I liked Copic, if only because his class was very easy (I got an A+). I took him in the Fall of '09, it was his first time teaching the class. I found lecture wasn't helpful, but he gave a large amount of extra credit on the exams, so that made the class fairly easy. He also did not cover very much material, and I thought his pace was pretty slow. However, he isn't the greatest lecturer, so a good TA is a must. I doubt he is still TAing the class, but my TA Matt did an exceptional job and was just fabulous - I would recommend him. I would also recommend Copic, but only because he is easy.

Example of the awesome randomnity of his lecture notes:
"That is true, and I would have been very dis-satisfied, had I not been vindicated by
another publication in the Journal of weird empirical finds. A recent article therein reported
a careful collection of field data. This included a "collection" pinkies of a random sample of
Durio males (they were happy to participate out of their enthusiasm for science, plus they
got local anaesthesia and a sandwich, so they were fine), and secretly picking through purses
of Alessian women (the author employed a local pick-pocket clan that stole everything they
could, but were especially instructed to take as many amulet pouches as possible; in return,
they could sell all the rest, as long as they promised they would donate ten percent of their
profit to charitable cause)."

DON'T TAKE COPIC! Horrible professor! He's very disorganized, mumbles in an incomprehensible accent and covers MUCH more than required by the syllabus and what most other professors cover! Take a quarter off if you need to but don't take Copic! His tests are extremely hard and though the curve is pretty generous- the tests don't really differentiate between good and bad students and it all comes down to luck! Just to clarify, I'm not bitter because I got a bad grade (got an A). Just that it was a horrible experience and I didn't feel adequately prepared for later Econ classes because of Copic. Stay away if you can!

Jernej, Jernej, Jernej. This guy is everything you expect from reading the reviews.

He may not be the most effective professor, in fact, his lectures teach you very basic concepts if anything and he tells awesome jokes most of the time. However, he cares so much about his students that if you want to learn more he will teach you one on one.
Regardless, what he does teach you sticks with you. Sure I probably "learned" more in econ 11 but I don't remember anything and honestly I'm not quite sure what exactly I was doing the whole time. He teaches concepts in a way you'll actually understand and retain.

A good TA is important, I learned everything from my TA. But his tests are so easy that it really does not matter if you know much.

Extra credit is abundant. This is the most extra credit I've ever gotten in a class through all 14 years of schooling.

Ended up with an A+, probably the only A+ I will get in an econ class in college. Definitely recommend, even if just for meeting Jernej. He is a great guy.

The man, the myth, the legend. Commonly known as “Yernie” by his pupils, Jernej Copic [Yerney Chopich] is a G-d among men. He is a small, delightful man, of petite stature but whatever you do, DO NOT underestimate his sense of humor.

His lectures are composed of one hour of elaborate stories and fifteen minutes of “lecture.” I’d say that they’re not necessary to go to because of this “inefficient use of time” (in an econ course, ironically), but that would be a damned lie.

Listen, folks. This is more than an economics or game theory course. Yernie believes in the importance of camaraderie, honesty, integrity, laughter, and love. Don’t miss out on the important life lessons Yernie instills in his students.

Now, the boring stuff...how to do well in his class. The most important advice: BOSS THE FIRST MIDTERM (or the second). 50% of your grade is the higher of midterm 1 or midterm 2 (aka he drops the lowest score) and 50% of your grade is a cumulative final. Our midterms were out of 12 questions, but he had 2 extra credit so it was possible to get a 14/12 aka 116% aka 58/50 for HALF. OF. YOUR. GRADE. Take advantage of this or you deserve to fail. If you do well on a midterm, you won’t have to stress for the final. More boring stuff...how to do well on the tests. Do the practice midterms a couple times. Find old exams. The midterms are fairly time pressured, so be aware of that. Also, make sure you go to class when there are hella crazy extra credit “experiments.” Lastly, no curve (you won't need it, either).

Some fun facts about philosophizing economist Professor Copic:
-More of a hehe guy, not a haha guy
-Winky faces in e-mails fer dayssss
-Unsure whether graph is spelt with an f or a ph
-Writes ridiculously hilarious lecture notes (or stories, rather)

Lastly, shout out to Owen for being a baller TA. Holla!

I personally admire this professor very much and his 101 class is probably one of the few classes I truly enjoyed at UCLA. The course is on game theory, which, in nature, requires you to actually think and analyze rather than memorize and regurgitate. Due to his heavy Eastern European accent, you might have a hard time understanding him, but if you focus on the big picture of his lectures, you will get his points. His lecture notes are extremely fun to read and very helpful. They were the only thing I studied with for this class and I managed to get an A+. You get two multiple-choice midterms and one final. His tests are all multiple choice and they can be very tricky if you are not 100% sure about the concepts. At the time, his practice tests and problems were littered with errors and mistakes so I had a much harder time to study for exams. But I went to his office hours every week and his special review sessions to get all the confusions cleared. I recommend him since he cares about students' learning and their grades. He throws a huge curve if students do terribly so that the majority can end up getting As.

I wouldn't recommend him.

He's a super nice guy, very comical and entertaining, and the dude is smart, but your grade is on the line, and he makes too many mistakes and is too unclear to make taking him worth it.

His lecture notes, yeah theyre funny, but theyre unclear, and when you're trying to study for a test, i don't need all this story crap, i just need the formulas and the main points to take away.

He's unclear and all over the place in lecture, and since there is no textbook to fall back on, you can only rely on your lecture notes, or his unclear lecture notes.

To his credit, he gives you a lot of study material, but what good is that when you didn't learn the stuff well before?

