Randall Rojas
Department of Economics
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3.2
Overall Rating
Based on 34 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.1 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.4 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 2.8 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Tolerates Tardiness
  • Uses Slides
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
14.0%
11.6%
9.3%
7.0%
4.7%
2.3%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

16.0%
13.4%
10.7%
8.0%
5.3%
2.7%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

14.8%
12.3%
9.8%
7.4%
4.9%
2.5%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

13.9%
11.6%
9.3%
7.0%
4.6%
2.3%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

14.6%
12.1%
9.7%
7.3%
4.9%
2.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

15.7%
13.1%
10.5%
7.9%
5.2%
2.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

15.9%
13.3%
10.6%
8.0%
5.3%
2.7%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

11.9%
9.9%
7.9%
6.0%
4.0%
2.0%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

14.4%
12.0%
9.6%
7.2%
4.8%
2.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

12.4%
10.3%
8.3%
6.2%
4.1%
2.1%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

10.8%
9.0%
7.2%
5.4%
3.6%
1.8%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (32)

2 of 4
2 of 4
Add your review...
Quarter: Fall 2017
Grade: A+
Jan. 4, 2018

Easiest class I took at UCLA. Found out econ majors don't know any math.

I'm a double major in FAM and Econ and was forced to take this class. Easiest A I have gotten at UCLA. Not sure how everyone did so poorly on the tests. If you aren't doing well here is a thought...try to open the book and actually read it. It's amazing. Really incredible.

I studied with several econ majors who were having a hard time when they just actually refused to open the book and read it.

First midterm is the easiest, second is a bit harder, and final is a bit harder than that, but everything is very doable.

Helpful?

2 8 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 8, 2023

Professor Rojas does not care about his students. Lecture slides ALWAYS had mistakes. Practice problems for the midterm weren't even tailored to be on material that would be evaluated. Exams were on topics not covered in lecture, which the professor explicitly said would not be evaluated. Office hours were not helpful; the professor would not explain the problems and would go on random tangents. The professor spent way too long explaining the simplest of concepts to then completely skim over the complicated theorems. Some theorems were not given to us and there was no associated example in class which meant a lot of self-teaching (however these still came up on exams).

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 16, 2022

To be fair, this class has imporved compared to the reviews from past quarters. However, this is still a confusing & challenging class and you need to dedicate much effort if you don't want your GPA to be ruined. The class material is much like a deeper understanding of AP Stats or Stats 10. The grading scheme is 25% midterm 1, 25% midterm 2, and 50% final, all are mcqs and 1% equals to 1 question in the exams, so getting 1 question wrong in either exam means losing 1 actual point of your final grade. Your final grade is also curved so I guess approximately 1/4 of the class would get an A or A-. On the good side, Dr. Rojas is clearly genius, he knows a lot about finance and economics, and extending the class material to actual work in finance industry. He welcomes questions and is willing to explain everything down to middle-school level math. However, his slides were full of mathematical mistakes cuz I guess he didn't check when using LATEX. So you really need to pay attention so that you won't look at the wrong slides. The exams are difficult and time is tight; but if you really do the homework and all the practice exams and problems, you should be fine. Overall, if you are confident with your mathematical instincts and know Stats 10 material pretty well, then you should be OK with Dr. Rojas and have a generally nice experience.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
April 15, 2021

i took ap stats in high school and this class was a breeze. learn to use a calculator that can do integrals for you and you'll be fine. the midterms were really similar to the practice midterms he gave. i only watched the recorded lectures which i found helpful so i can't say much about what he was like live. homework is also optional. my ta, iris fu was so good and explained everything.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: C+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 31, 2021

The actual material of this class is not difficult, but this class was horrible because of the professor. His lectures were so boring and he would give the easiest examples that did not reflect the difficulty of the actual problems on his exams at all. He also had typos in almost every example he gave during lecture. Grade was based purely on two midterms and a final, which is pretty unfair considering the fact that several of the problems on the exams were unclear and had typos, which he refused to give points back for. He also claims he "curves" but in all three classes I've taken with him, I've never heard of anyone's grade actually changing after his "curve". I feel like I could've done better in this class if it weren't for him, because I understood the material pretty well, but his exams and answer choices were so unclear that I got problems "wrong" despite my calculations actually being correct. Even my TA couldn't give any explanation as to why I got the problems wrong after I explained my calculations other than "sorry, I can't change the professor's decision," which just shows how unreasonable he is.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: P
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 18, 2021

If you have taken AP Statistics or have a knack for mathematics, this class will be a breeze for you.

- Verbose lecture style, and covers the material very quickly. I'm not sure if this is because he is the only person with his camera turned on. No one in class turns on their camera, so he speaks into a black void..

- Exams are proctored on Respondus Browser & Zoom call.

