His notes were very detailed which helps when studying. The exams were okay since he didn't really include concepts not taught during class or on past exams. The professor's goal is always for the students to fully understand each concept, even if it means going slower than the syllabus. Rojas also made an effort to connect almost each topic to how it is used in finance/economics. I would definitely take another of his courses.

I took this class during the pandemic so things may be different during a normal quarter, but either way I strongly recommend against taking this class. Professor Rojas was highly uncommunicative, rarely responded to emails, and was not very understanding. He assumed we knew material from Econ 41 that we hadn’t actually learned and refused to teach it to us. Lectures were basically Rojas moving his mouse around the screen and reading through the notes, which were extremely long, disorganized, and often incorrect, and he sometimes entirely skipped important sections. You’re required to code in R for homework assignments and interpret it on exams. While R is a useful language to know, there is a disconnect between the amount and difficulty of coding that is required for homework and the basic knowledge you need to have of R for exams. Additionally, the homework took at least five hours to complete each week, and during the first week it took around fifteen hours because of the steep learning curve. Rojas was not very helpful with teaching us R and told us to look up everything online whenever someone had a question rather than answering. Grades consisted of homework (15%), two midterms (20% each), and the final (45%). The first midterm went well, but since the average was higher than what the professor expected he assumed there was cheating and made the second exam heavily proctored. The final was also proctored, but everyone had so many technical difficulties with the software that it was removed and just proctored over Zoom. All exams were open note, which was helpful, but while we had no restrictions on the length of our study guide for the first exam the rest had some page limits. There was very little practice material for the midterms and none for the final, and what was given was often incorrect. While Professor Rojas is knowledgeable about the subject, I did not find his teaching very effective and I would not take this class again.

Econ 103 and Econ 103L are the classes using Statistics knowledge at Economics Department. The good thing to learn Econ 103 with Professor Rojas is that he has a very decent knowledge of Stats and often make the points very clear to non-stats major students. Besides, he is very polite and helpful both during his class and his office hours. He likes to make sure every students are clear on the subjects. If you attend his lectures (highly recommended, very clear) and do the exercises, you should be fine on the midterm and finals as they are pretty straightforward. Highly recommended :) Professor Rojas is the BEST Professor ever! I would love to take more classes with him.

Lab lectures were very unhelpful. This quarter we were required to complete homework assignments in R and essentially learn the language in a couple of weeks, but the lab did not help at all. Later in the quarter instead of teaching us new concepts that were relevant to the homework, Rojas introduced us to machine learning and other concepts that were useless for assignments and exams. Overall the integration of the lab with the class was not the best and lab lectures were a waste of time.

Having taken Econ 1 with Rojas (and having had a pretty good experience), I was shocked by how unorganized and poorly planned this course was. This class began with a ridiculous homework assignment in R that took days and ended with Respondus crashing over and over again on the final. In between, Rojas basically seemed to give up on trying to teach - it really felt like the pandemic had taken a lot out of him. He also decided to teach off of an R Markdown document, which sort of made sense because he was trying to teach us R, but was a lot more difficult to follow than a traditional powerpoint. If you can, I would recommend that you wait a couple of quarters before taking 103 so that the Econ department can figure out how to run this class.

Any positive reputation this professor had in the past is completely gone. He has completely checked out as a teacher this year and doesn't care about anyone. You will never get an email response. You will waste 40 hours a week on homework working on unrelated questions. He said we will be tested on R studio and coding, but not a single piece of code was needed for any of the tests. We started with the ability to take tests using R studio, but by the second midterm we were not allowed R studio, limited notes, testing via respondus, and a webcam proctor in addition to testing. While previous reviews say there is a curve, there really isn't. I bombed the first test because I studied to be tested on code. I got B and above on midterm and final. Raw score 79% because of the first exam, C+ as final grade. So basically no curve, couldn't even bump me to a B-. Students were so frustrated with him the entire class wrote a formal letter of complaints to the head of the econ department. One student went as far as chewing him out during one of the class sessions. The material isn't that hard but he made it a very toxic learning environment.

If you have taken AP Statistics or have a knack for mathematics, this class will be a breeze for you.

- Verbose lecture style, and covers the material very quickly. I'm not sure if this is because he is the only person with his camera turned on. No one in class turns on their camera, so he speaks into a black void..

- Exams are proctored on Respondus Browser & Zoom call.

- Many of the multiple choice questions had an option for "None of the Above"

- There is virtually NO curve. Don't rely on there being a curve!!!

- Unlike other ECON 41 professors, he lets you use a Graphing Calculator on exams. Learn how to use it to solve stat questions!

- Many times (during the lecture) he would say, "I'll be sending an e-mail out later about____" . . . and there would never be an e-mail. A total of 4 emails were sent out to students during the entire quarter, about Midterm 1, Respondus Requirement, Midterm 2, and Final Exam.

- Professor Rojas' email policy is: "Students should email me only for personal matters." We are supposed to get help from T.A. or during his office hours only. If you have other classes during his office hours, then you're out of luck.

Despite my experiences shared above, Professor Rojas is a good professor to take for ECON 41. He provides you with textbook scans of homework questions and answers.

The actual material of this class is not difficult, but this class was horrible because of the professor. His lectures were so boring and he would give the easiest examples that did not reflect the difficulty of the actual problems on his exams at all. He also had typos in almost every example he gave during lecture. Grade was based purely on two midterms and a final, which is pretty unfair considering the fact that several of the problems on the exams were unclear and had typos, which he refused to give points back for. He also claims he "curves" but in all three classes I've taken with him, I've never heard of anyone's grade actually changing after his "curve". I feel like I could've done better in this class if it weren't for him, because I understood the material pretty well, but his exams and answer choices were so unclear that I got problems "wrong" despite my calculations actually being correct. Even my TA couldn't give any explanation as to why I got the problems wrong after I explained my calculations other than "sorry, I can't change the professor's decision," which just shows how unreasonable he is.

i took ap stats in high school and this class was a breeze. learn to use a calculator that can do integrals for you and you'll be fine. the midterms were really similar to the practice midterms he gave. i only watched the recorded lectures which i found helpful so i can't say much about what he was like live. homework is also optional. my ta, iris fu was so good and explained everything.

this class was not too hard but a lot of material. rojas uses mindtap instead of ccle for homework and tests. lectures are dry but the professor just read off the slides. the material is introduction level so it is not too hard but there is minimal outside help from TAs and the professor