I had pretty good notes, more than anyone, I swear. And I did pretty well for both exams, but not the top of the top. But for final, I felt bad, since the most important parts that we covered were not on the exam, but rather the last materials we covered after second midterm (which were instructed one week before the exam) took most of the parts.
His office hour was super helpful, but based on the premise that you DID TRY to solve the problems on your own BEFOREHAND. Then you pick out parts you are confused with and ask, and if you keep doing this, you will probably succeed in this class. However, during lecture time, I often thought he talked too fast, so it was hard to catch up.
Also, his office hour was disturbed easily by the noise from other parties of other class that shared the room with us. WTH? there are so many empty rooms in ucla and how can two different classes share office hour space? I hope the professor did something about it, but I guess he didn't have power.

Overally I recommend this professor, but you will make sure you are ready to work ahead and keep thinking about econ concepts for the whole quarter..... beyond the materials.

The class was not as hard as I thought it would be. I struggled in ECON 11 and ECON 101 was much easier. Smith's exams are like 30% MC and 70% calculations. It's not as difficult if you attend his lectures, he usually gives you hints on which types of calculation problems will be on the exams. If you understand his problem sets and go through his slides a bit, you will definitely get a B in the class. In order to get an A, you have to know the conceptual part of the subject inside and out to ace the tricky MC questions.

Midterm 1's average was 74%.
Midterm 2's average was 35%.

I always procrastinated and stalled until 3 or 4 days before the test to do 3 weeks worth of problem sets and I still managed to get a B+. If you put effort in this class, you will be rewarded heavily.

Attend his lectures and do his problem sets accordingly and you will be fine.

i liked troy for the most part, and i felt that he did a decent enough job lecturing. i enjoyed how the lectures were not just 55 minute exercises in math, and that they showed some practical real-world applications of what we learned. however, the problem sets were not enough to prepare us for the exams, which were significantly hard. the first exam was doable, but the second was ridiculous enough that the distribution ended up becoming a meme. the final was ok. idk if i'd take this class with troy again, but i thought it was a decent enough experience, and it's not like the material is ever actually going to be easy.

Take any other professor.

Econ 101 is in general a really hard class. Prof Smith seemed like a really nice guy, but his lectures were pretty hard to keep up with. He uses slides to cover proofs and concepts, while he generally uses the board for practice problems. It was hard to follow when he used slides because he would often flip back and forth between slides really quickly, not giving enough time to take notes- maybe printing the slides off before class would have helped? While the class was hard, I liked that his exams were fairly conceptual rather than pure math (a relief after econ 11 and 41). If you take the class with Smith, make sure to find a good study group and befriend your TA. Jingyi was really good.

Smith is a nice guy who seems cool outside the classroom. He's well-spoken and tries hard to be engaging in lectures...he even gave money to some students who volunteered to act as a demonstration on stage...

However, his class was demanding and his exams were consistently and predictably unpredictable. Completing the problem sets were non-essential in a successful completion of the course. Examination material failed to align with the material contained in the assigned homework. Don't waste your time memorizing problem sets and solutions, make sure to cover concepts, whether discussed in-depth or briefly mentioned. I heavily used Wikipedia and Youtube to supplement my studying for this course which consisted of skimming problem set solutions and reading lecture slides; I attended maybe half of the lectures and ended up with an A.

I have never written a review on Bruinwalk for a professor, but my experience of Econ 101 was so bad that I had to for this course. Overall, he's a really nice guy and knows what he's talking about. However, he has no idea how to teach. I would say 90% of the material I learned in this class was from me self-studying because he only skimmed the topics in lecture and never actually ended up teaching what would be coming on the exams. I know this was his first time teaching at UCLA, but the fact that they assigned him to this course which is so important for a lot of students to get into their major is ridiculous. I would highly suggest anyone who sees a class being taught by him in the future to avoid him immediately. This is not a class you will enjoy and anything you learn would be self-taught. I would rather take the rest of my classes at UCLA with Professor Ravetch than him because at least Ravetch provides you all the materials in class for you to succeed.

I was super scared to take econ 101, but was so happy that I had Professor Smith. He was very relatable and genuinely wanted his students to succeed, which was refreshing. He even held a review session for the final and extra office hours. His lectures were good, he would transition from slides and doing problems on the board. He also used interactive examples in class and gave real life situations that made econ more relatable/ useful. I definitely recommend him as a professor. He's SO nice and willing to help!

The first midterm and final for this class were relatively easy if you studied extensively. I will not lie, this class took effort, but I don't think it was that challenging. People will complain about midterm 2, but the only reason I did poorly is due to my TA saying not to focus on a concept that was worth 35%. All in all, I would take this class again because I think all it takes is studying and understanding the concepts. If you want an easy class that will get you a C without worries, this isn't your class. If you want to study and be rewarded, this is your class.

I think he is okay as an professor, maybe it's because his lack of experience with large group of students that led to problems. Also he only covered the basics in class, but in order to get a good score in tests I think a full understanding of problem sets and a good TA is necessary. My TA had his own notes which were helpful and supplemental to the professor's notes. As noted by others his mc questions are difficult and often involve options like "more than one is false" or " all the above " and " none of the above".