Probably one of the most engaging lecturers I've had at UCLA.The trick to this class is to show up to every lecture and pay as close attention as possible! Mel often will explicitly state what material she's putting on the midterm and final, so just by showing up to class and listening to lecture you will be guaranteed at least 3/4 questions. We received extra credit each week by responding to a discussion forum and answering a form of clicker questions in class (no clicker required). Homeworks were pretty easy; you could work in a group on them. The best way to study for the tests are to do the practice problems in the book, and to read the textbook before class. Each lesson builds on the last one, so make sure you're staying on top of the material!

Mel is not very organized. It took until Week 2 of Spring Quarter to receive our grade for Winter Quarter, even though ALL number scores were inputted for over a week.
The class is not very good. The only useful thing you learn is compounding interest and how to think about if you should take out a mortgage or invest elsewhere, or pay it off early.
The class is pretty boring, she goes off on weird tangents, isn't engaging, or much.
If you're taking this for a tech breadth, I recommend MGMT 108 and MGMT 160 over this class, you learn much more in those.

I think she is the most disorganized professor I have had; 1 week into spring quarter and still no grade. The notes she provided were garbage and illegible. She means well but for some reason she cannot present clear and coherent concepts very well, often giving weak examples or just a fuzzy explanation. I think there are more capable prof's out there, sorry Mel.

Mel isn't a terrible professor but isn't a particularly good one either. She's certainly friendly and seems approachable, but her lectures were generally disorganized and hard to follow. I only went because she gives extra credit for doing her online polls during lecture. Most of what I actually learned (and studied for the final) was from slides made by my TA. Mel's own notes during lecture are largely indecipherable.

Homeworks tend to be short and not too hard, but sometimes they aren't assigned until the Friday before (and they're due on Sunday) so be on the lookout. I've had friends who missed homework assignments because they didn't know about them. Tests aren't too bad as long as you know the material and do practice problems. The final is harder just by virtue of the topics covered being harder, but is still very doable.

Extra credit is definitely worth doing - a bit tedious but worth it for the grade boost.

Overall, Mel is pretty mediocre lecturer but the class is fairly easy so its worth taking.

It's true that Mel is not a great lecturer. However, the material is not super hard to learn by yourself, so lectures are optional. Also, I would say that the pace of her class is pretty slow, so she'll most likely cram a lot of the material at the end to make sure that she covered those last topics.

Honestly, I think a lot of people come to this class with the expectation that it will be a free A with minimal work. That is absolutely not true. It is much less work relative to other engineering classes (i.e. computer science classes), but you still have to spend some time studying the material since it will be most likely new to most engineering majors who are taking this class. It's not stuff that you can figure on the fly. That being said, I would say to start studying for the tests two days before, reading the slides (shout-out to Alex Wong, whose slides are really good), and understanding how to do all the practice problems. Other than that, this class should provide a nice breather from your more technically demanding upper divs.

Horrible lecturer... long tangents and then crams material

Since I already took Econ class for 2 years in high school, it goes without saying that the Micro and Macro Econ stuff in this class are quite basic. If you have already taken AP Econ, feel free to make this course a GPA booster. The Materials are straightforward, and she REPEATS the materials a lot, going again and again on some points (which are bound to be in the exams). The microeconomics stuff is roughly 40% of an AP exam, with no mention on externality, market failure, deadweight loss etc. The macro stuff is even less, only 10% of an AP exam: only GDP + fiscal + monetary policy. Other than the economics topics, another BIG topic (40%) is Time Value of Money, which I think she explained pretty thoroughly, breaking everything into separate ppt files and talking about it for 3 weeks, sometimes using 10-12 slides just to explain a single concept.
Now a more objective take on Mel and her class. She is a very, very nice person (objectively). As long as you go to her lectures (hard may be for us engineers), she would give you lots of extra credits just for showing up and paying a little bit of attention, for EVERYBODY by submitting a paper answering a simple question related to that day's topic. She may sometimes go on tangents, but seriously, it's a two hour class, and there's only so much to talk about (which she explains at least 2-3 times a single key concept). The course load isn't heavy at all. The HW can be done in groups. There's one group project that basically gives you 90+ for a clearly organized submission. AND she gives you an optional HW after final exam to replace the lowest HW score. Although my raw score is around A- (80+), with all the extra credit + optional HW, it made itself to A+.

Fairly straightforward class. There's a group project but the grading is easy. She tends to go on tangents but if you're confused just go to office hours and she will clear it right up. I'd give this class a 9.5/10 overall.

She lectures straight from her Powerpoints that are very poorly made (and you can tell she put little to no effort in them because she just took screenshots of the examples from the textbook). She goes on tangents, which waste class time and do not help in understanding what the material is about. I cannot stress how much clarity she lacks in her instruction. If you're just taking this as a TBA, I advise taking some other course. Also, I don't know how previous reviews claim she has "charisma"; my classmates and I find her boring.

I would say highly of professor mel since she literally helps you when your grade turns out to be out of your expectation. My midterm improved like 10 points since she knows how these tricks in her exams work and what her students deserve. Her lecture sometimes might sound unstructured, but generally concrete with examples. Her slides are super helpful and are exactly test material. She is super available and helpful to her students and she helped me with my recommendation letter when another professor forgot it and it was almost deadline. I have almost nothing to say against this professor. If you want to learn about finance and business world, please take this class.