Reviews for ECON175

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Ethan Kaplan ECON175 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/31/2024	If you are even slightly interested in economics and if you can keep up with notes and debates, professor Kaplan is a great teacher and ECON175 is a great course. The quizzes are easy if you've structured your notes for the past few days correctly and work out when they will be given, and you can easily average up to 125% on the whole category. The grading for debates is a little less consistent, but if you do basic research and plan out your arguments you should be fine. Midterm and Final are basically timed writings, and are a little less easy to study for. Overall, I feel that professor Kaplan made the course just difficult enough to justify the slightly more economics-major-related title but easy enough for a Gen Ed. However, if you are just looking for an easy Gen Ed or you're not so good at studying outside of class, ECON175 is probably not for you. At least a few people dropped the class even before the first debate, and the pop quiz averages were probably not great based on the other scores I saw.
Ethan Kaplan ECON175 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2023	This course is really a headache...professor kaplan is one of the top researches in inequality economics and it shows. However, a side affect of this is that he makes his course ridiculously confusing for people with no prerequisite knowledge in economics. His lecture slides are detailed, and his historical knowledge is extensive, but getting confused is a constant in this course. All of the assignments are easy, albeit the pop quizzes can be really inconvenient if you miss class, but the work load is manageable. I wouldn't recommend this course unless you are really really into economics. The reviews, sadly, are accurate.
Ethan Kaplan ECON175 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/07/2023	Took ECON175 with him; excellent professor and a great, interesting course. Learnt a lot, quizzes are reasonable and have a bonus question, lowest two quizzes are dropped, and the exams are fair. Lectures are very interesting and he provides a lot of examples around the world on the content, references a lot of research, and does a good job to answer questions.
Sergio Urzua ECON175 Expecting a B- Anonymous 07/21/2023	Have you ever wondered how grad school was taught? I swear this guy teaches this 100 class the same way he does grad school, there's a ridiculous amount of readings to do and he's very unhelpful.
Sergio Urzua ECON175 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2023	This is a 100-level course but we were expected to complete work that was the equivalent to a 300 course. He would show us these complex graphs and equations and told us that we "did not have to understand them as long as we were able to take away the main purpose". However, these graphs and equations would show up on the (graded) Problem Sets. He would never give a straight answer to anything and is prone to debating students. The average for the midterm was a 61% and the average for the final exam was a 63%. It is extremely difficult to get an A in this class, and many students end up either withdrawing or retaking it next semester. So I suggest that if you are taking this for an elective you chose another course.
Sergio Urzua ECON175 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2023	Avoid this class at all costs. While he may be better at teaching higher level courses, the same level of strictness shouldn't apply for a 100-level gen-ed class. We were given new readings/articles/books every single day and the total pages of reading exceeded 10,000. There is no proper preparation for the midterm/final. For the midterm, we were given a small list of readings and that's it, while there was much more than what was on the list on the midterm. The final was completely undocumented and we have no idea what's going to be on it. For the essays, there is not a rubric. Literally. No rubric and it's impossible to know what he wants. Whenever somebody asks a question (like a yes/no) he will go on a forever long tangent about how there's no answer.
Ethan Kaplan ECON175 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/17/2022	Ethan Kaplan is a great teacher. I took his ECON175 course not really expecting anything in particular, but ended up really enjoying it. Economics were never my particular focus, yet the course was really interesting, and he teaches it with enthusiasm. He always takes time to answer any questions students have, and does so thoroughly, periodically going into interesting tangents. Exam wasn't too hard and quizzes are very reasonable. Even if you aren't majoring in economics, imo the material of this course has a lot of generally useful and important information. Overall I really enjoyed the course :)
Ethan Kaplan ECON175 Anonymous 09/21/2021	You won't understand he's lecture because he is just reading the slides. Heavy lecture and you don't even understand a word. He doesn't like question and only gave a few few few examples. Eeven you ask a question, he won't answer it clearly. VERY AMBIGUOUS LECTURE!