It is vital to know that this class defines sink or swim. There is almost no handholding on the math and he only goes over how to do questions that appear on the exams once.

Vogel's lectures were pretty entertaining and clear. He comes off as pretentious and pretty douchy at times, but he's brilliant. Also, he treats his students as if the material is obvious, which is pretty annoying when you have to self-teach yourself how he arrived at that solution.

Additionally, his last midterm is scheduled for the last day of class, and its much more brutal than the first. It's annoying that we go straight from midterm to final, but Vogel said he hated studying in college, so he likes to minimize as much as possible. Pretty damn funny ngl.

The best advice for the exams is to learn by doing as much as possible. He posts all his previous year's exams, so grind away on those. Also, be careful because he grades harshly and there is almost zero margin for error. A couple of algebra mistakes will tank your entire course grade.

Overall, will definitely take Vogel again, just know what you are getting yourself into.

Until now, I think Professor Vogel is pretty good. His slides are clear and organized. His midterm one was easy, and his discussion sessions and homework provided some useful practice questions for this exam. His midterm two is tricky and different from the questions posted on CCLE, but if you read his slides very carefully, you can make it.
Besides, my TA Miss Ariadna is really nice, helpful and knowledgeable. I will recommend my friends to take her discussion.

Do not take this class!

The grade is 20 percent for the lowest midterm, 30 percent for the highest midterm and 50 for the final. The tests aren't too tough themselves, but they are graded very, very harshly. He is very unforgiving and there isn't much practice. He gives us a few discussion sheets to practice on, and he shows the midterms from the year before (which were much easier than the ones that we had). The final and midterm review sheets were kind of helpful, but not too much. He is a very mediocre professor, and lectures are very boring.

If the practice questions were more like exam questions it would have been reasonable to do well. The only redeeming quality about him is the curve. I got about 5 percent higher than I would have without the curve.

As a transfer student, this was the first Econ course I take at UCLA(I took Econ11 at another University). I was nervous about this course especially when seeing the previous reviews. However, the professor truly understand everything and he is so neat and clear about explaining concepts. Sometimes I am amazed by the way he solve problems as his brain is moving so fast.

The course has 2 midterm(higher midterm 30% + lower midterm) and 1 final (50%), the median is around a 75 but he does gives a very genrous curve so the median student will receive a B or B+. Make sure to do every single practice problem before his tests(including the ones on lecture slides), no homework and no problem sets weekly, but please don't slack off and don't wait everything until the end. His office hours is also helpful. I got A by doing his practive problems and understand how to do them without looking at the solutions and going to his office hours when needed.
His exams are fair and doable. If you really interested in econ, he is the right choice, you will learn a lot.

Okay so the person who wrote the review before this one is clearly bitter about something because let me tell you something this guy is one of the good professors in the Econ department.

He gives practice questions, homework and discussion questions and gives us all his slides. While sometimes his explanations are slightly complicated if/when you read through them again at home it makes sense. He also does try to relate it to simpler examples.

I would recommend Vogel.

Vogel is, overall, a good professor. He's very clear during lectures, uploads all the slides, and gives students plenty of resources to succeed in the class. One of his TAs (Ariadna) is amazing, and possibly the best TA I have ever had at UCLA. However, he was not a perfect professor and has many policies that may strike a wrong chord with some students. So read this and consider the flaws of the class if you need to take Econ 101 with him. And if you didn't do too well, I understand where you're coming from, but don't just brush off this review and others because they don't say what you want to see.

I will reflect the sentiment that having Midterm 2 after Thanksgiving break was pretty awful. Additionally, I feel like there was too big a disparity between the difficulty of the first midterm and the two follow-up exams, where the latter two were significantly more difficult to prepare for (although he repeated a question from MT1 on the final). I never really found a problem with his attitude but he does sometimes take jabs at UCLA through his homework questions. I also don't really like the fact that his exams are only a few questions, which can make them unforgiving if you don't know a concept. These are what I would say are the flaws of his class.

