I struggled a good amount with this class because the material was all very new to me. I thought the discussion sections were most helpful in this course and helped me prepare for the exams, although they were always very difficult. Professor Goncalves did curve pretty generously in the end.

This class opens your eyes to how stupid the econ classes are moving forward. Who made this shit up, I really dont know. The professor doesnt care either, he speeds through the slides.

Professor Goncalves is a super awesome professor in the Econ department. He does a great job of explaining the material, and is quite clear in lecture. He posts his lecture notes along with the slides, so it makes it easy to review if you missed anything. The class material can definitely be tricky at first, especially since students who haven't taken Math 32A will have to quite a bit of multivariate calculus. However, the class does get easier as you go and get more familiar with the material. He's really helpful in office hours too. I also took his seminar course, where we read academic papers on the economics of crime and policing and discussed them. This was super fun, and it was really awesome to discuss these topics with him, since he's literally an expert in that field. The midterms weren't terrible, but the averages were somewhat low, with the first having an average of 75 and second 65 (medians were 80 and 70). If you studied and paid attention in lecture, it wasn't terrible. Overall a really cool guy, and great professor too.

Good professor, I'll say he's pretty generous on the overall curve for both midterm and final. Midterm 1 is ok, and Midterm 2 and final are both largely the same as those exam papers in past years (likely because the Midterm 1's median does not look good). I receive 92 in Mid 1, 84 in Mid 2, and 95 in Final. It's largely the same as the past papers, so as long as you finished those practices (I didn't do so for Mid 2, so...) you should be fine. But honestly, at the time before the week 10, I felt this course to be a bit boring for what professor's teaching - basically some foundations and applications of multivariable calculus, with a lot of econ concepts (you know, those thoeretical stuffs). However, in the week 10, the professor magically spent a course time in discussing a famous economics incident happening in 2025: "the Deepseek Moment," together with real applications to explain the hidden triggers with economics concepts we learned during the class, and even introducing a term called "Jevons paradox," which is that the technology advancement (i.e. new techniques that make the AI model training) sometimes may not cause the demand for those companies that supposed to be hugely affected (like Nvidia) to get worse, since the demand is elastic enough. The advancement in technology decreases the price for the model training causes more people to join the market and start to train their model for start-ups or other stuffs, making the Nvidia stock price surge after receiving a deep trough. In fact, that trough is actually the best point to buy at that time, and obviously you'll make considerable amounts of money

I know, you may think that just a single course that taught student about a historical event simply will make me to turn 180 degrees in terms of my attitude toward this class sounds insane, but what if I tell you that just a few weeks ago, right after our final week in the winter quarter, the same thing happen to the SanDisk, a SSD storage company that has received an unprecedented shocked in its stock price due to a technical paper released by Google of a technical improvement in using the SSD memory/storage in a more efficient way, almost exactly the same to what happened in the DeepSeek moment in the last year. When the article first come out, SanDisk stock prices falled more than 17% (to around $580 per share), and if you have bought it and hold it till now, April 9th, 2026, there's at least 43% benefit (around $831 per share now) you can earn from that, which means, if you listen to Felipe's lecture on Deepseek, and notice this chance, investing let say $100 thousands, that would be 43 thousands dollars returns within a month. Think about it, 43% returns in one single month! Since it is exactly what happened in the real world, I'll feel my conscience being condemned if I don't say something good to Felipe.

He's the one of a few professors in this school that can actually make you earn some real money right after the class.

This class was very challenging, and I found it difficult to keep up. While I understand that it's meant to be a tough course, I believe that the professor could have done a better job with the material. The class requires a lot of practice, but the practice material provided was not enough. During lectures, I often felt confused and unsure of what we were studying. If the professor had taught the material in a way that reflected what would be on the exam, it would have been more beneficial. I would recommend attending all the discussion sections since they were more helpful than the lectures. When I asked the TAs and professors for extra practice material, they were not very helpful, and what they had posted online was not sufficient. If they had provided mock exams, it would have been more helpful. The exams got progressively more challenging, and I could have done better on the first exam if I hadn't panicked and made silly mistakes. One of the TAs held review sessions that were useful, so I would recommend attending those. Overall, I think this professor is still the best option for Econ 11, despite the difficulties of the class. I do want to note that I am not very good at math, so my experience may be biased. Other students may not have had the same issues as me. Good luck!

