I felt a great disconnect with the professor and my classmates this quarter as the professor and economics department attempted to adapt to an online format. I really disliked the professor's use of pre-recorded lectures from another professor since it felt like I was paying for videos that I could access outside of the class, while Rojas earned a living just posting videos that he didn't even make to the class website. Examinations were open-book and extremely easy as long as you did the readings and went over the practice problems on the class webiste a couple of times. The overwhelming majority of students in this class got A's.

*Covid-19 Review*

This class was kind of a mediocre experience for me. Rojas' lectures are basically just him reading off slides, they teach the material but aren't super engaging either. Attendance isn't mandatory so a lot of people ended up just reading the textbook. It kind of felt like Rojas was just going through the motions. During virtual covid finals, he also wasn't super flexible with allowing different times for other time zones.

That said, the assignments were not super hard in my opinion. You had to buy mindtap to do the homework and exams which was a bit annoying, but as a result, they weren't too hard since any question you would ever do just came directly from there. You could practice using the practice questions that came from the program, and with covid, everything was open note and open book. I got an A- instead of an A because I misread some questions on the second midterm and made dumb mistakes, but I'm not too upset about that. The exams did feel to get progressively more challenging, but I think that's just a feature of the material. I guess the assignments were kind of a tradeoff for the boring lectures

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Rojas is probably the most chill Econ professor you will ever get. Take advantage of that. Here are some key points.

1. Lectures IMO are optional. Slides are posted on CCLE and Rojas mostly reads off his slides. By the end of the quarter, you will notice only 20% of kids actually show up.

2. Discussions IMO are a waste of time. I could not understand my TA and he was no help.

3. Grade breakdown: 25% midterm 1 (25 Questions), 25% midterm 2 (25 Questions), 50% final (75 Questions Cumulative). All multiple choice.

4. Each test gets a bit harder. Averages were 90% (midterm 1), 79% (midterm 2), 72% (final).

5. Rojas curves the overall class, not individual tests. Though I ended with a raw 93%, the curve brought me up to an A+. To be fair there were only 9 A's on the final (out of a class of 127).

Took Econ 1 with Rojas and I enjoyed 103 with him! Probably the best professor to take 103 with. Clear and concise. No coding is tested (yay!) just know how to read the outputs! Curve is pretty generous!

Ok, I'm shocked by reading all these positive reviews. The exams are hard, literally the average on the final was a D. Just look at his grade distribution. I wouldnt take this class again

The lab lectures were theoretically supposed to teach you R and apply the concepts from regular lecture to coding. However, there were no basics given, so it was really hard to keep up early on in the quarter. Later in the quarter, he gave up on connecting the material to lecture and instead would talk about stocks and machine learning, neither of which were relevant to the homeworks or exams. The only good part about this entire class were the TAs since they were really available to help us try to make sense of the material. When Rojas did actually go over coding material that was related to lecture, it was usually something from the homework that would be due THAT DAY. By this point, most of the class had already taught themselves the concept and googled how to code it into their homework, rendering the lecture useless. Overall, the lab lectures were a waste of time and didn't integrate well into the course.

The most useful class an Economics major at UCLA can take. Super helpful and applicable skills that make you a very valuable hire, especially in finance and consulting. Rojas is a great professor, though the class was tough, it was very fair and he's the best Economics lecturer I've had to far. The workload for this class is very heavy, especially if you are newer to R-Studio. I would spend from 10-14 hours on projects and HW every week. The midterm and final were fair and the class is curved. I'd take it again.

Rojas is really thorough and slow. He presented the material in a very nice manner, using different color chalks and bullet points to make everything pop out. He provides a good amount of practice tests and ungraded homework.

With that said, the material is not that easy. You have to stay on top of it. Don't wait to do the homework the day before the midterm. Also, it would help to practice some integration beforehand (simple and parts).

I would also recommend taking Stats 10 or an equivalent class for the hypothesis tests at the very end. That class helped me a lot!

Apparently Econ 103 has become the prerequisite for Econ 104, so the material has changed. There is A LOT OF coding in R, and the professor expects you to have a basic knowledge of R before entering the class( or you need to self-teach during the first two weeks). ALL homework is done in R, which requires A LOT OF time. (the professor has cut down the number of questions due to complaints, but the workload is still huge) For me, every homework takes AT LEAST 5 hours to finish (have taken Stats 20). However, the is No relevance between HW and exams. The exams are more doable than HW, but there is no room for dumb mistakes since it's a curved class. NO practice final is offered and No similar exercise for the exam! Still waiting for the grades, I don't know what the curve will be like..
Overall, you will find yourself spending 70% of time doing HW that counts for 10% of this class since No homework will be dropped. No exercise or practice is offered when you try to prepare for the exam. The professor is not responsive, but it's understandable. I do think there is an issue with the structure of this class.