Well, I passed, so that's the pro part. I came from the sad class of pizzas and champagne for Mazz's 11 class and so, comparatively, this class was slightly easier. I laugh at the ECON department instead, for just stressing students out and placing them in a tough situation because of classes like these. IMO, Bernardo tried HARD to help us out. However, with that dumb ECON curve, it is a system of failure that decreases students' academic and work opportunities with these weeder classes, and ironically, you would think economists would know better.

Class-wise, it was fine. The class is what is it is - more calculus than economics. Midterm was sad. Final was long afk = sad. What else is there to be said? Bernando really does his best though - Can't take that away from him.

LECTURES:
- Lectures were prerecorded and posted about 2 days before the lecture day. You're expected to watch the lectures before actual lecture days. You will be provided PPT lecture notes, and only need to write in the margins for some things.
- "QnA sessions" (similar to office hours) take place on lecture days, where you submit questions in a webinar-format. He ends class on-time, not a second over.
- Downside: You can't see questions other students have posted, thus forcing the professor to sort through duplicate questions in the sea of questions.
- Duration of each prerecorded lecture is (almost) always the exact duration as regular class would be.

EXAMS:
- Grade turnaround is very slow.
- All multiple choice questions (Note: COVID-19, online quarter)
- Two midterms, 1 final exam. If you score better than both midterms on your final exam, he'll drop your lowest midterm.
- Proctored by T.A. over Zoom. Webcam is required.

HOMEWORK:
- 4 problem sets are assigned for a grade. He drops your lowest problem set. 50% of the grade is based on completion. He will pick one of the questions to be graded for accuracy (for the other 50%).
- 3 additional problem sets and solutions are given, 1 just before each exam.
- NO late submission accepted.

COMMUNICATION:
- Uses email to share when prerecorded lectures are posted and when problem sets are uploaded.

I would say that Professor Silveira is one of the better professors in the econ department. His lectures are concise and even though we covered a lot of topics, they weren't too hard to learn. However, the exams are definitely harder than usual, but this seems to be a trend for all econ classes during the pandemic unfortunately. Problem sets also take a really long time and sometimes cover things that we didn't learn so it took a while to figure all the problems out. But this is overall a good class and I'm glad that the prof made the online learning go pretty smoothly.

Honestly went better than I expected and I thought it was easier than Econ 11, but very similar format. My only issue was the curve barely improved my grade, even though I did relatively well.

overall, the class was pretty difficult, but i found that the pre-recorded lectures were really clear and didn't need to go to the q and a sessions. akina is also an amazing ta and would go through the problem sets step-by-step with me. the first midterm was definitely the harder of the two and the second one was almost identical to the practice ones he gave us. the final was really difficult, but gave a super nice curve. he's really understanding as an econ prof and definitely wants us to understand the material

You should disregard some of this review since I got a shitty grade partly responsible to other obligations like signing up for a Diff Equ class during week 2 that gave me six times the amount of homework for a typical math class making it very hard to keep up in my other class. For example, I showed to the first midterm for 101, very sleep derived barely studied and bombed expectedly because I had spent most of my time ketchuping in Diff Equ. Unfortantuely, he made the next exam harder thanks to everyone execpt me doing really well on it so I got hit too the face with a truckload of true/false. I was also hilarously sleep derived for the final-- but anyways my point is to do really well on the first exam if you wanna succeed you may not get another opportunity to catch back up seriously it is the easiest by a long shot I just made the dumb decision of adding a diff equ class to my schedule like 12 days before the midterm. You're unlikely to do that so you should be chilling. The practice exams are extremely accurate to the actual exams execpt for the 2nd midterm where there was a lot of true/false for some random reason. Its not hard to pass given he does a nice curve at the very end, I did find it harder than 11, but I think I'm a rarity. I typically do better in harder class for some reason so disregard what I said. If I hadn't added my diff equ class I would have gotten in B range for this class, unfortunately I didn't pass either class ugghh so be it. Anyways this guy is the goat. Go to his office hours the TAs are very lost and confused for some reason. I had to teach the TAs how to do some of the practice exam questions and I didn't even pass the class so the quality of TAs this quarter was pretty bad. Silveria was amazing tho wish I had attended his office hours more often but unfortnuately it conflicted with a history class.

