(AY2018/2019, Sem 2) NUS FIN2704X Finance Review

Module Title: Finance
Module Code: FIN2704X (for non-business student)
Taken in AY2018/2019, Semester 2.

Lecturer: Dr. Jumana Zahalka
Tutor: Graduate student pursuing PhD

Components	Percentage	Grade	Marks
Mid Term	30%		25/30
Final Examination	55%
Class Participation	5%
Quizzes	10%

Final Grade: A-

What is it about?

     FIN2704X is an introductory module to finance, covering content such as time value of money, bonds, capital budgeting and etc. 

     Students are assessed through Mid Term, Final Examination, Class Participation and Quizzes. The Mid Term paper consists of 30 MCQs covering the first half of the module. They are generally tricky but Dr. Jumana does provide lots of practice papers and the questions generally test the same concept. For the Final Examination, the paper consists of 50 MCQs covering the entire 12 weeks' worth of content. I can't stress how important time-management is as a lot of questions require tedious calculations and if you miss a single a component, it's going to make you super frustrated. As for practices, she does provide past year final examination paper for you to practice on, but it's only a few in number. For both Mid Term and Final Examination, one is allowed to bring in an A4 size cheat sheet. For class participation, I think we are graded based solely on our presentation (for one of the week's tutorial questions). There are three quizzes in total and the moderator will only consider the best two out of the three. Basically, you can afford to skip a quiz. However, do note that the quizzes differ across the tutorial groups so you must attend the class you are allocated to. The difficulty of the quiz and whether it's open-book or close-book depends on your TA.

Review

     For this module, I don't think it's necessary for you to attend the lectures as they are dry and you can get the same piece of information from the textbook. Tutorial classes are boring, and my TA does send us the presentation slides from other groups so we have access to the answers for our tutorials. I skipped all the lectures and some tutorial (including one quiz). In addition, my Mid Terms is merely one mark above the median. I believe I was saved by my Finals but I don't think I did exceptionally well for my Finals too due to bad time management and lack of practice.

     I would say that the module is competitive but not as competitive as business student's finance module as I still manage to get an A- despite my mediocre efforts. However, I would like to stress that the workload is heavy and that is a huge factor to consider if you are thinking of taking it as a supplement to your core modules cause you definitely won't have time for it and you can't S/U it.

     All in all, FIN2704X is a dry and heavy module. 

Ratings

3.2/5