BUS I3003

4 psets (only 3 graded) 4-5 cases (similar to psets but a little more extensive, but these are group submissions) 1 exam - final, worth 50% of your grade (a little risky due to the weight but he doesn't make it a mystery what the final will be - just pay attention in class when he talks about it)

Refer to the 2007 reviews because he hasn't changed. He could be the worst professor ever lived on this planet. Why? He practically doesn't teach us anything! He rambles about useless things that can be found in the textbook but the cases require more advanced, in-depth knowledge which he just expects us to know. On top of that his assignment instructions are SO ambiguous and poorly organized. What's the point of him being a professor if all he talks about can be found in the textbook? He's just there to call on students, not to teach. No wonder why he wants us to work in a group. This is not a difficult course if professor is decent, but the fact that he doesn't teach us anything makes it particularly difficult and impossible to do ill-organized cases. The majority of students received Cs for this course.

midterm (40%), final (45%), homeworks (15%)

Case studies that are long, but fun, you can work in groups for almost anything.

A quiz every few weeks (30%) Midterm (30%) Finall (40%) Not a lot if you just want to get by, a significant amount of independent work if you want an A.

I was a little hesitant when I signed up for this section because there was no professor listed and I had shopped Tri before (not my style), but I was more than relieved by the second class session when it became clear that the Prof Segram cares a lot this class and about us as students - he asks and remembers people's names, and always checks in class to make sure we are following what he is saying. Prof has also been lenient with extending deadlines for certain assignments when enough people in the class reach out, and even at the very beginning of the semester, he reduced the number of total assignments (one less pset and one less case) to make sure we weren't just bogged down with work for the whole semester, but rather actually learning. The prof and TAs are also both relatively responsive to questions via email and has hosted impromptu office hours to help us with assignments like our cases.

I just finished a term with Mesznik. He would make a great tour guide - full of knowledgable tid-bits and artifacts. But, as an instructor he is weak. Specifically, he is terribly unorganized. Both the classes and the exam felt like a roller coaster where you aren't sure what is coming up but you know it can't be good. Overall - thumbs down.

i took tri vi for both corporate finance and money and banking. if you're interested in an easy class, this is definitely for you. tri vi reads off his slides, so not going to class and reading the slides at home would be proficient. his midterms and finals are 75% like the practice exams (he tells you what a majority of the questions will be like) with about 25% being tricky questions that are a bit difficult to solve. that said, his class is definitely fair! his psets are a bit difficult, but the tas are helpful as well. my only qualm with the class is that if you are interested in actually learning corporate finance (in preparation for ib recruiting or something) i would probably take haran's (the other corp fin teacher) class. we spent the first half of the semester learning about arbitrage and trading, and skimming over relevant corp fin stuff like dcfs in the latter part of the semester. but, if that doesn't matter to you, then i definitely recommend this class!

Charissa was great: engaging lecturer, helpful, attentive, plenty of lecture notes, lenient grader. Case studies were interesting and informative, there were no surprises. She took Econometrics a long time ago with Phoebus Dhrymes (Econometrics) and thus understands the shortcomings of the econ dept at Columbia, so she tries to make things better. That sweet motherly voice of hers is an added bonus.

Overall not great. Corporate Finance is naturally pretty dry, but this class was brutal. Prof. Guirguis is very smart and qualified. However, the 2:45 Monday night lecture was pretty grueling both for him (who seems to have a day job) and for us. The class was in the hottest room in IAB (temperature wise) so everyone wanted to take a nap. Also, Prof. Guirguis just blazed through Excel spreadsheets showing us how to do different things which were, when done by hand, computational nightmares. There is no homework in the class and only a few quizzes which count for 30% of your grade. There is also no recitation. So you're pretty much given handouts, a textbook, one 2:45 minute lecture a week, and sent out in the cold to learn a lot of the stuff on your own. Also, there is no curve in the class -- you get whatever your number average is. Thus, he only gave out about 20% A-range grades -- quite a bit worse than your average economics class.