ECON 2020

Lectures can be pretty boring and dry but Doyle does his best to keep things interesting. You don't have to go to class if you don't want to because he uploads video lectures from COVID but honestly I think it's harder to focus watching the videos than it is going in person. He also does Dutch knockout at the end but the final is significantly harder than the midterms so don't count on it. Solid prof to take intro macro with. #tCFS25

I think professor Doyle is a good professor and he is passionate about economics. This class has very little work and almost all of the grade is quizzes and exams. There is readings that you are supposed to do each week but you can definitely get through the class without doing them. The exams are pretty fair in this class. The midterms were 15 multiple choice questions and a few free response. The only thing about the free response is they often had very specific rubrics that sometimes expected more than the question asked for so you could lose points even with the right answer. The class has Dutch knockout so your final exam grade could replace your overall grade if you do really well on it, but I’d assume not many people benefit from it because the final is a good bit harder and obviously way longer than the midterms.

Course grade breakdown: class participation = 8%, discussion points = 4%, two quizzes each = 4%, two non-cumulative exams each = 20%, and final exam = 40%.

Class participation is calculated using weekly Kahoots. He also emails these out to do by EOW in case you were not in class, which is very generous. I would highly recommend going to class because Doyle is a very good lecturer and I was always super engaged. Discussion attendance is optional, but Mina Aydin was the best! We did in-class worksheets (open-note), and she would have 3hr OH before exams that were very helpful.

Material is very easy, but exams can be tricky to ace. My advice: Make sure you understand the content, study with the practice exams and practice questions (they are usually pretty similar to the exam!), and then do some additional practice for the short response questions because lost points there add up. If you do not have time to read the textbook, pay attention to graphs/charts in his lecture slides or when he talks about real-world examples. The MAINLY matters for the final exam (except I would highly recommend reading the textbook by the final because there is a low margin of error with it being 40%). However, on the non-cumulative exams, if the question/answer cis directly from the textbook, he will NOT budge with any grade request/explanations.

Overall, Doyle makes the class pretty fun, and I was lucky with my TA. Not an easy A but very doable if you are consistent.