The worst part: NO CURVE! what the hell is that? His midterm is 40% of your grade, and is only 12 multiple choice questions. EACH QUESTION IS ABOUT 7 PERCENT OF YOUR MIDTERM GRADE! I can't even begin to get into how wrong that is.... especially with how unclear he is.

Its just unfair to students, to be so unclear and expect them to perform that well on tests. The class would be 'okay' if there was a curve, but nope.

The only redeeming quality is that there is a good amount of extra credit. Probably around 7% average for everyone if you do the work, but honestlly, i'd rather just be able to learn what IM SUPPOSED TO KNOW, as opposed to doing some weird experiments and homework assignments.

If you do poorly on the midterm or, especially, the final, thats pretty much it, its over.

Professor Copic seems to care about his students a lot and I have no doubt that he’s very intelligent, but he can’t teach at all. He was disorganized and unprepared in every lecture and exam. Basically everything he made had mistakes. I felt like I was wasting my time every time I went to lecture. The only time I learned was when I went to discussion (by the way, Owen is a great TA!) and the TAs basically saved us by answering all our questions before the exams on the discussion board. The class is NOT curved but he gives out a lot of extra credit.

EXAMS: The class only had one midterm that was 40% of your grade and had 14 multiple choice questions—2 questions were extra credit. I feel that the midterm was really easy if you studied his past exams that he posted up to see patterns. It’s not hard or impossible to get over 100% on the midterm as long as you pay attention to the details in his past tests. It’s really important to score as high as you can on the midterm to boost your grade because the final was freaking hard.

The final was worth 60% and had 29 multiple choice questions and 2 short essay questions –5 of the multiple choice questions were extra credit. He made a deal with us at the end where you could exchange ~3% of your extra credit for your final to count for 100% of your grade if you wanted to. His past finals were not as helpful as his past midterms because it was hard to tell whether certain topics would be on our test or not. He posts up around 20 short essay prompts before the test, but they were quite simple. Split answering them with friends! On the actual final, I had no idea how to do a lot of the problems because he made them a lot trickier than his past exams. I came out of the class thinking that I failed the final. I haven’t gotten my grade for the final yet, but I got an A in the class so I guess I didn’t do too badly on the final.

On both tests, he made mistakes on them so you’re bound to get at least one question right no matter what you put.

STUDYING TIPS: Study groups are really important and helpful!! Check out the discussion boards for TA explanations also. I heard that Copic was helpful during office hours but I’ve never gone myself.

EXTRA CREDIT: Besides the extra credit on tests, he also offers at least 6% of extra credit through his experiments in class and homework assignments that you can do in groups.

SUMMARY: You probably won’t learn much but he gives out a lot of extra credit and it’s not impossible to get a good grade as long as you study his past tests well. If you have an option to take another professor who is a harder grader but is a good lecturer, I’d take that person over Copic. If you have no other option but to take him, he’s not too bad of an option grade wise.

His lectures are extremely unorganized, although he makes an effort to be clear, most of the time he is absolutely unprepared. However, that was not the worst part of the class.
I think the worst thing is that he was not only unprepared for lecture but for the whole course!
1. He posted the practice midterm (which to be fair, was very similar to the real midterm) the weekend before the test. We had ONE day to get our questions answered. Every single person who cared about his grade came to that one office hour on that one day. As a result, with 50-60 people in one office hour, not one person got his questions answered. The next day, I took the test and I could not answer the questions that Copic had answered in his OH the day before.

2. The final--I don't know what was going on in the final. However, once we got the practice final the weekend before the test, it was clear that this was not going to end well. Even my TA was confused on what Copic was asking for in his multiple choice tests.
Basically, the wording was horrible and VERY tricky.

The next day, when I saw the final, I was wondering if by some chance I came into the wrong room and was taking an exam for a different class. Alas, that was not the case! I then realized that no matter how clearly I understood ALL that Copic and the TAs thought it did not matter, because the only way to get a good grade on the test was to be able to
(a) read the mind of Copic while bubbling in answers on the scantron
(b) be a game theory genius and most likely have taken several game theory classes before
(c) be lucky--extremely lucky and guess all the answers correctly.

3. All his answer keys for his multiple choice included multiple mistakes and had no explanations. The day before the final, Copic told us that they key was "for reference only." What does that even mean???

Summary: What he tests on (especially on the final) is nothing like what he or the TAs teach. I don't even know if there is any possible way to get a good grade in the class. So do not take him, for your own sake, unless you know of some way to guess all the correct answers on the exam.

I really do feel bad writing this review, because I actually did enjoy this class and Prof. Copic seems like a good person. But I think it is just not fair to the students the way that this class is organized. And if you are still hoping to get into biz econ, do yourself a favor and do not take Copic. I promise you, you will thank yourself later.

Have a good summer.

First off, I did receive a good grade in this class. I quite enjoyed Copic as an individual, and I thought he was a good guy. However, do not take his class if you care about your education and your grade.

No textbook, no homeworks, no study guides, the only thing provided were his lecture notes (most of which were horrendous) and some practice exams that he posted (usually right before the exam, not too much time to study and ask questions!). On top of all this, his lectures were the worst I have ever had the pleasure of attending during my entire career @ UCLA. He comes to lectures totally unprepared and wastes a TREMENDOUS amount of time doing silly experiments that illustrate simple concepts that everyone already understands and accepts, and telling jokes. He
probably wasted about 1/3 of the total class time we had available for lecture, which is huge. On top of this, the exams were much more difficult than you'd expect, particularly the final, which was a huge mess. I have never seen such a disorganized, unprepared professor before in all my time here.

So in short, don't take Copic if you care about your grade and your education. If you're already an expert on the subject and just want to chill and listen to him tell jokes and whatnot, and you're already capable of acing his exams, then by all means go right on ahead. Otherwise, think twice.