- Many of the multiple choice questions had an option for "None of the Above"

- There is virtually NO curve. Don't rely on there being a curve!!!

- Unlike other ECON 41 professors, he lets you use a Graphing Calculator on exams. Learn how to use it to solve stat questions!

- Many times (during the lecture) he would say, "I'll be sending an e-mail out later about____" . . . and there would never be an e-mail. A total of 4 emails were sent out to students during the entire quarter, about Midterm 1, Respondus Requirement, Midterm 2, and Final Exam.

- Professor Rojas' email policy is: "Students should email me only for personal matters." We are supposed to get help from T.A. or during his office hours only. If you have other classes during his office hours, then you're out of luck.

Despite my experiences shared above, Professor Rojas is a good professor to take for ECON 41. He provides you with textbook scans of homework questions and answers.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 16, 2021

His notes were very detailed which helps when studying. The exams were okay since he didn't really include concepts not taught during class or on past exams. The professor's goal is always for the students to fully understand each concept, even if it means going slower than the syllabus. Rojas also made an effort to connect almost each topic to how it is used in finance/economics. I would definitely take another of his courses.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
Feb. 10, 2021

Rojas always gives fair exams and will create more office hours if you need extra help. Econ 41 is a fairly tough class in general, but he makes it easier than other professors. I would recommend taking it with Rojas.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: D+
Jan. 8, 2020

Professor Rojas is an extremely knowledgeable and kind professor, but sometimes the lecture content would become extremely dry, and this was exacerbated by the fact that lecture had a large class size, was after lunch and in an extremely hot room (maintenance had been called many times but nothing changed over the entire quarter), making it difficult to focus and keep up. Moreover, the pace of the lecture was quite fast, and if you fell behind, it was almost impossible to catch up. My biggest issue was the disparity between the practice exams posted to CCLE and the actual exams, which were far more difficult, mostly because of the unreasonable time constraint (more so on the midterms, final had sufficient time for most people). Lastly, the textbook is terrible in terms of explaining concepts, and was only useful for the homework questions. However, some strengths of the class are the amount of real-world based problems professor Rojas solved in class, and how he introduced us to the use of statistical modelling in R.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: A+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 23, 2019

Rojas is actually not bad as a professor, he can just be a little dry sometimes, but that's just the nature of the material we're learning. He also hand writes notes legibly in class and gives very short problem sets and past exams that are pretty good practice. His midterms apparently were too hard, as they had medians around 75%, so he tried to make the final easier. But honestly, the final was a challenging but fair extension of the material we had learned up to that point (For reference, I got 100% on the final, not sure if the test itself was curved or not, but the mean was still below an 80%). It is very evident that Rojas cares about his students and wants them to learn, as he responds very quickly to questions after class and is overall very patient about answering questions. I definitely would recommend him.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2017
Grade: A+
Jan. 4, 2018

Easiest class I took at UCLA. Found out econ majors don't know any math.

I'm a double major in FAM and Econ and was forced to take this class. Easiest A I have gotten at UCLA. Not sure how everyone did so poorly on the tests. If you aren't doing well here is a thought...try to open the book and actually read it. It's amazing. Really incredible.

I studied with several econ majors who were having a hard time when they just actually refused to open the book and read it.

First midterm is the easiest, second is a bit harder, and final is a bit harder than that, but everything is very doable.

Helpful?

2 8 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A-
Jan. 8, 2023

Professor Rojas does not care about his students. Lecture slides ALWAYS had mistakes. Practice problems for the midterm weren't even tailored to be on material that would be evaluated. Exams were on topics not covered in lecture, which the professor explicitly said would not be evaluated. Office hours were not helpful; the professor would not explain the problems and would go on random tangents. The professor spent way too long explaining the simplest of concepts to then completely skim over the complicated theorems. Some theorems were not given to us and there was no associated example in class which meant a lot of self-teaching (however these still came up on exams).

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 16, 2022

To be fair, this class has imporved compared to the reviews from past quarters. However, this is still a confusing & challenging class and you need to dedicate much effort if you don't want your GPA to be ruined. The class material is much like a deeper understanding of AP Stats or Stats 10. The grading scheme is 25% midterm 1, 25% midterm 2, and 50% final, all are mcqs and 1% equals to 1 question in the exams, so getting 1 question wrong in either exam means losing 1 actual point of your final grade. Your final grade is also curved so I guess approximately 1/4 of the class would get an A or A-. On the good side, Dr. Rojas is clearly genius, he knows a lot about finance and economics, and extending the class material to actual work in finance industry. He welcomes questions and is willing to explain everything down to middle-school level math. However, his slides were full of mathematical mistakes cuz I guess he didn't check when using LATEX. So you really need to pay attention so that you won't look at the wrong slides. The exams are difficult and time is tight; but if you really do the homework and all the practice exams and problems, you should be fine. Overall, if you are confident with your mathematical instincts and know Stats 10 material pretty well, then you should be OK with Dr. Rojas and have a generally nice experience.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
April 15, 2021

i took ap stats in high school and this class was a breeze. learn to use a calculator that can do integrals for you and you'll be fine. the midterms were really similar to the practice midterms he gave. i only watched the recorded lectures which i found helpful so i can't say much about what he was like live. homework is also optional. my ta, iris fu was so good and explained everything.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: C+
March 31, 2021

