I don't know why, but Professor Mazzocco makes this course harder than it should be, especially during the pandemic.

His old tests do not speak a word for what we have in Fall 2020. The tests were pure calculation. I don't see the point of abusing the log function and the power function just to make calculation harder. It's not a math calculation class. I hope his Champaign, pizzas, and Ferrari were on the test, not the calculations.

This was honestly the most disappointing class I have ever taken. I know people usually say this is a weeder class but after seeing that 30% of the people in my groupme were looking to switch majors after this course, it just made me sad considering that most other classes in the major are very different. Mazzocco may have been a good professor when he is in person but the level of difficulty he makes his exams (his reasoning being we get to use notes yet do not have any time to use notes because of the intense level of math used to calculate every problem) was awful. I was not looking for him to make his class easier due to the difficulty in learning this material online, but I never thought he would make his class harder. This is especially since taking tests online is not only extremely difficult but also adds significantly more stress when you have bad wifi which takes a minute to load each page of the test. I am a transfer and straight A student yet I am expecting to get a B- or maybe a C. I was constantly studying all semester and on top of that was dealing with family members getting covid who have significant health issues. Having to deal with worrying about my family while studying 24/7 to try to maybe get a better grade on the next midterm (which never happened) was completely mentally draining. This whole experience and class has even made my question going to UCLA because of having to take classes like this, and specifically with professors like this. Again, I did not want him to make the class easier in response To covid but the answer was not to make the class extremely more difficult. To put this into perspective: the fall 2019 average on the first test was an 89% and the fall 2020 average was a 65%. As a transfer I need to average a 3.5 between this class and Econ 101, which looks practically impossible at this point in time. Extremely disappointed Mazzocco.

To be fair, Professor Mazzocco is a decent professor. Even though most of his lecture were talking about theories and proving formulas, he still tried his best to make the lecture interesting. The only downside of his lecture is that he did not give much examples on how to use the formula. However, if you utilized the discussion section with your TA, this should not be an issue.
I took this class during the pandemic so Professor Mazzocco recorded all his lectures and upload it to CCLE. There were 2 midterms and 1 final in this class. He will drop the lowest midterm score at the end of the class. Most of the questions in the exam were similar with the HW and the past year Midterm but a bit harder. As long as you understand the material well enough, I believe you can do well. At the end of the class he curved quite a bit on our final grade so I have nothing to complain about.
To be honest, Mazzocco did what he can do as a professor. If you expect your professor to spoon feed you and give you an A without putting any efforts, you might come to the wrong place.

as a straight A student, i can confidently say that this class and this professor 10000000% ruined my self-esteem and passion for econ. the only thing that kept me going in this class is the best TA ever, Victoria Barone. props to her.

i genuinely cannot figure out why mazzocco is a professor bc he clearly does not give two shits about his students or their well-being. i know of numerous students in his econ 11 class who had covid, their parents had covid, were affected by the wildfires, etc and he did not care one bit. he just proceeds as normal and gives his TWO HOUR (even though they're supposed to be 1 hr 15 min) lectures, his non-helpful Q&A's, and ignores emails.

TLDR: SAVE YOURSELF FROM THE FRUSTRATION, TEARS, AND WASTED TIME. DO NOT (I REPEAT, DO NOT) TAKE MAZZOCCO.

This whole quarter has been chaotic because of the pandemic, but he made it even worse. Even though lectures are online and much more packed, he made all of the exams substantially harder than the previous years (combined probably), reasoning that we have more resources although we are in the middle of a pandemic. Although his lectures are okay, his exams do not reflect what we have learned and instead became our roadblocks to purposely make us fail. Honestly, I still don't know why he would do all this, but lesson learned--always take Bruinwalk reviews with a grain of salt!

I'm not here to bash on Mazzocco for giving me a C- (not bumping me to a C to take Econ 101 but it is what it is). What I received in the class is the grade I got, and I'm pretty sure the email I sent him explaining my situation this quarter, which was testing positive for covid and family issues, won't help. But I was frankly blind sided and really disappointed this quarter. I came into this class hyping myself up that I got a great professor based off the endless amazing reviews from BruinWalk.

But, for me and the rest of the 2020 fall students, we all thought otherwise. To put things into perspective, for every midterm and final, I studied for 7+ hours a day, for the past week and a half to prepare me. I used all of the old practice midterms and finals to study, and they ALL shared very similar problems, alongside with their level of difficulty. However, for this year at least, every time I began to take my exams, Mazzocco made our exams indubitably harder than it already is. I really thought Mazzocco would cut some slack this quarter, considering everything was online and that a lot of students, like myself, can't adapt to the online environment quickly.

