this class covers interesting topics. I think professor McDevitt is not a bad lecturer and during the lectures he will talk about all type of topics, from Econ 1 to Econ 106. the workload is not that bad, you just need to watch the lectures, and study for midterms and finals. some questions on the exams are almost the exact same from the practice exams. my biggest advice is to go to the regrade section that he offers after each exams. For each exams on average my grade improved by 8/10%. Overall a good class, in the same quarter I was taking three other Econ classes and I was able to manage all As.

- Despite this class being extremely tough, McDevitt is a very good lecturer and explains every concept very well. His style of teaching is whiteboard rather than slides, which IMO allowed me to follow along better and take better notes. He also provided notes which he followed in lectures and although they were kind of messy and confusing to follow, if you can deconstruct it, use it to study and for the exams.
- Exams make up 100% of the grade with two midterms and a final (25%, 30%, 55%) so there are no other graded assignments. Exams are multiple choice, true/false, with a couple FRQs, however, the multiple choice sometimes have choices A-G with only one right answer, but his recommendation was to treat them as a FRQ which sorta worked for me. Exams are open note/book which helped a lot especially because there was so much we needed to know, but for the midterms there is a huge time constraint so don't depend on them. I bombed the first exam, but got better with second and final which boosted my grade.
My advice to study for the exams:
- Go to lecture and then rewatch it (you don't even have to show up in person, but just watch it twice). He does record his lectures, and again he explained concepts very well, but I found it impossible to grasp onto the concepts after watching the lecture for the first time especially when I'm more focused on taking notes so all the understanding came while rewatching the lecture. And I rewatched it in 1.5 speed, plus he cuts his lecture short sometimes and it's really not that bad. Also, everything he tests us on he would teach in his lectures, he would sometimes also let us know exactly what would be on the exam so we can study for.
- Deconstruct his notes and make cheat sheets. His notes are very confusingly formatted and all over the place, but if you are able to deconstruct them they explain some of the concepts very well and very useful for exams.
- Do the study question and practice exam questions and understand them.
- Go to office hours, around exam times, he opens up more office hours at different dates and times to accommodate anyone that needs it.

Overall, this class wasn't easy but McDevitt is a very good lecturer (probably one of the best in the Econ dept.) and gave everything we need to know for exams.

The class itself was conceptually fairly simple for me. I have heard that other professors are math heavy and have complex calculus and algebra involved in the class but professor McDevitt does not have hard calculus or algebra in any part of the class so you do not need to worry about brushing up on these concepts too much. The class is very conceptual but as long as you are following in lecture and do the practice problems you will do fine on the tests.

Distribution:
Midterm 1: 20%
Midterm 2: 25%
Final: 55%

I got a 97%, 100%, and 96% respectively before the cure on the exams scoring the highest in the class overall. I did not put in a crazy amount of time outside of the class studying. I simply would make sure I understand lecture problems. I would try to apply to concepts to the study questions. Then I would again try to apply the concepts to the practice exam questions. Thats all you need to do. Understand the concepts he is talking about and you will do fine.

The averages in on the the tests were around 60% but then he curved these up to a B approximately. The class is pretty heavily curved so you could honestly put even less effort than I did to get an A even though I didn't do anything crazy to score high in the class.

