Professor Barreto was a very understanding professor, which really meant a lot to me as we transitioned back to in-person classes. He made sure to have a working hybrid model for the class, and he made the final online. The content of this course is interesting (be warned there are a lot of statistics but its not scary!) The grade is broken down between 50% final 25% section participation and 25% final project. The exam was an 114 multiple choice question test, which for the most part was easy to accomplish if you went to the lectures. I found the readings helpful, but you could probably go without doing them. The final project is really not that bad, it uses STATA, a data program, but it is very minimal and Professor Barreto walks you through STATA. I would take this class again easily, the information is pertinent to the real world, making it a great class for me.

Barretto is one of those professors where you think they're good at first until they show their true colors. He is very arrogant and condescending. This is clear when trying to have a conversation with him outside of class hours. His lectures are pretty straightforward until you get to the final exam.

There are only three things you're graded on in this class: Participation, Final Project, and a Final exam. The project was easy if you did it in advance, although the wrong TA can send your grade down. My TA was putting critiques that didn't make sense, like why a graph was used in two slides (I was elaborating on a point made in the first slide using the same data). The final exam is horrendous. 114 questions on very specific things. My brain was scrambling to remember when we learned everything. Otherwise, it's easy to get a good grade in this class.

This class is not as stressful as everyone makes it out to be. We don’t have any homework assignments (no discussion boards, quizzes, writing/essays) and no midterm. The only thing we have to do is read book chapters and articles. There are only two books, both of which are on inclusive access. Usually, we were assigned 2-4 readings a week, which may sound like a lot, but the book chapters were super short (never more than ten pages), although some articles were lengthy. Essentially, you just read the assigned readings and show up to the lecture.
That being said, Professor Barreto is not the best professor. It is very obvious that he does not love teaching. Barreto told the class to go to our TA first if we have any questions, and if our TA can absolutely not answer your questions, THEN you can go to him. Your TA does all the grading for the class, but Barreto is not involved in the grading aspect at all. He is basically there to just lecture and leave. He didn’t even show up to our final exam, which was a bit of an issue because there were some questions that required more than one answer on the final exam, but the directions did not say that there was more than one answer. He does not use Canvas, so I never found out my grade on the final exam or the final project. His lecture slides are just repeating what the assigned readings said, but it is very important that you take notes on every lecture slide. Everything that appears on the lecture slides is fair game for the final exam. Additionally, Barreto does not publish his lecture slides anywhere and does not allow the TAs to send them out. If you do not take notes on the lecture slides, you will never see them again, so take notes!!
Here is the grading breakdown:
PARTICIPATION: 25% of your grade. How your participation is graded depends on your TA. My TA, Kevin Kandamby (who was great), had our participation graded on attendance, group discussions, and short answer responses to a prompt. Again, this varies on your TA.
FINAL PROJECT: 25% of your grade. Professor Barreto provides five different data sets that we use to answer a proposed research question. We use Stata (which Barreto provides) and have to turn in a 12-slide presentation showing our data. This sounds difficult, but Barreto and the TAs walk you through this project. Barreto holds a “Stata Day” during Week 7, where he shows us how to use Stata instead of lecturing. During week 10, Barreto and the TAs hold workshops during class time where you can go in and work on your project and ask for help if you need it. Barreto said that if you do the assignment and show that you tried, you will get 100% on the project.
FINAL EXAM: 50% of your grade. Our final exam had 106 questions. My advice is to study all your lecture notes. As previously mentioned, everything mentioned in the lecture is fair game for the final. It’s entirely multiple-choice, and there are no essay or short-answer questions. A scantron is provided.
Overall, this class is not that bad. A lot of the content in this class is common knowledge and is often repeated multiple times throughout the course. Professor Barreto isn’t a very energetic professor and is not very involved with the course. Your grade is entirely dependent on your TA. In my opinion, this class is not very demanding. The only stressful part about this class was starting the final project, but if you attend the workshops, you will be completely fine. I would take this class again, but only if it was one of the few options left. So if this class is your only option, don’t worry, you will be fine! This class is not very difficult. The best way to succeed in this class is to attend lectures and take notes.

Whew Chile! This Class has great potential. However, this Professor is not helpful and when I asked for clarification he always responded with an attitude. If you don’t like helping students, please do not become a professor. Also, the final project should be changed to something more engaging and substantive. If you are stressed out don’t take this class.

