I want to die

By far, the absolute most difficult class in the economics department. This class was tough and required a lot of effort to succeed, but it was worth it. It is the class where you learn theoretical but it's also very practical because you get to practice your R skills. The material is very interesting and even though the projects where challenging, it is impressive enough to use during internship/work interviews and gets you interested to learn more. Professor Rojas is one of the smartest and most patient professors. If you are willing to learn, he is more than happy to teach. Definitely attend office hours because you will understand the material and you'll be able to chat with the professor about interesting topics! Before the class, try to get a head start with learning some basic R skills.

Project codes (got A's on everything) and spreadsheet available, ema!l me @ ************* at gma!l

Professor Rojas is incredibly intelligent. Unfortunately that makes him a terrible teacher. His notes are structured so poorly and don't follow any sort of structure to make any sort of cohesive sense. To make things worse, his lectures consist of him reading the notes, and thats about it. The notes are written like a script for him to read, which makes them no use looking back on them trying to decipher which things relate, or how to actually do the things we are supposed to learn about.

If there is another professor available, take them, but otherwise good luck charlie

Since the projects are most of the grades, if you have a good grade and study for exams, you'll be fine. However, the professor is not clear at all (frankly I think he's so smart that he doesn't understand that students don't get it), so it felt entirely self-taught as lectures were not helpful. This class is a huge time commitment and is quite stressful so make sure the rest of your classes are not too stressful.

Rojas is by far my least favorite economics professor. I think he is actually a sadist and/or a lizard. His lectures are the most monotone experience you possibly imagine. I shit you not I fell asleep every lecture I attended (at 1pm nonetheless) so I stopped attending class. He is incredibly punitive and does little to help his students. He does not record lecture. He gave us one practice midterm that was absolutely nothing like the actual; this seemed intentional. The coding projects took forever even in groups of four. Be warned, this class is solely about R not about economics. The homework is all R and the tests are all related to R in some way as well. Rojas is clearly quite intelligent but this leads to him just assuming we know a bunch of stuff we were never taught. Take 104 with Boswell if you can.

No one is gonna say 104 is an easy class. No one is gonna say 104 is a fun class. However, if you know how the class operates, 104 is a lot more doable. The class's grades consist of 3 group projects, a week 7 in-class midterm, a comprehensive final. Overall, the group projects are graded generously and are mainly on completion. Make sure you have accurate descriptions to not loose points. For the exams, if you know the statistical tests from the material (ex checking p values, etc), you will be well prepared. I cannot stress how important that is. The exams are tough, but they are fair- no random things you've never seen before like some other profs like to do.
As a professor, Rojas expresses his understanding of the course's difficulty yet keeps high expectations. It would serve you well to take this class directly after 103, as Rojas references 103 concepts in most lectures. Additionally, Rojas presents a lot of material each lecture and there are 3 classes a week, so don't get behind or it will be hard to catch up.
Best of luck.

Okay this class was challenging but I pulled my grade up from failing the midterm by scoring the top percentile on the final so I'll give some tips on studying. Most of the questions on the exams are interpreting R output or about conceptual details. So you should spend very little time reading the textbooks, especially the Hill one, and you shouldn't spend time on anything math or calculation-related. Just read the lecture notes and lab powerpoints/code and memorize them back to front. I made a quizlet covering every possible conceptual question and ran through it a ton of times and the final was a breeze.

We’re in week 7 and i still have no idea what’s going on… and why does the practice midterm solution look like that…

I'll have you know, that I studied ECON 104 and I only cried from confusion 5 times.