The actual material of this class is not difficult, but this class was horrible because of the professor. His lectures were so boring and he would give the easiest examples that did not reflect the difficulty of the actual problems on his exams at all. He also had typos in almost every example he gave during lecture. Grade was based purely on two midterms and a final, which is pretty unfair considering the fact that several of the problems on the exams were unclear and had typos, which he refused to give points back for. He also claims he "curves" but in all three classes I've taken with him, I've never heard of anyone's grade actually changing after his "curve". I feel like I could've done better in this class if it weren't for him, because I understood the material pretty well, but his exams and answer choices were so unclear that I got problems "wrong" despite my calculations actually being correct. Even my TA couldn't give any explanation as to why I got the problems wrong after I explained my calculations other than "sorry, I can't change the professor's decision," which just shows how unreasonable he is.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: P
March 18, 2021

If you have taken AP Statistics or have a knack for mathematics, this class will be a breeze for you.

- Verbose lecture style, and covers the material very quickly. I'm not sure if this is because he is the only person with his camera turned on. No one in class turns on their camera, so he speaks into a black void..

- Exams are proctored on Respondus Browser & Zoom call.

- Many of the multiple choice questions had an option for "None of the Above"

- There is virtually NO curve. Don't rely on there being a curve!!!

- Unlike other ECON 41 professors, he lets you use a Graphing Calculator on exams. Learn how to use it to solve stat questions!

- Many times (during the lecture) he would say, "I'll be sending an e-mail out later about____" . . . and there would never be an e-mail. A total of 4 emails were sent out to students during the entire quarter, about Midterm 1, Respondus Requirement, Midterm 2, and Final Exam.

- Professor Rojas' email policy is: "Students should email me only for personal matters." We are supposed to get help from T.A. or during his office hours only. If you have other classes during his office hours, then you're out of luck.

Despite my experiences shared above, Professor Rojas is a good professor to take for ECON 41. He provides you with textbook scans of homework questions and answers.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 16, 2021

His notes were very detailed which helps when studying. The exams were okay since he didn't really include concepts not taught during class or on past exams. The professor's goal is always for the students to fully understand each concept, even if it means going slower than the syllabus. Rojas also made an effort to connect almost each topic to how it is used in finance/economics. I would definitely take another of his courses.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
Feb. 10, 2021

Rojas always gives fair exams and will create more office hours if you need extra help. Econ 41 is a fairly tough class in general, but he makes it easier than other professors. I would recommend taking it with Rojas.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: D+
Jan. 8, 2020

Professor Rojas is an extremely knowledgeable and kind professor, but sometimes the lecture content would become extremely dry, and this was exacerbated by the fact that lecture had a large class size, was after lunch and in an extremely hot room (maintenance had been called many times but nothing changed over the entire quarter), making it difficult to focus and keep up. Moreover, the pace of the lecture was quite fast, and if you fell behind, it was almost impossible to catch up. My biggest issue was the disparity between the practice exams posted to CCLE and the actual exams, which were far more difficult, mostly because of the unreasonable time constraint (more so on the midterms, final had sufficient time for most people). Lastly, the textbook is terrible in terms of explaining concepts, and was only useful for the homework questions. However, some strengths of the class are the amount of real-world based problems professor Rojas solved in class, and how he introduced us to the use of statistical modelling in R.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: A+
Dec. 23, 2019

Rojas is actually not bad as a professor, he can just be a little dry sometimes, but that's just the nature of the material we're learning. He also hand writes notes legibly in class and gives very short problem sets and past exams that are pretty good practice. His midterms apparently were too hard, as they had medians around 75%, so he tried to make the final easier. But honestly, the final was a challenging but fair extension of the material we had learned up to that point (For reference, I got 100% on the final, not sure if the test itself was curved or not, but the mean was still below an 80%). It is very evident that Rojas cares about his students and wants them to learn, as he responds very quickly to questions after class and is overall very patient about answering questions. I definitely would recommend him.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
2 of 4
3.2
Overall Rating
Based on 34 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.1 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.4 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 2.8 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Tolerates Tardiness
    (9)
  • Uses Slides
    (12)
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