I highly recommend taking Professor Surro for Econ 102. Lectures were pre-recoded and 45 minutes, with a 30 minute live portion during class time. The live portion consisted of doing practice problems related to the lecture, plus office hours at the end. There were 2 open note exams (30% and 45%, or 75% for the final if you improve), an Excel project (15%), HW (10%), and optional quizzes. The optional quizzes added points to the numerator and denominator of the total number of points in the class, which helped pad grades. Professor Surro is a clear lecturer with good slides, exams were tough but fair, and office hours and the Campuswire forum helped a lot with the Excel project, HW questions, and understanding the material in general. Overall I would definitely take this class again, or any other Econ class, with Professor Surro.

My FAVORITE class ever!!! If you can, please choose Chris at all cost. He is the best! I really love his teaching philosophy, that it is more important for student to understand the class materials than simply getting an easy A. Sometimes it is really tempting to choose some 'easy classes' but I feel like I did not learning anything at the end of the day. For this class, yes it is not that easy, but I did feel I learn a LOT and fall into deeper love with Economics.

A few tips for this class(I hope they are useful):
1. Do all the problem sets and quizzes, even if they are not required. The quizzes are super easy, but the problem sets may be a bit more challenging, and more on the intuition side of the problem. But since the midterm and final have a bunch of questions that requires us to understand those intuition, it would be better just to do all the problem sets.
2. Go to office hours!! Chris is super helpful and approachable, and he can explain everything in a logical manner.

In short, I really really really recommend taking Econ 11 with Chris!!! You will learn more than you expected. : )

THIS WAS THE BEST ECONOMICS CLASS I HAVE TAKEN! The structure of the class was conducive to learning, for a few reasons:

-Short quizzes (credit for completion) after every lecture let you stay on track with material. You know what concepts you should have gotten from the lecture and if you didn't understand quiz questions it was easy to just go back and review the lecture slides. This is unlike other econ classes where you are unsure of what you need to know and to what depth you need to understand material until practice problems are released (or even worse for some classes just midterms).

-The Solow Excel project was a great way to learn excel. Felt very relevant to future job demands. Also a great way to review class concepts. Felt like my time was well spent while working on this project.

-It is very clear what is expected of you on exams. Surro explicitly says that 80% of test material will be similar to questions we have seen (quizzes, problem sets, practice midterms) and 20% will be new questions where we must apply the knowledge.

-Surro is a good lecturer. He explains concepts well. Powerpoints well organized.

-There is material to work with. When studying for the final, I could review the quizzes, problem sets, practice midterm, solow excel project, and practice final. A lot of problems to work with along with organized lectures = easy studying.

I was never stressed taking this class, but not because the material was easy, because Surro was a great teacher with a well-organized class. Would 100% recommend anyone to take this class.

!!Don't take this class if you want to get an A!!
I agree that Surro is a great lecturer who explains everything clearly and is really helpful. However, he is a tough grader. The midterm and final is about 70% of the total grade, and the class average for each exam is approximately 75% everytime. Surro promised us that there will be a curve to adjust the mean to B/B+ range, but he went back on his words and did not curve at last. I put in a lot of effort and got 88% on my exams, and I ended up with an A- at last. It was frustrating to see his email notifying us that he won't curve, and I would say that similar scores for other econ dept courses will definitely get some kind of curve.

Tried hard, Failed hard

If I know about this beforehand, wouldn’t take the class

DO NOT TAKE A CLASS WITH SURRO!! BY FAR THE WORST PROFESSOR I HAVE EVER HAD AND THE WORST GRADE I HAVE EVER GOTTEN. VERY CHALLENGING TESTS. HE TOLD US THE CLASS AVERAGE WOULD BE A B+ FOR FINAL GRADES AND IT WAS AROUND A B-. He didn't even curve 1% after saying earlier in the quarter that he wants the average to be way higher. Just don't take this with him he's just one of the worst professors ever.

He was highly accessible through CampusWire (online discussion board system with a live video chat, office hours). If you have questions, you'll have them answered! Seek help early.

Before each exam, he'll share one past exam (mock exam). Class averages for each exam were in the C/B range; don't rely on a curve.

Professor Surro is one of the department's best professors for sure! I'd take any courses taught by him as he makes even the driest topics interesting. He is a bit tough on essays, but reasonable. This was a great class, from the structure to the grading to the material itself.

One of my favorite classes I've taken at the school. Very interesting and not too difficult in terms of work load. Chris is amazing.

very highly recommend any cs major take this for sci tech.

Lectures drag on. After the first week, we were getting about 2++ hours of lecture time (including "homework" problems after lectures) on T and R. Look, there isn't any homework in this class, but if you want to know how to take Surro's tests you gotta do them. The midterm was tough. People generally did better in the final. You're gonna see other people saying that Surro grills us on application-type problems, but he did that just to prevent any sort of cheating. Generally, know the math and know how S&D graphs work and shift. — it gets more interesting when you look at LR and SR shifts. Surro says you don't have to read the textbook bc he tests on the stuff in his lecture. I found myself taking more notes from the textbook than his lectures, expect for like one chapter. I feel like either way works.