FIN 103a · Financial Management
The first finance course in the sequence: time value of money, valuation, risk and return, and the basics of how firms decide what to invest in. It comes before the upper-level finance courses.
It clicked in class. Until the midterm.
Finance tutoring for Brandeis students.
I studied finance at Brandeis myself, so I know how these courses are taught and where students get stuck. I tutor Brandeis students online, one on one, in the core finance sequence from Financial Management through Corporate Finance and Investments.
Private 1-on-1 on Zoom · $250 / hour
Book a session
The courses
What we work on.
Bring your slides, problem sets, and your last midterm. We work from your actual course.
FIN 104a · Corporate Finance
Capital budgeting, capital structure, and payout decisions in more depth, building on FIN 103a.
FIN 105a · Investment and Portfolio Management
How securities are valued and how portfolios trade off risk and return.
Topics
What we cover.
Bring your slides, problem sets, and your last midterm. We work from your actual course.
- Time value of money on a financial calculator
- Bond and stock valuation
- NPV, IRR, and payback
- Risk, return, and CAPM
- Cost of capital and WACC
- Capital structure
- Midterm and final exam prep
Brandeis
Where students get stuck.
Jumping from FIN 103a to FIN 104a
The second course assumes the first one is automatic. If discounting, WACC, or NPV setups still take you a long time, we rebuild them quickly before the harder material arrives.
Word problems with extra numbers
Finance questions hide the unknown in a paragraph. We practice finding what is being asked, drawing the timeline, and matching the rate to the payment period before any math.
Knowing which formula to reach for
Most lost points come from picking the wrong setup, not from arithmetic. We sort problems by type so the first move is obvious on exam day.
How a session works
Diagnosis first. Then the fix.
- 01
Before we meet
Send me what you're stuck on: a problem set, slides, your last midterm, a practice exam, last week's quiz.
- 02
On Zoom
You walk me through a problem out loud. It usually takes a few minutes to hear where the reasoning goes sideways. We fix that piece and rebuild from there, so you know why each step works.
- 03
Before we finish
The real test: a fresh problem with new numbers and different wording, the way a midterm would ask it, and you solve it yourself. I don't complete assignments or hand over answers. You leave able to do the work.
Your tutor
Studied it. Worked in it. Now I teach it.
I’m Chi Odogwu. I have a B.S. in Business with a finance specialization from Liberty University, earned summa cum laude in three years, and a Master’s in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis. I tutored IB students in grad school, did valuation and private equity consulting at PwC, taught MBA finance at Florida State, and spent three years as an adjunct professor teaching Business Finance.
Questions
Before you book.
My midterm didn't go well. Is it too late to fix it?
No. Send me the exam and I will mark where the points went. Most are lost on setups and wording, which are fixable before the next exam or the final. I can't promise a grade, but there is almost always a clear pattern.
Which calculator can I use in FIN 103a?
I could not find a published calculator policy for the course, so check your syllabus. Some finance courses require a financial calculator and others allow only a scientific one, and we practice on the model you will bring.
Is this course taken by students outside finance?
Business and economics students at Brandeis take the finance sequence, and the course list above comes from the official bulletin. Check your degree requirements for your own major, and bring the course to me either way.
Is tutoring allowed under my school's honor code?
Tutoring on concepts and practice problems is generally fine, but policies on graded work vary by course. I don't complete graded assignments. Check your syllabus's collaboration policy, and if you're unsure, ask your professor.
Get started
Bring the problem you’re stuck on.
Tell me your course and what isn’t clicking. I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.
Book your first sessionOnline Finance Tutor is an independent tutoring service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Brandeis University. Course names are used only to describe the material we cover.