ECON 1
Principles of Economics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Not open to students with credit for former course 100. Introduction to principles of economic analysis, economic institutions, and issues of economic policy. Emphasis on allocation of resources and distribution of income through price system. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
4 of 7
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - This was the first Econ class I took at UCLA. The workload is very manageable, however his tests were difficult. The exams were almost impossible to complete on time, with most people guessing the final few answers. Furthermore, the test was all multiple choice, and the difference between the choices on a given problem were sometimes very difficult to differentiate. Most people didn't do too well on the midterm (me included), but he would drop the midterm grade if you did better on the final, which was pretty good. One more thing, he didn't record his lectures, so you basically have to show up to class or you will be missing out on information.
Spring 2024 - This was the first Econ class I took at UCLA. The workload is very manageable, however his tests were difficult. The exams were almost impossible to complete on time, with most people guessing the final few answers. Furthermore, the test was all multiple choice, and the difference between the choices on a given problem were sometimes very difficult to differentiate. Most people didn't do too well on the midterm (me included), but he would drop the midterm grade if you did better on the final, which was pretty good. One more thing, he didn't record his lectures, so you basically have to show up to class or you will be missing out on information.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - Professor Ohanian does not seem to care much for students in this class. He appears on Zoom once every two weeks just to repeat what he has already covered in the recorded lectures using another set of slides, saving minimal time for additional Office Hours questions. There is far too little practice questions in the MCQ format of the Midterms and Finals (only 4-5 questions a week that rarely asks about the same content as the test questions): the practice questions in the textbook are formatted completely differently and the practice midterms and finals have far too few questions compared to the real one (e.g. the practice finals had 31 questions while the real one has 76). I understand that they used the Mindtap app for practice MCQ questions in the past years but this year it was discontinued because it was too expensive. However, there is no replacement found for the practices on Mindtap and the exam questions continue to come from Mindtap. Overall, because of the lack of well-organized practice, there is no good mechanism to assess how you are doing in this course and how well you understood the topics until it is too late- when you get bonked in the Finals. This just reinforces the sense that this course is poorly organized and the general feeling (this may be subjective) that the professor is teaching this course part-time and has little attention to spare for ECON 1 students.
Winter 2023 - Professor Ohanian does not seem to care much for students in this class. He appears on Zoom once every two weeks just to repeat what he has already covered in the recorded lectures using another set of slides, saving minimal time for additional Office Hours questions. There is far too little practice questions in the MCQ format of the Midterms and Finals (only 4-5 questions a week that rarely asks about the same content as the test questions): the practice questions in the textbook are formatted completely differently and the practice midterms and finals have far too few questions compared to the real one (e.g. the practice finals had 31 questions while the real one has 76). I understand that they used the Mindtap app for practice MCQ questions in the past years but this year it was discontinued because it was too expensive. However, there is no replacement found for the practices on Mindtap and the exam questions continue to come from Mindtap. Overall, because of the lack of well-organized practice, there is no good mechanism to assess how you are doing in this course and how well you understood the topics until it is too late- when you get bonked in the Finals. This just reinforces the sense that this course is poorly organized and the general feeling (this may be subjective) that the professor is teaching this course part-time and has little attention to spare for ECON 1 students.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Although the course material was relevant, the way the professor conducted lectures was so confusing and unorganized - she made the material sound honestly frivolous. Questions during and after lectures received confusing answers, and I honestly feel like the professor didn't understand what the students were asking and would give a random response. However, you can tell that she does really care about the students and is genuinely a nice, laid back, and funny professor. She held a lecture just to review content just in case we didn't understand, which shows that she cares. Personally, I only went to lecture the week before the midterm and the final, and I mostly used the slides and the textbook to study. The final was not that bad, but surprisingly the average was a 72%. There were some oddly specific unintuitive topics on there that were not on the slide, but as long as you have that on your cheat sheet, you're good. My TA Antonio Martner is the GOAT and explained everything in an intuitive way. Overall, I recommend taking this class with her.
Fall 2024 - Although the course material was relevant, the way the professor conducted lectures was so confusing and unorganized - she made the material sound honestly frivolous. Questions during and after lectures received confusing answers, and I honestly feel like the professor didn't understand what the students were asking and would give a random response. However, you can tell that she does really care about the students and is genuinely a nice, laid back, and funny professor. She held a lecture just to review content just in case we didn't understand, which shows that she cares. Personally, I only went to lecture the week before the midterm and the final, and I mostly used the slides and the textbook to study. The final was not that bad, but surprisingly the average was a 72%. There were some oddly specific unintuitive topics on there that were not on the slide, but as long as you have that on your cheat sheet, you're good. My TA Antonio Martner is the GOAT and explained everything in an intuitive way. Overall, I recommend taking this class with her.
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