first MBA finance exam coming - focus items ?

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KSJT

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Hey folks
Have my first MBA Finance “Corporate Finance” exam in two weeks. Prof is a nice guy but some of us are worried about exam material. This site has been very useful by the way. Can anyone shed some “focus items” for Exam-1 stuff ?
We have discussed Time Value of Money, Bond Valuation, Risk, Interest Rates, and other stuff.
Any “for sure, know this” stuff ? advice, tips ?
Thanks
 
Never taken an finance class before but off the top of my head i would think you should know:
1) finding cost of debt given a combination of PV, FV, Coupon, , n
2) finding cost of equity given CAPM or dividend discount model, or other cost of equity approaches relevant
3) WACC
4) Beta leveraging
5) NPV, IRR (comparing NPV of projects with different investment horizons)
6) operating leverage, financial leverage and total leverage
 
Probably some fundamental concepts if this is one of the first finance courses for the program– how number of compounding periods or interest rates affect the PV, FV, etc. How to calculate an EAR from an APR and vice versa.
Any types of pro forma methods you used (percentage of sales, for example).
If you covered topics about agency problems/management decisions, thats probably important also, but not as fundamental as TVM, valuation, WACC, NPV/IRR. Think of the draw backs to different kinds of project evaluation rules that you have covered (ex: Payback period doesnt account for TVM and CF after payback, IRR/NPV can give conflicting decisions on mutually exclusive projects, etc.)
 
Is this a real question? How is it possible to expect that people who are not in your class can give you insight into what you should study for a class exam? Don’t you have a syllabus and a textbook? You should probably start with those.
 
KSJT wrote:
Hey folks
Have my first MBA Finance “Corporate Finance” exam in two weeks. Prof is a nice guy but some of us are worried about exam material. This site has been very useful by the way. Can anyone shed some “focus items” for Exam-1 stuff ?
We have discussed Time Value of Money, Bond Valuation, Risk, Interest Rates, and other stuff.
Any “for sure, know this” stuff ? advice, tips ?
Thanks
Click to expand...
I had the following items to cover in my first finance class in BBA.
1) Accounting entries, inter-relationships b/w financial statements, Time value of money, loan amortization tables
2) Bond valuation— Fixed, floating, sinking bonds, Callable and Putable bonds
3) Stock valuation— Gordon growth model, Dividend discount model and Free cashflow models
4) Probability based weighted average questions
5) Capital budgeting— NPV, IRR, WACC, MIRR, NPV profiles of different projects
6) Project analysis for different capital structures
7) Financial ratios— , all profitability, liquidity, solvency and acitivty ratios + Dupont equation, modified dupont
8) Calcualtions for CAPM, beta, porftolio standard deviation (for 2, 3 and n assets portfolio), portfolio return, Duration, Convexity
9) Basic Derivatives such as their types and how to calculate the payoffs
10) Stock trading simulation
I would say Financial ratios and TVM questions seem to be professors’ favorite questions so they have a very high chance of showing up on your exam.
 
As a prof, I’d say
wait for it
…
Talk to the prof. His opinion is the only one that matters. If not, try to get a hold of prior students. A given prof tends to write similar exams over time.
 
you’re asking random strangers on AF about what you think will appear on your first MBA test?
wow. just wow. I think we hit a new level of stupid on AF. Vandelay’s starting to look like a genius now.
 
This may seem a bit “out there”, but wouldn’t you focus on what the professor has taught in class and indicated would be tested on the exam?
 
itera wrote:
you’re asking random strangers on AF about what you think will appear on your first MBA test?
wow. just wow. I think we hit a new level of stupid on AF. Vandelay’s starting to look like a genius now.
Click to expand...
thx <3
 
^ yeah i know. Been missing everybody. Been doing some traveling. Busy with school, job, and job search last couple weeks
 
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