ECON 3630

The expectations for this class are incredibly ambiguous. You don't see any of your project grades until the end of the semester, and you have no idea what the rubric is. Work is heavily back loaded towards the end of the semester -- two projects, a paper and a final all in the last month of class. However, the average midterm grade was an 88 under her completely subjective grading, which seems to be pretty lax. To study for exams, if you can fill out the study guide you'll do fine. Everything else is a toss up.

Devlin is incredibly smart and knows exactly what she's talking about. However, the class is still really boring. If you do the crazy amounts of reading she assigned they're easily 400 pages/week. I stopped reading them and they were not that important anymore.

The work is heavily skewed towards the last month of class. Prior to spring break there was only a midterm. After spring break there were 2 group papers (both single spaced), a group executive summary (single spaced, 2 pages), two projects on a country, and now the final. No homework though besides group work. There is a group evaluation so that helps people pull their weight. She does have slides up to study for the midterm.

Edit: This is basically a policy class, not an econ class. What you usually expect from an econ class is not what you're going to get here at all. If anything, it's more application, but at such a high level that economic principles basically don't come into play.

Devlin is brilliant and a pretty good lecturer. Each lecture focuses on one subject (urbanization, women, youth, etc.) Lecture is a combination of powerpoint and her drawing economic models on the board.

Grading consists of 25% midterm, 25% final, 25% first presentation, 25% second presentation. Here is how to do well.

Midterm: She provides study questions a week before. Each set relates to one lecture. Learn the economic models presented on the board from that class, then figure out some key concepts and facts. The test questions are basically the review questions.

First Presentation: Each group must present about the topic for the day, which relates to the lecture. Put in graphs and statistics from the World Bank readings for that day. Pick an early presentation date.

Second Presentation: It turns out the presentation itself is NOT FACTORED INTO THE GRADING! You must present a policy prescription for a certain country (e.x. healthcare in Tunisia). Do the required essays very well, this is what is graded.

Final: Same as the midterm.

This class is not overly difficult. Reading is unnecessary, although it can be very interesting. Take good notes, memorize concepts, and you will be fine. Non-Econ majors will be fine.

Overall, this was a very interesting class and relatively easy. There is a lot of groupwork so having good group members is nice, but it isn't too hard to do well on this part of the course. Focus more on the actual paper (country analysis and project summary) instead of the presentation since the presentation doesn't affect your grade. Everyone also has a short in-class presentation which takes place at the end of every class. The lectures were usually pretty boring in my opinion, but this is only because I usually got lost early on in most of them. She lectures extremely fast and throws a lot of information out, most of which isn't important for the exams, and it is easy to keep track if you lose focus at all. However, she gave out very helpful study-guides for both exams; reviewing/learning as much information as possible for each question on the study-guide is the best way to go since exam questions are based directly on these. Midterm and final are ten short answer questions and not hard at all.

This is not an economics class. Do not let the ECON classification fool you, this is much more of a policy oriented class. That being said, I personally struggled with the course, not because the course material was particularly difficult, but rather because the lectures were very dry and the grading of the midterm/final (which are 10 free response questions each) were very subjective. The reading is extensive, but absolutely not necessary. I also would not recommend taking this class if you have no prior policy knowledge of the Middle East. I found myself having to spend a lot of time learning the background on many aspects of Middle East policy in order to understand the material presented in lecture. That being said, it's very easy to get a B+ or A-, but an A will require a very well-rounded knowledge of the material.

This class is very easy for an Econ major, but could be somewhat more difficult for someone unfamiliar with Economics. Julia Devlin herself, while very, very knowledgeable in the subject, is not a very good teacher, and the class becomes very boring. She also does a very poor job of explaining what she is looking for in your group project or class presentation but seems to give good grades for them regardless. In short: easy to get a good grade, but frustratingly boring and unclear.

For someone wanting to bang out an Econ elective, this isn’t a bad class. However, to get an A you need a true mastery of the content which is fair. Exams are all free response (same format as the study guide) and graded on a scale from 1-10. If you at least sound like you know what you are taking about you will get around an 8. If you truly nail everything on the head you will get a 10. It is obvious Devlin knows her stuff, but I think she expects too much out of her students. For example, one time she drew this incredibly complicated graph on the board depicting how Saudi Arabia’s change in oil production impacted the market (profits, revenues, other effects, etc.) Everyone in the class was sitting there like what the hell just happened. Professor Devlin knows these are all much more advanced topics than we can even begin to understand the complexity of. She knows how hard it is and could completely destroy every student on the midterm and final if she wanted to - but she doesn’t - a very lenient grader. She just wants you to get more excited and be genuinely interested in a relatively important part of the world. By no means is this class an easy A, but almost everyone in the class will get a B+/A-. If you are interested in becoming an oil trader, currency trader, or macro investor, this would definitely be a worthwhile class to take if you are willing to put in the effort to make it worthwhile.

Professor Devlin's class is structured around weekly discussions on a survey of important topics for the MENA economies. Those interested in learning about development economics and policy will find this class very interesting.

Devlin is a knowledgable professor but she introduces economical concepts in pure abstract way that makes them difficult to grasp for those who haven't take to many economics classes. For those in this situation, I recommend focusing in the big ideas behind each of her graphs. If you see her rumbling and talking to herself while drawing a curve with eight symbols you barely understand, take notes on what the graph is actually refering to. You will see that behind all those abstract concepts there is a much simpler idea, and that idea is what she will test you on.

The grading is divided into a class presentation (25%), a midterm (25%), a country analysis (25%) and the final (25%). Her grading is very lenient. Make sure you never leave a question on a test unanswered, even if you don't know what the hell she's talking about.

RECOMMENDABILITY: (7.5/10)
DIFFICULTY: (5.5/10)

So this is a fairly easy Econ elective but I’m not sure I learned much at all. This is also much more of a policy course than an Econ course. Additionally, Devlin has a unique lecturing style which puts you to sleep. Her ppts are absurdly packed with information and it’s almost as if she wrote everything she wanted to on a word doc and copy/pasted it. Her group projects she assigns are slightly confusing at first but then you realize it’s even more work than you initially thought. You don’t really use any class information on the projects, you pretty much have to look everything up. I think my group spent a solid 20 hours doing our country project, because there’s also a data analysis portion. However, I will say this is one of the easier Econ electives, you’re just gonna hate the entire class.

So this course had the potential to be really interesting (as a policy/econ nut) but professor devlin was just suchhh a dry lecturer. She also didn't record lectures which was EXTREMELY wack. Other than these issues, I would totally recommend this class bc again, the stuff has potential to be really interesting but it's also a really easy A. Two group projects worth 25% each and an exam worth 50%. Also pretty lit because the exam was given in mid-April, so essentially no need to go to class after the exam. So again in summary, she was a super dry lecturer so the class can feel really boring at times, but a really easy A! Also don't bother buying the textbook I promise you won't need it at all#tCFspring2021