Professor Barreto is wicked smart, but seems aloof. He doesn't engage with students, and seems almost bothered by questions. The subject matter is something I'm passionate about, and I learned a lot from him and Professor Dunn who co-taught the course with him - but unless someone is independently interested in the subject, his disengagement with the students would likely make it a miserable course for most. In short, lectures are great, engagement with students is poor - so consider that when thinking of taking a class with Professor Baretto.

This class was interesting, but I felt like there were some flaws in the structure of the course and the way the professor engaged with the class. The professor does not post slides on his website, but because his lectures are literally the same material as the readings, it did not matter all too much. The professor also refused to use canvas, which led to a situation where many students were unaware they were charged for electronic textbooks they could not access until two weeks into the course (because of the “Inclusive Access” system). The project is not as bad as it seems; he spends a lot of time scaring students about it, but it's pretty easy. It is somewhat frustrating though that the only real assignments for the class are the project (25%) and an all-multiple choice final (50%). The rest was discussion points (25%). The subject was interesting, though, and if you're passionate about the subject, or U.S. politics in general (most of the class is about the most recent elections, 2004-present), you should take this class.

This class was kind of all over the place. It was not necessarily difficult in terms of material BUT the structure was really odd and invoked a lot of stress. Also the title is very misleading. This class should be called US Latino Voting Behaviors. We really just talked about various factors that influence how Latinos engage in the US political system, did not adrdess the sociological or more nuanced elements of Latino identity.

Breaking down the class structure and grading:
- no midterm
- participation in discussions kind of mattered, depended on the TA
- final exam worth 50% (I think) of your grade
- final project worth something like 40% of grade

The final project requires A LOT OF ENERGY, especially if you are unfamiliar with using R or stata. It is basically a data analysis of latino voting behaviors and opinions using HUGE datasets. There is very little support from the professor and TA's in tackling this project.

I did fine in this class, but it was honestly really stressful. Not worth it.

Start your final project early, and ask your TA for help/guidance. If you do well on that project, you're likely to do well in the course, it's 25% of the grade, and section participation is 25%, so actively engage your TA. The professor is incredibly interesting, but it's unfortunate that there's not more room for engagement, but rather just regurgitation of polling information he's acquired over years. This was the least engaging course I've taken in school - and if I wasn't interested in the subject matter, it would have been a total bore.

One of the worst professors I've ever had. You genuinely cannot ask him any questions without him belittling you. I would genuinely never take a class with this professor again.

I think you should take this class. Every Extra Credit assignment you do adds 1% to your overall grade. And you can do as many Extra Credit assignments as you want....I'll let you do the math on that.

However, the exam was actually pretty hard and this is me saying that after I studied 3 straight days for it and only left my room to eat. He said in class that "the exam is super easy and don't worry about it" and so I worried about it, and rightfully so. If any professor tells you that the exam that they wrote, on a topic they spent years researching, and has an answer key for is easy, it probably is not. I would recommend going to ~all~ his lectures because he does not post the slides. I repeat, he does not post the slides. He doesn't even give his slides to his TAs. To prepare for the exam, I would recommend writing down every word that leaves his mouth. Anything and everything he says is fair game to the exam. Every video he shows in class, make sure to write the title down and a summary of what you watched. Every guest speaker he invites, make sure to take notes on what they say and on what he says. If you are an excellent note taker, this is the class for you.

I highly recommend some background in R before taking this class. Please listen to me. LISTEN TO ME. Take POL SCI 6 or STATS 10 before this class otherwise you may struggle on the Final Project. I had to help a lot of my classmates because they had zero experience in R and had I not taken those two classes in the past I know I would have struggled. I am honestly surprised this is not a requirement.

Breakdown:
- Participation: 25%
- Final Exam: 50%
- No midterms
- Research Project with R: 25%

Additional notes if you care to read:
- He is funny and actually quite nice. Just approach him respectfully. He is authoritative.
- I went in on the first day of class with every intention to drop it, but thought, hey I’ll go to one class just to see, and thank goodness I did because I loved this class. The content is so fascinating. You analyze the political behavior of Latinos and their voting pattern and behaviors throughout the century -- if you like statistics, graphs, and data, this is the class for you.
- How to do well in class: Do readings after each lecture, not before. Show up to all discussions because this is a free "A+" in participation. Do as much EC opportunity as possible. Take extensive notes in class because no slides are given.
- Textbooks are hella pricey so maybe find a friend a split cost.