Although the class itself was not horrible, Rojas is not a good professor. He gives zero guidance for what will be on exams and only offers online office hours on Zoom. He gave two practice midterms from many years ago that were mostly math. The midterm had hardly any math on it and was mostly analyzing graphs, having to know what certain R outputs are showing, and some definitions from the notes on certain concepts. The final was basically the opposite and had a lot of math, definition-based questions, no graphs, and not a lot of R code. It was mostly focused on indicator variables and how to solve problems involving them. Although this is mostly just subtracting two equations from one another and is not super difficult, I feel like no one would have expected the exam to look like this after the midterm. The only reason I did well was because I had a great TA who gave us advice on what to study and was super helpful as well. I would suggest going to lectures. He does not record them or do Zoom lectures, and he tends to talk more about topics that he tests on in class and goes into more detail, which helped me understand things a bit better. I would suggest taking this class with someone else if you can.

I went to class about three times before I realized it was absolutely pointless sitting there listening to Rojas read the slides in a monotonous manner. I only did a few days of studying before every midterm and final simply using the mindtap. I'm surprised more people didn't know that his tests are literally exactly like the mindtap practice problems under A+ Test Prep. I just read the mind tap textbook and did the practice problems over and over again and every test was a repeat of those types of questions with a few original questions on the final. Even though the professor and TAs weren't the most helpful, the material wasn't difficult to grasp and did not require much time as class/discussions weren't necessary. Having only 3 exams determine our entire grade was daunting but the mind tap was seriously all you need in this class.

If your read the text book it basically the same material as his slides, unlike other classes their is no room for error on the exams because the the only thing being graded 2 midterms worth 25% each and 50% for the final. he said that if we studied using mindtap we would be well prepared for the exams but the practice exam mindtap generated were way easier and less application based than his exams so at times it felt like i was just memorizing answers rather than learning how to apply the class content. I feel like many student would've felt more prepared if we had homework assignments so that we can get more practice or even extra credit opportunities, as not all student are good test takers.

one word, Mindtap.

really nice and smart prof but he didn't even give us a practice final... and didn't inform us we weren't going to be given a practice final until someone emailed their TA and told the rest of the class. midterm was completely unlike the homework. notes are full of information that isn't going to be tested. the project (a 30% of your grade) is graded on completion (thank god) because our TAs (god bless them) tried their best to help us and pretty much gave up and told us to use chatgpt to check our code

This class gave me mixed emotions. I think it is a must-take ECON elective because of how much I learned through the quarter. It is by far the most useful, interesting, and informative ECON class I've taken at UCLA. The reason emotions are mixed: it's a ton of work. There is a homework or project due every Friday (besides midterm week) and it takes about five or six hours. I don't know if this is typical, but the homework and projects were basically graded for an honest attempt (I think the average score on all of them was like a 95%). The exams are tough, but it seems like an incredible amount of partial credit is given. Our midterm median was an 81% and the final median was a 72%. I think a slight grade boost/curve was applied at the end of the quarter (maybe an extra 3% or so?). Also, a note on Rojas: he gets a lot of negativity for how he teaches ECON 41 (which I did not take with him), but I thought he was a really good prof for this class. It's really easy to slow him down in lectures and go over things, he explained everything pretty well, gave examples, etc. Overall, if you are ready to work, take this class.

Dont take Rojas unless you absolutely have to. He bascially just reads off the lecture notes during the lectures, which is extremely confusing. He only gave one practice test for midterms and finals, which are pretty much irrelevalant from what actually appeared on the test. Both midterms and finals were quite hard:( However, the group project was graded pretty leniently which was the only good thing about this class.

this class killed my 4.0 gpa. lectures are not recorded. 2 group projects with R but you will struggle unless you are already okay with R

He changed the structure of this class, there are now 2 projects worth 20% each, a midterm worth 20% and a final worth 40%. He does not give much practice material so just make sure to ask the TAs to give you more practice problems, some give out additional old practice problems.

His labs are essentially a continuation of the lectures. While he explains the concepts of the material very well and helped me grasp the thought process and foundational ideas, he doesn't really teach how to code in R, which is essential for the projects. Because of this, the TAs suggested using Google and ChatGPT for coding help. Rojas has high expectations for his students, but I genuinely learned a lot from him and I'm glad that he was my professor. Take his class if you're eager to learn, but not if you're looking for an easy A. I really liked him and the way he explained stuff but a lot of people complained because he had high expectations from us and covered more material than other professors.

Overall he's a very nice guy, if you ask him for help with the project, he will help you and he is very knowledgeable about the material.