The class is not that hard at all. I didn't read the book and still got an A with no problem. Some people study for days, and I am not sure that I understand why. Take good notes. Memorize the few key concepts (i.e. the Rotunda principles), review the historical data on his slides, take good notes, and just pick the answer that seems logical. It is a great class.

Just go to lecture and take diligent notes. If you are a good test taker, you'll do fine. I wouldn't rely on double dutch though since the final is relatively tricky.

I really have no idea why people believe this is a hard class to get an A in. I had not taken any economics courses before in my life, let alone ECON 201, and my only knowledge was very basic offhand microeconomics and the overview of macroeconomic fiscal and monetary policy I learned from AP US Government in high school and from the news, as well as the growth theory I learned from Prof. Waldner's Politics of Developing Areas (a course that Prof. Coppock personally told me was all I needed to know about growth theory). Despite all that, I got a rather easy A- (I calculated an A from his curved grading scale that he creates every semester based on median and mode grades on exams) with rather minimal effort. The textbook is only helpful at the beginning of the course in teaching how to use PRICE THEORY GRAPHS, the absolutely most crucial thing to master to get an A in this course. Every other reading is not at all needed, and in fact, when going over growth theory, the textbook is abysmal and more of a hindrance in learning the material. All you need to get good grades on the two midterms are good notes from lecture, which are easy to attend as part of your grade is dependent on answering Who Wants to Be a Millionaire-style "Ask the Audience" questions about the lecture in class with clickers. The midterms are both mainly short answer and regurgitating the three big statistics he gives you throughout the whole course, but the final is 200 multiple choice questions, meaning that it is the one test that is actually somewhat difficult, but with a curve, I still got an A- on it. Overall, I absolutely love Prof. Coppock and his lectures, even if he oversimplifies a lot of macroeconomic theory and doesn't get into any theories other than Keynesianism and criticism of it. I would heartily support absolutely anyone taking this course, and it convinced me to double major in economics and foreign affairs.

Definitely go to every lecture. You don't need to read the book. It did help me to put some of the concepts he taught in a broader context, but nothing from the textbook that was not addressed in class was ever on an exam. I ended up getting the dutch knock out but it's not easy to do. The final definitely had some very tricky questions including ones on historical context. Overall, an amazing class and Coppock is an incredible professor. I loved going to his classes. Definitely take it, but be prepared to study.

Coppock does have interesting lectures and the class itself is very enjoyable. But he does not teach to the book at all, and his exams are based solely on how he teaches economics, not the textbook, so most questions are very ambiguous and vague. They are also extremely difficult and not a reflection of command of material on the whole. I would say if you are not an econ major, think twice because an A won't be easy.

Coppock has awesome lectures, but there only seems to be a weak correlation between amount of time studying and the final grade.

I absolutely loved this class. It's been one of the best classes I've taken so far at UVA. Professor Coppock has made me go from hating to economics to finding it extremely fascinating and fun. He's one of the best lecturers I've seen so far, and his enthusiasm for the subject material shows. The course was definitely not an easy A, but if you study his lecture materials (I only opened the textbook once during the entire course), you'll be set. There's a curve at the end of the course that bumped my grade from an A- to an A. I loved this class!

Took this class because I was interested in learning how the economy works. What I learned was not to branch out unless you're ok with a D. I do feel like I've learned something about macro, unfortunately the tests didn't really reflect that.

I didn't like this class

Entertaining professor, enjoyable subject. Large class makes it hard to keep focused, but the clicker questions keep you coming at least. The tests are a little tricky. But dutch knockout at the end.