questions, I will share the link later, or you can google it HAHA. But I must not be thinking clearly at that time, since I only did MCQs which was worth 60% of the final paper, and did not touch on structured questions at all. So in the end I breezed through all the MCQs but got stuck at the SAQs. Ugh what was I thinking… Ya so in the end I SU-ed it right after the final paper, although I wasn’t planning to do so..

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Hairdryer. Originally published at https://ionhairdryer.blogspot.com/2017/06/ay201617-ntu-spms-cbc-y1s2.html

Year Taken: AY13/14, Sem 2
Grade: S

In my opinion, this is a heavy module. I suggest you to take this module only if you have time to study it. Although it is just basically maths and common sense, however, the terms and formulae we are expected to memories are too much for me. The workload was relatively high as all tutorials must be completed before lesson as my tutor (sui sui kena the female one who is stricter than the guy lecturer – Daniel Ong) would check our answer sheets before lessons started.

My memory is not too clear about the course percentages here. I think there are 20% 10 MCQ midterm through blackboard, 10% group presentation on selected tutorial, and 70% closed-book finals (20 MCQs and 2 structure questions). During finals, the MCQ questions were relatively tough as they required complete understanding on the subject to be able to select the correct answers. As for the structure questions, make good use of the formulae given then you should be fine.

Also, a financial calculator is needed as there is a specific formula that would be commonly used. Lecturer and tutor teach solving methods based on the financial calculator. If you don’t have one, borrow from you NBS friend or better still, purchase a second hand from Carousell. You can always resell again easily since Business Finance is a hot module among NTU students.

My advice to study for this module is that last minute studying does not work for this module. Trust me, I regretted it therefore I S/U it. Constant understanding and practicing will make final very easy to score. Go through all PYP then you can gauge the questions coming out.

If you are aiming for an A- and above, score at least 8/10 during you midterm then you should be fine. Also, take note of week13 revision lecture, as important concepts and questions solving methods will be repeated!

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Yunzi. Originally published at https://joysofyz.blogspot.com/2016/05/what-electives-to-take-score-in-ntu.html