I had Rojas in econ 1 and got an A- and many people have been told to wait until Rojas is teaching this class because he is the best professor for 103. I didn't love him in 103 but to give him the benefit of the doubt, this was the first quarter he transitioned to giving homework in R instead of Stata but he did not estimate how long homework would take so we were doing 30 hour homeworks for the first few weeks. Over time, you learn how to code a little better and the homeworks get shorter (you can also work with other people and split up the problems). The problem though is Rojas sees the concerns of students but doesn't really care. He expects students to figure out their life and take this class like we arent in the middle of a pandemic.

The tests are actually pretty easy if you study for them. His exams used recycled questions from practice/previous exams so try to find prior problems because he does not update his tests.

The overall worst part of this class is the assignments in R took hours and the exams had very little to do with them. So we spent hours learning to program and 85% of our grade (2 midterms and a final) had little to the majority of the course.

A word of advice if you have never programmed before: it starts out intimidating and you think you will never figure it out. I had never coded or anything like that and I thought I was going to fail the course. It gets easier after 2-3 weeks so try not to get too anxious in the early weeks and by week 5/6, you can knock out 2-3 problems per hour. Figure out which TA is the best and go to their sections because my TA (Alvaro Boitier) was super unhelpful but a different TA Ben Shapiro (lol) really helped me learn the basics which saved me a ton.

I took Econ 2 with Professor Rojas Fall 2020, it was a very well organized and well taught course. The material itself is straightforward, and Professor Rojas was always very clear and informative in lecture, providing a solid understanding of the material as pertaining to the problems and tests, while also tying in its relation to macroeconomic issues in the world today. He was always prompt and helpful with emails, the grades were easy to understand and fair, definitely recommend!

Despite the many positive reviews, I did not enjoy this class at all. Rojas is extremely boring and reads directly off his slides, which are taken straight from the book. The two midterms were incredibly easy, but his final had a average of a D with no curve, and it was 50% of your grade. I know that I and many others were screwed because of the final. While the $180 mindtap was not required, it was practically essential to do well in the class.

Took this class at my first quarter in UCLA and ngl, Rojas worsened my expectation for college. You can feel that he doesn't care about his students: never reply to emails, poor adjustment for students in different time zone (I had to take the final from 3am to 7 am). He does not explain how the curve works, has zero understanding for students experiencing difficulties under pandemic, and his lectures are meaningless to attend. Do not take him if you never learned econ before.

This was probably one of the most interesting and useful econ electives I've taken at UCLA. I took this course with Rojas during the pandemic (AKA when everything was online/remote), so I'll give my review based on that.

First, you should definitely take a class on R, set aside some time to learn how to use the program, or have a friend who has experience and can teach you how to use R. I went in with really minimal programming experience (I've only taken PIC10A, so C++), so there was definitely a learning curve with it. Since the quarter was all online, Rojas gave us more time to complete the one midterm and final, but he put more weight on programming than he usually would with the class. That meant we had to come up with and submit our own lines of code for both exams.

In terms of content, I think I learned a lot of really useful information through this class. If you're looking to go in the data analyst direction, this is a great course to take. Rojas is also a very clear and helpful lecturer, and probably one of the best professors the econ department has to offer.

If you want to take a more challenging yet helpful econ elective, I highly recommend taking this with Rojas.

I actually expected to get an A and ended up getting A-. I guess it's because Rojas's teaching was pretty clear and straightforward. I think the median and average is better than I expected, feels like everyone did pretty well. So I am only at around 30% ranking and ended up getting an A-. The contents were pretty easy, and there are a lot of old midterms in coursehero, especially mdt one. go look for it and then practice a lot, try to get very high scores in the 1st mdt because it's very easy but some people still do bad. Students tend to perform better in 2nd mdt and final, so doing well in mdt 1 can really help you gain some advantage and eventually secure an A.

idk why rojas has so much hate on bruinwalk. his lectures were super clear and engaging and he won't test on material that he doesn't fully cover. his tests were challenging but the multiple practice exams he provides are really good prep. compared to other econ professors I've had/currently am taking class with he's my fave. <3

I took Econ 2 and Econ 41 with Rojas, so I knew what to expect in terms of lecture and exam style prior to coming into this class. I definitely think that I made the right choice taking 103 with him as well. He is extremely thorough and clear, and both of his midterms and the final were fair. I definitely suggest buying the textbook and reading the chapters covered in class, because the book goes over example problems and provides more detail than he is able to provide during lecture. We did not have any lab problem sets, so I never downloaded or learned how to code Stata (which is a requirement for some other 103 professors). Therefore, lab discussions will be pretty useless if your TA spends a lot of time covering Stata coding and not on conceptual material. You will need to learn how to interpret Stata outputs in order to do well on the exams, but everything you need to know is covered during Rojas’ lab lectures. I stopped doing the discussion and homework book problems after the first midterm because I didn’t think that they were representative of the questions he asks on exams (ended up being more confusing than helpful), and instead I focused on reviewing practice exams. I did almost exactly average on the first midterm and the final, and 10% above average on the second midterm, and with the curve I ended up with a B+.

He is the best choice for 103 HANDS DOWN. For my quarter, discussions did not help, but TAs did help if you needed questions answered. Do not slack off when it comes to the homework. DO THEM and problems related to the them. Trust me.

With all the bad stuff I'd heard about this class and the difficult time I had in Econ 41 (took it with Rojas, got a B-) I really expected 103 to be rougher than it was. Rojas is super nice and tries his best to make the material interesting and clear. He moves at a manageable pace and has very neat, easy to read handwriting. I never downloaded R or Stata or tried to learn either of them beyond what the outputs meant in the problem sets. I did most of the practice problems, went to my TA's office hours before exams, and came out the other end with a B+. You'll probably do better than me if you have any interest in statistics or programming.