Professor Surro is an excellent lecturer. He explains everything in a clean, concise way, his class is very organized, and you feel like you understand everything after each lecture. However, the midterm and final are challenging because he tests for a deeper understanding of the material. You can do all the practice problems he gives, yet there will still be questions that you have never seen before. Also, your grade is either 33% midterm, 67% final, or 100% final. Attendance to discussions and lectures is not mandatory, and weekly homework/quizzes are practically extra credit. This class was pretty good overall, but I wish the final wasn't weighted so heavily

Surro's class was difficult in the best way possible. His method of teaching and grading was rooted in a motivation to increase conceptual understanding rather than simple memorization or an easy A. He gives you all the tools necessary to succeed in the class, but its up to you to use them-- the problem sets, practice questions, and quizzes are optional. Follow his advice on how to do good in the class, and it will be extremely rewarding. It wasn't easy, but I have gained a deeper appreciation for the subject and broadened my intuition-- would highly recommend Surro!

Surro is an amazing professor, I am just not an amazing student. I just never went to class and crammed midterm/final a night or two before-hand so some of the edge cases that you learn about scenarios are tested heavily, and given my lack of preparedness and simple math mistakes due to my adhd, I got bad test grades.

In the end when calculating final grades, he didn't curve the upper 50% of the class but only curved the lower bottom. So basically if you were borderline B+/A- and was expecting a curve to bump you up, that would not happen. I had a B+ and stuck at the B+ in the end.

This class can be challenging but still doable. As other commenters noted, the majority of your final grade will come from your performance on exams, which can be very intimidating. I would first suggest going to every lecture and discussion if possible, as they provide great intros to the content and reinforce important concepts. On your own time, I would advise redoing problem sets and ensuring that you form a graphical intuition behind what you're trying to accomplish. This will be especially helpful when you're going through different types of equilibrium towards the end of the class. Before starting the class, try to go through partial derivatives if you can. Generally, the exams are an elevated version of the problem sets done in class except with more challenging numbers or rephrased questions that require you to think about the concept more. For the exams, I would highly recommend that you focus on these concepts and their economic meanings: utility maximization vs expenditure minimization (convex vs concave preferences), compensating vs equivalent variation, income/substitution effect, short and long run supply curves (partial equilibrium), and the difference between the general equilibrium situations we cover in class. It can be easy to lose points on these concepts since they involve a great deal of graphical and numerical interpretation. Overall, I felt that I have learned a ton in this class and feel more confident in future courses because of Professor Surro. So, if you can, definitely take the class with him.

Great professor but veeerry difficult class. Tests are weighted very heavily--even with the most forgiving grade scheme, the final exam counts as half of your grade. If you aren't great at math, prepare for a looot of studying. While the problem sets were typically not too difficult, the exams were extremely stressful. The midterm (and to a lesser extent, the final) were time crunches and included questions that were worded in ways that you wouldn't have expected based on the problem sets, practice problems, and practice exams. I kinda felt awful after both exams, but the pretty generous curve came to my rescue. With that being said, Professor Surro is one of the best instructors I've ever had. He lectures by writing out his notes and all the steps to problems in a very systematic fashion. I would definitely recommend attending his office hours because he explains the concepts very clearly. Furthermore, he provides an immense amount of resources to help his students learn the content (practice problems, typed notes, study groups, written advice for how to do well in the class). If you want an extremely strong foundation for future econ courses, then definitely take Professor Surro!

So hard I had to pnp this class

Exams are really difficult. The final exam will be at least 50% of the overall grade, so if you mess up with the final, the overall grade will be bad.

1. Extremely tough class which helped me to decide that I'm not up for Econ
2. His tone of voice and style of speaking is hypnotizing. It was boring as hell taking his class.
3. Extreme difficult class, but did not have textbooks and other resources to help me learn.
4. Extremely tough tests (testing stuff not in class) and I had no idea how to do them

I went to my first lecture today for Econ 101 with another Econ professor and it made me really miss Professor Surro and his teaching style so here I am writing this review:

Absolutely loved Professor Surro. He is a great lecturer. He is very clear and organized. If I have the chance to take Professor Surro again, I definitely will. I highly recommended taking Econ 11 (and other Econ classes if you have the opportunity) with Professor Surro.

There is no textbook required for this class. Also, Professor Surro doesn't use slides but has typed notes that he posts before each lecture. I found it useful to read through the typed notes before lecture and understand it then go to lecture where he explains all the concepts in the typed notes and often goes more depth. This isn't necessary though because Professor Surro makes his lectures very clear and easy to understand. Professor Surro also provides a lot of opportunities for practice by posting practice problems after each lecture that cover the content learned that day. He then goes over the practice problems in about the first 30 minutes of the following lecture.

Your grade is based on problem sets, quizzes, one midterm, and the final. However, if you do poorly on the midterm and better on the final, your midterm will be dropped and your final will weigh more. I personally found the midterm and final to be fair, and they reflected the problems done in class and on the problem sets and practice questions. Also, the problem sets and quizzes are completely optional but are very helpful so I recommend you do them. Plus, they are graded on effort and they can only help your grade! The points you receive from the quizzes and problems sets you get are added to both the numerator and denominator of your grade. i.e. if you score a total of 500/600 (83.33) on the midterm and final but completed all quizzes and problems (worth a total of 150 points), you would have a 650/750 (86.67) in the class (note that your grade may be higher because this class is curved). Professor Surro also posts the answers for the problem sets after the due date so you can check your answers. He goes over quiz questions in office hours.

Overall, amazing professor and definitely recommend taking this class with him!