- UCLA Economics is notoriously theory-heavy, and no class demonstrates this better than Econ 102 with Professor McDevitt. Some of the high-level ideas are interesting and relate well to general economic thinking, but all of the models are extremely simple (relative to the complex nature of national economies), full of what I call "voodoo math" (basically math in econ classes that is there just for the sake of being there), and ripe with key assumptions that are never true in the real world (such as prices being fixed in the short term). It's a true shame that we have to take classes like these that are a complete waste of students' time and mental energy.
- There are three exams that make up your entire grade (20% Midterm 1, 25% Midterm 2, 55% Final) and all exams are open-note (I slaughtered a small forest with the amount of notes I had for the final). There are a few free response questions, which are usually just variations of examples in lecture (just print out the lecture notes, and you'll be fine). The multiple choice have usually ~9 options that you can pick from, and the last 4 options are "Choose this one if you think 2 of the above are right", "Choose this one if you think 3 of the above are right", and "Choose this one if you think none of the above are right". Those tripped me up, as I usually was one the fence about one statement, and that determined which of the last 4 answers I chose.
- Lectures are boring, but a good introduction to the material. I stopped going to lecture after the second midterm and my final exam grade definitely reflected this. It is hard to focus (especially if the class is 3:30-4:45 pm, as ours was), and I was usually dozing off after 30 minutes.
- My strategy for the final was to not learn the material, but to print out all the practice questions and remember the questions, not the answers. Then, during the final, I would read the question and simply flip through my notes to see the similar question I had already printed out, and map that response to the question on the final. This worked remarkably well (especially considering I did not understand any of the material but rather just copied graphs) and honestly a strategy I highly recommend if you don't care enough to understand the useless material and your GPA could take the hit (I was at a 3.9 before this quarter and am now at a 3.8). My sanity was more important than my grade, and I'm so happy with my decision to prioritize a social life and better grades in my other classes than grinding on the pointless material of this class that would've been forgotten immediately after the final anyway.
- Overall, I'm very happy with my grade. I simply wanted to pass the class and did the bare minimum of studying to do well on the exams and not have to retake it. The curve was very generous and McDevitt was helpful with lots of office hours, though the nature of the material made the entire class boring, useless, and a complete waste of time. I learned more about macroeconomics in my high school AP Macroeconomics class and reading The Wealth of Nations than in this entire course.
- Good luck! Make sure you bring a pillow to lecture, as you're sure to fall asleep within the hour. :)

This class is hard no matter the professor. That being said, I would reccomend to take it with McDevvit. While lectures are kind of hard to follow, especially since he writes in chalk with hard to read handwriting, all the lectures are posted online and he has a copy available of all the notes needed for the class. He gives out plenty of studying material, so you don't really need the textbook. One stressful thing is that the final is 55% of the grade and the two midterms make up the rest, so there is high pressure for those tests. Overall, hard class that you will have to study a lot for but a solid professor for the class.

Tests make up 100% of the grade. Multiple choice, a-j in some cases, multiple may be true/false. No graded assignments. Teaching was mediocre and lack of graded assignments reeks of laziness or department being cheap. Because of how the "multiple choice" questions are designed and extreme time constraint on exams, your curved grade is a random number generator between 50 and 100. Lectures were also boring, essentially a read aloud of his posted notes. Overall, not engaging, boring, lazy teaching and would not recommend over watching YouTube on Macroeconomics.

He was a nice guy and all but his class honestly was something else. 2 Midterms and a final was your entire grade. The avg our first midterm was like a 60 and the second was a 75, and for these he will say that it is MC/Essay but the MC's are honestly the hardest part of the whole thing. The options basically go from a-g so take that as you will.

Pretty chill if you actually make sure to watch the lectures & take good notes. His exams allow a cheat sheet but you're really pressed for time on the midterms. His multiple choice isn't actually multiple choice so it's misleading and takes a lot longer than expected. Overall, I'd recommend taking this class with McDevitt but make sure not to lag on lectures

NOT NICE PROF
ARN'T WILLING TO ANSWER QUESTIONS
KINDA PRETENTIOUS HYPOCRITE

This class was definitely harder than expected and I think the bruinwalk grade distribution is MISLEADING. I think that the material is relatively straightforward and McDevitt is a good professor but I think there's the impression that Econ 134 is a pretty easy doable class, which honestly, I disagree. The material is like microeconomics on crack but environmental themed, which was cool for a bit until I was doing shifts on 5 graph systems. The exams are also pretty challenging, especially the multiple choice. I think if graphs are your strength this class is good for you, but if you're not into that stuff I'd pass on Econ 134. Also, your whole grade is based on exams so if you're bad at test taking that's another thing to consider, but he curves pretty generously.