First and foremost, this class is pure economics. I took this course without doing my research, expecting to learn principles of management relative to engineering, and there is none whatsoever. The professor is very kind and funny, and the lectures were genuinely pleasant, however the material was deceptively difficult for me. If you’re looking for an easy class that you can skate through without effort, this really isn’t it. If you’re looking to learn about economic principles, such as loan interest calculation, comparing projects based on pure numbers of revenue and expense, and general factors of supply and demand, this is the class for you.

TLDR: This class isn't too difficult, but it could definitely be much better organized.

Pros: It isn't too hard to end up with an A of some sort, since according to Mel's grading scale, 85% and up is an A. There are many opportunities for you to boost your grade, such as quizzes, discussion posts, and the group paper due at the end of the quarter. As for the exams, I thought they were pretty fair and more or less reflect what Mel taught in lecture or assigned for homework. The exam averages were surprising low in my opinion: 78% for the midterm and only 66 % for the final. It makes me wonder whether people really learned from the homework assignments, since people could work on HW in groups.

Cons: The class felt disorganized throughout. Maybe it's due to the transition back to in-person classes, but I felt the organizational aspects of this course was lacking. Mel never replied to any emails I sent her, so it was extremely difficult to contact her outside of class. Her expectations on the group homework were not very clear. In the beginning of the course, she sent out a google spreadsheet where we could form our homework groups. However, if you forgot to write down the names of every group member on the homework assignment during submission, even if the names were on the google spreadsheet, the missing names would earn a 0. I didn't think this was quite fair, since Mel never clarified this in lecture.

Quizzes were also quite annoying. Every lecture, Mel would have us to do 2-3 mini-quizzes on our phones. The quizzes were password protected, so lecture attendance was mandatory. Sometimes, Mel would lose track of time, so we sometimes had to do the quizzes immediately after class (with a 3 minute deadline!). I felt sorry for those who have a class right after this.

This class is one of the easier ones to take, but needs to be way more organized.

I seriously do not understand how Mel still has a job here. She is one of the most unclear lecturers I've ever had that emphasize knowledge that will most likely not be useful were you ever to have a management position in a company. I actually don't even know why the word "management" is included as part of this course label, as I don't think we talked about management once - we spent almost all of our time talking about pretty relatively useless things such as the time value of money and the optimal levels of production and such. If you're doing the technology management tech breadth to get an idea for how to handle a business, avoid this class at all costs and stick to the MGMT courses, as those cover topics which might actually be useful.

This class is super easy - group homework and weekly current event forum posts on CCLE - but the lectures are extremely boring, and you have to attend lectures because she has mandatory online polls that count for 10% of your grade. I don't think I learned very much but it's an easy A, I recommend this if you want to boost your GPA without much work

Mel herself might be a nice person, but she is extremely unorganized for teaching. She didn't post assignments/lectures on time and suddenly asked students to do those works after the end of the course.

While I liked this class overall, like many of the other reviews say, Mel is an extremely disorganized teacher. Her notes are posted online, but are quite unreadable. This class is also extremely scattered with Mel jumping around between many topics. This was one of the things that disappointed me about the class, with everything seeming to just be glossed over, making the class feel like a watered-down econ class that only gives you a surface level understanding of topics. It is also extremely focussed on microeconomics with macroeconomics only coming up in the last week of class.

Mel does have an extremely lenient grading scale with anything over 85% being an A. She is also very generous with partial credit on exams. This is definitely not a difficult class and will give you an intro to economics if you have never taken it, but is a bit disappointing in the lack of depth in the topics taught.

We simply have no choice but to stan Mel. She truly cares about your learning, and it shows, even if she can be disorganized. This class used to be much harder, as evidenced by the practice midterms/finals she releases from previous years. She's restructured it to focus on key topics that might some day be useful/relevant to your personal finances. You get a cheatsheet for exams and there's only a few homeworks throughout the quarter. The group project at the end is simple enough and boosts your grade with free points as long as you do it properly. One of my fave professors!

This class is quite an enigma to me. On the one hand, Mel is a very engaging and intelligent lecturer who clearly wants to teach better and help students understand the material. On the other hand, she struggles with this vision, rushing through concepts and not explaining them well at a pace that students like me (who don't have much of a background in economics) can understand. What made this even more difficult is the fact that those in-class quizzes other people mention in prior reviews are no longer optional; they are now part of your participation grade. So when she asks these questions right after explaining a concept, if you don't understand all of it well enough on the spot, it'll be pretty hard to get it right. The way she organizes the quizzes is kind of problematic too: she uses the UCLA online poll site, which no one could seem to log into 30% of the time. I just feel like there's a much better way to implement all this.

On the one hand, Mel is a very generous grader, with an average of 80 on all assignments being curved up to an A- (85% or above = A, 80 or above = A-, 75 or above = B+, etc.). I'm still quite confused how I got away with the grade I did, given my abysmal midterm score. On the other hand, I still felt like I was falling behind all quarter because the homeworks, practice quizzes, and some exam questions were very convoluted and confusing (sometimes completely wrong), and Mel seemed disinterested in helping resolve this. She also said she would answer questions on Piazza but then practically disappeared for days on end, which was a bit frustrating around midterm and final exams.

I can't really fault Mel for trying harder at making the course better, and I can't really complain about the generous grading either. But I feel like the concepts are being taught too fast and not being explained well enough. There are just so many wrinkles that should've been ironed out years ago.

Probably one of the most engaging lecturers I've had at UCLA.The trick to this class is to show up to every lecture and pay as close attention as possible! Mel often will explicitly state what material she's putting on the midterm and final, so just by showing up to class and listening to lecture you will be guaranteed at least 3/4 questions. We received extra credit each week by responding to a discussion forum and answering a form of clicker questions in class (no clicker required). Homeworks were pretty easy; you could work in a group on them. The best way to study for the tests are to do the practice problems in the book, and to read the textbook before class. Each lesson builds on the last one, so make sure you're staying on top of the material!

Mel is not very organized. It took until Week 2 of Spring Quarter to receive our grade for Winter Quarter, even though ALL number scores were inputted for over a week.
The class is not very good. The only useful thing you learn is compounding interest and how to think about if you should take out a mortgage or invest elsewhere, or pay it off early.
The class is pretty boring, she goes off on weird tangents, isn't engaging, or much.
If you're taking this for a tech breadth, I recommend MGMT 108 and MGMT 160 over this class, you learn much more in those.