But to make up for it, there's plenty of partial credit (edit: yes, you do get partial credit. The second midterm grading was suspect, but overall you will get points for having part of the solution. Not considering boundary solutions is huge; half the work on a given problem that has them is on determining the conditions when the boundary solutions apply) that you can get for setting up the problem in a reasonable way. There's even the possibility of him overscoring one of the problems if you put in extra information about the solution, though I'm not sure if he still does this. Although his exams are short yet difficult, he includes extra problems on the homework to study from and gives solid preparation problems for both midterms and the final. His final review problems were actually very close to what we got on the actual final.

Overall, the class was fair, and Vogel himself is a good lecturer, but if you fall behind, it can be very unforgiving. I was ill-prepared for Midterm 2 and got a 56/100. However, there is always a chance for a comeback if you improve enough, as I still ended up with an A in the class after doing well on the final. If you take this class and don't do too well in the beginning, it's not the end of the world.

Easily the best professor I've ever had. He's great at clarifying concepts, makes the class engaging, cares about student learning, and has straightforward exams. Definitely recommend taking his course.

I don't know why people are so sour about this class. I thought Professor Vogel made it much easier to learn Economics 101. It was definitely much easier to grasp than Economics 11 was. He takes you through the course, and he tells you what you need to know or if you've already covered things in some form or other. I thought he was very helpful. The course is self-contained, and he didn't require any outside materials. All the information you need comes from the lecture slides or from discussion. It certainly isn't the EASIEST class you can take, by any means, but the work was certainly trimmed with Vogel's help. I thought he made game theory--a most challenging concept to teach--very easy and very manageable; he made the math so easy; and, he assigned very easy homework that you can basically pull from the lectures. Now... if you did pull from the lectures to do the homework without giving any thought to it, and you didn't do well on the midterms, I think that's on you. I got good scores on the midterms, so they obviously weren't impossible.

Granted, he isn't the most personable professor, but I thought he was a great professor overall. People just expect professors to be nice all the time, and Vogel isn't nice all the time. He'll get annoyed, like all of us, and he'll be curt when he's annoyed. He cracks jokes occasionally, which are actually quite funny if you understand the references; his analogies can be unrelatable, especially if you didn't grow up with the culture he is referencing.

Overall, a great professor, and I highly recommend taking this class.

Professor Vogel's test is by far the most ridiculous test I've taken in UCLA, and I had Ronchetti just for comparison's sake. I have never seen a professor who just determines a student's entire grade based on 8 questions. PLUS, the points he assigns to each of the 8 questions are TOTALLY ABSURD, for example one question may be worth 50 points while the other one is worth only 10 and the latter requires WAY MORE CALCULATION. ALSO, he does NOT give partial credit. I got THIRTY points taken off just because I did not write boundary solution, which is literally two lines. He also brags about how he has tenure so he can't be fired no matter what happens. Seriously, UCLA needs to be careful of who it's offering tenures to. In conclusion, just like one of the previous comments, HE DESERVES TO BE BALD.

Okay so I personally feel that some reviews of Professor Vogel are a wee bit harsh. I’m honestly not a big fan of his but his class really isn’t that bad. My biggest problem with it is that he taught with slides and I’m really against slides in Econ classes. I feel it’s just harder to follow considering the fact that we are doing mostly math. I would’ve preferred if he used the board more often. However, Professor Vogel’s way of teaching game theory is the bomb diggity. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a topic in Econ that much in my life, and it’s supposed to be super complex too.
Professor Vogel warned us that the second midterm and the final would be much more difficult than the first midterm. I felt his “warning” was inaccurate because the second midterm really wasn’t that difficult; the graders just took off a ton of points for the slightest errors and that’s why everyone did badly. I’m still pretty salty about that tbh. The final wasn’t as bad, though.
Honestly, I probably wouldn’t take Vogel again, but he really isn’t as bad as everyone says he is. So if he’s the only one offering Econ 101, I promise you’ll be fine.