Overall, Professor Silveria is a gem within the economics department and did a great job teaching this course that is notorious for being difficult. His lectures were clear, the tests were pretty fair, and the class content was well organized. I highly recommend that you take this class with him.
Lectures: Due to remote instruction, lectures consisted of recorded videos explaining key concepts both with slides and examples done on his iPad. None of the lectures were too long, he does a good job balancing both theory and examples, his explanations were clear, and I found them to be engaging. He also held informal Q&A sessions during scheduled class time (these were optional and I only attended a few times but found them helpful for exam review)
Discussions: Discussions were live on zoom and recorded. They consisted of going over additional practice problems and reviewing midterms.
Problem Sets: We had a total of 7 problem sets (only 4 were graded as the others lined up with exams). They consisted of 3-4 problems each and were graded half for participation, half for accuracy on one problem. I found the questions to be of similar difficulty to the exams (although worded in a different format). Great review for exams. Lowest one also dropped.
Exams: This class can be notorious for difficult exams, but I found them overall to be pretty fair. The first midterm was the most difficult for me (he included a multi-part curve ball question that threw many people off), but the second midterm and final were more straightforward. Averages were in the 70s for the first midterm and final and 85 for the second midterm. He also provided two practice tests for each exam that were pretty helpful for studying. Questions were all multiple choice and consist of multi-part questions. As long as if you review these exams, your problem sets, and review your notes, you should do well.
Helpfulness: Overall, Prof. Silveria was very helpful and transparent throughout the quarter. He would frequently email us with updates, hold office hours and answer questions over email, and genuinely takes the student's interest to heart.

Great class and great professor!

Professor Silveira is a nice guy who is a great lecturer for topics that are relatively tough and hard to imagine real applications for. He always uses examples of events to demonstrate how the concepts can be applied which is personally very helpful. He also puts a lot of his personality in the practice questions, which makes the learning of it a lot easier to take in.

There are 2 grading schemes to the class, one which splits the midterms and finals 30 each, and one which splits the higher of the 2, and the final 40-50. The remaining 10 is from the problem sets which are generally a great indicator of what the tests will be like. There were 7 problem sets total, but only 3 counted since some problem sets were released as practice for the midterms/final instead of a grade. Additionally, the lowest one was dropped, so you only needed to get 100% on 2/3 problem sets to get the full homework grade.

The grading curve for professor Silveira is not an enforced bell curve like other professors, if the whole class does well, everyone gets an A, putting less competition in the class which is good for stress levels.

As for the tests themselves, he releases around 5-6 practice midterms/actual past midterms for us to use as practice. They are generally indicative of what types of problems he’ll put on the midterms and finals, though some topics are not covered (there was no long question about price discrimination for example). The first midterm went quite well, while the second I bombed, similar to many others in the class. Because of this, he curved it by 10% and made an unnecessarily long apology for making the midterm too difficult.

It’s obvious that professor Silveira wants the best for his students, and even though I finished the class with a B I’d take a class with him again in a heartbeat.

TAKE THIS CLASS IF ITS WITH THE GOAT BERNARDO. He is honestly such a kind soul and stays behind to answer every student's questions. He is very communicative and provides so many practice midterms and finals to help you out. My only gripe would be that his lectures are sometimes confusing, but they are recorded, and you can easily supplement your learning by having AI explain concepts if need be. He literally gave everyone an automatic 100/100 on a problem set because it was nearing finals and wanted to be nice. Take this class with him!

I took Professor Silveira’s class in Spring 2025–a bit hesitantly, I must admit, as it was directly on the heels of a rather character-building Econ 11 class (a story for another time). But my skepticism shortly turned to delight, as I almost immediately realized the typo tally was about to far surpass that of my previous economics course.
It felt too good to be true.
It…wasn’t.
Nonetheless, if you are considering taking Econ 101 with Professor Silveira, I will rain some anvils of truth upon your heads—take them ass you will.
* There are two midterms, week 4 and week 7. The first one is a cushion in case you screw up the second, which you inevitably will.
* Tests are all multiple choice, which is good if you like multiple choice.
* Only 3 of the 6 problem sets were actually required, and the rest were extra practice. The lowest score of the required sets is dropped. (I made a slightly risky decision and didn’t do the optional sets, instead choosing to play more Minecraft.)
* Professor seemed tolerant of people being obnoxious in class. I naturally seized the opportunity to do so.
* Timing is such that I finished the final in half the allotted time, giving me plenty of time to draw a poorly executed walrus driving a Camry on page 19 of the final.
* We were given almost all the tests from previous years as practice tests. They are very accurate indicators of what material will be on yours. If you are not doing well on the practice exams, you are screwed.
* that being said…he threw a curveball at our class and gave us an assload of true/false questions on midterm #2, which most people missed. He felt bad afterwards and added 10% to everyone’s midterm grade.
* In the quarter I took this class, only one of the several TAs actually knew what he was doing. Mine did not. I had to explain concepts to her…multiple times. If this happens to you, lecture notes provide a much more thorough explanation than a confused human can.
* Don’t hesitate to go to the Professor’s office hours for clarification. Because if you do hesitate too long everyone’s gonna crowd in there right before the final and make the Professor quite grumpy.