I know I'm a smart student, and I know I put in the work to try and succeed in this class; but to be honest my BruinWalk lads, after taking this class, I went as far as considering switching majors. No joke. I guess I'm going to have to test my luck and take this class again next quarter; and like I said, it is what it is.

Professor Mazzocco, if you're seeing this, I know you mean well; and I know if you had the capability to give us all A's you would in a heart beat. But sir, telling us that you needed to make this falls' exams harder, since we were accommodated open notes because it's online, isn't fair. You out of all of us know the level of difficulty for this class, especially when Zoom University isn't the same experience as if we took you in person.

I spilled my heart, with fair ability, and I hope this leaves some food for thought.

This class is a whole mess. Extremely long lectures and q&a videos to watch, useless practice exams, and impossible exams...

All I wanna say is Bruinwalk is a lie, Mazzocco has officially ruined my prospect of being an Econ major. No more champagne and pizza, bye

One of my biggest issues with this professor and class is that the material in the lectures and homework does not adequately prepare you for the material that will be on the exams. The professor posts his past exams a week before each exam, and I guarantee you that you will not get a good grade on an exam if you do not use rigorously study with the past exams to familiarize yourself with the types of questions he typically uses. The lectures themselves are outrageously boring, and the homework assignments are outrageously easy. I suppose they balance each other out. I would say Mazzocco is overall a pretty average professor.

Grading scheme:
10% homework assignments and one of the two following schemes:
If your final grade is higher than each of your midterms, 50% final and 40% highest midterm;
Otherwise, each exam counts for 30% of your grade.

I heard before taking this course that Econ 11 would be a weeder course and it was notoriously hard from a few of my friends. However, with Mazzocco, it was a lot easier than I anticipated. He starts the quarter saying that you can learn this entire course from the textbook and if you're really good at self-learning, you don't necessarily show up to lecture. There is some truth to that. However, Mazzocco is relatively clear and has a pretty good sense of humour. I went to his office hours once and I found it helpful. Also, I think having a solid TA is integral as well. I often learned most of the course through my TA discussions. Further, TAs hold review sessions for the midterms which really help clarify concepts that will be assessed. In terms of tests, I thought they were extremely fair and relatively easy. Every exam is 100% multiple-choice so depending on who you are that could be good or bad. Additionally, the past exams are very similar to the actual exams given. I often found that doing every practice exam made me more than prepared for the midterms and finals. Mazzocco doesn't curve his tests or provide extra credit, but I believe that he scales the entire course afterwards. If you're not the strongest in calculus I would definitely recommend reviewing derivatives beforehand. There is a lot of chain rules and log rule usage in the course and being familiar with it will make Econ 11 a lot easier.

Exam Averages
Midterm 1: 90% Median // 87% Mean
Midterm 2: 80% Median // 78% Mean
Final: 92% Median // 87% Mean
Needless to say, the exam difficulty is not very challenging but a large portion of the class also does well.

His grade scheme is as follows:
10% Homework
30% Midterm 1
30% Midterm 2
30% Final
(Worst Homework Score Dropped)

OR

10% Homework
40% Higher Scoring Midterm
50% Final
(Worst Homework Score Dropped)

Okay so I usually don't write reviews but I'm seeing way too much Mazzocco slander that's undeserved. Professor Mazzocco is probably the best math-based professor I've ever had, and definitely the best econ professor I've had in my prerequisite courses. Honestly, this class cemented for me that I want to be an econ major. I'm definitely not a math person whatsoever, and I kind of learn concepts and apply them because I know I should, but this is the first time that I actually understand what's going on, and like holy crap it's a whole new world.

I took this class in the online format, and it definitely sucks just because it takes up twice as much time as usual because you watch the video lectures, and then the regular lecture time is used as a Q&A. The lectures are also longer than they're supposed to be, like some weeks he might post a two-hour long lecture for whats supposed to be an hour and fifteen-minute class, but I put the lectures on 2x speed anyway so I can't really complain about that. You also definitely don't have to go to the Q&A, because Mazzocco posts all the previous years' midterm and final exams and their solutions, and as long as you run through at least three to four of those, you're pretty set for the exams. I reaaaally recommend doing them because there are some questions that appear there that you don't see anywhere else. The Q&A's are still good though because he runs through different problems and it's just exposure y'know. I'm just not a morning person and couldn't even wake up at 9:30 am at home.

It'd be stupid to call this an easy class, and it's definitely the class I had to put the most effort into, but I actually felt like I learned in this class and that's pretty cool. The averages of the midterms and the finals were pretty low, like around 65 and 73, but Professor Mazzocco curves really well for the econ department and I think if you score around average you get a B. Also if you score better on your final than one of your midterms, your lowest midterm gets dropped and the final gets weighted more.

Overall, Mazzocco is a nice guy, explains things well, and is kinda funny sometimes. I recommend him!!