Professor Goncalves generally presents course material with clarity, although there may be occasions where his proofs or explanations are confusing. Fortunately, he always provides practice problems in class to help solidify our understanding. The midterms for this quarter become progressively more challenging, and the limited time provided during the exam can be difficult. However, this course offers ample resources for you to succeed, including a bunch of past midterms and finals with solutions to practice before the final exam. Additionally, the TA Jack Sitarski is the GOAT: he recorded two hour-long review sessions where he went over each multiple choice question from a past midterm step-by-step. Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this class.

Professor Goncalves was great!!! He gave so many opportunities for us to ask questions and really nail in the material. He gives so many resources like practice tests to test your knowledge before the exam, so there really is no way to under prepare for his exams. The exams were fair, and never beyond what he lectured. Take this class with Goncalves!!! The material will be naturally difficult at first but I can't think of any other better professor to take it with. Also, I highly recommend Goncalves' honor seminar on crime and policing. Such cool stuff and very relevant to today.

Since this was my first econ class at UCLA (I got credit for Econ 1 and 2 from high school) and it was a difficult class I felt that I struggled a bit more than if I had taken Econ 1 and 2 before this. I knew it was a weeder class going in and the difficulty was expected but I felt that my TAs (I attended Victoria's sessions and Akina was my original TA - I changed due to timezone issues) were both incredibly responsive and helpful. Additionally, Professor Goncalves was helpful and hosted Q&A sessions but due to timezone issues and the timings of my other classes, I could only attend one. I think that Professor Gonclaves could've potentially just had live classes and then posted the recordings of those instead of posting lectures and separately hosting Q&As during class time, but of course, this is more applicable due to COVID. I found that he was a good professor and he definitely took feedback well (midterm 2 was easier than midterm 1 and I felt the final was also a good level of difficulty - especially for an open-notes test). However, sometimes I felt that it took me a while to understand the content because he explained it in a very roundabout way. Other than that, I'd say this class was reasonable given the known difficulty of econ 11.

Professor Goncalves is really helpful, accommodating, and cares a lot about students' learning. He really devoted a huge amount of time and efforts into teaching this class with pre-recorded lectures, two Q&A sessions each week at the scheduled lecture time, and lots of office hours. His lectures and Q&A sessions effectively introduce key concepts and examples and have clear focus on what will be tested on the exams. In a difficult quarter when it's hard to fully focus on classwork, he accommodated a lot by providing multiple grading schemes and making the exams straightforward. In future regular quarters, I would expect his exams to be harder but still manageable, as he gives tons of practice exams and goes over tons of example problems that really consolidate almost everything learned in this course. Regarding this class itself, I would say it's easier than I thought before taking it. I would say this class focuses more on applying quantitative tools and linking economic concepts with quantitative interpretations. I didn't take Econ 1 and 2 here at UCLA, but I feel this class did not add that much to the theoretical background I learned from my high school Econ 1 and 2 equivalent. Although Math 32A is not a pre-requisite for this class, I would recommend taking it before or together with Econ 11. Still, Professor Goncalves explains knowledge related to Math 32A well so there's no worries. Overall, I would highly recommend taking Econ11 with Professor Goncalves.

Professor Goncalves was the best professor I've had at UCLA! I was scared to take this class because I had heard it was difficult, but Professor Goncalves explained everything very clearly and prepared us for the tests very well. I took this class while it was online because of COVID-19, so the lectures were pre-recorded videos, while the actual lecture time was used to do practice problems and give us time to ask questions. We had weekly homework assignments, which were super helpful and reflected what we had been learning in class. He gave us multiple practice exams before each midterm and the final, which were extremely similar to the real tests. Professor Goncalves was extremely kind and helpful during office hours and during Q&A sessions. I would highly recommend this professor!