ECON 2020

Coppock is one of the best professors I've ever had at UVA. His lectures are interesting and engaging and he's just a really cool guy. Final was harder than the midterms, and just a heads up - he doesn't do the dutch knockout in the summer. As a non-econ major, this was an incredibly manageable course even without having previously taken 2010. Review the textbook hardcore before every test. He can be picky about wording/phrasing.

I really did not like elzinga or his way of teaching, but Coppock made economics so much more interesting and easy to connect with. I enjoyed his lectures and the textbook did a great job of reinforcing what we learned in class. highly recommend!

This is a wonderful course that I wish everyone could take. The amount of real world knowledge you learn in this class is substantial. I have never had a professor lecture in such an engaging way before. By far my favorite class so far at UVA. With no homework, only 1-2 hours of reading per week, and tests that are not bad at all, taking this class is a no-brainer, even if you are studying something unrelated, like I am (Electrical Engineering). Hurry and sign up!

Professor does not really know the course. Uses his sons shitty examples. His son doesnt know anything, trust me. Rotunda principles 4 lyf

Before recommending this class I will lay my two biases out on the table; I took ECON 2010 with Elzinga before, and I had a good TA for 2020.

I would recommend taking micro first, as it lays the groundwork for the first half of the course, and puts you far ahead of the game. I have found Elzinga's class to be good preparation as the class and tests are structured the same way.

So, the class.. Say what you will about Coppock. I think he is incredible. Funny, engaging, brief, and understandable, he keeps every lecture extremely condensed so you can capture all of it, and most of the lectures finish early as a result. As opposed to Elzinga's grilling of vocabulary, Coppock designs each test so that if you have an overall strong intuitive knowledge of concepts and how they work, you will do great. I believe the tests were totally fair and about what I expected going into them. Perfect balance between challenge and enjoyment. Take the class.

Coppock is an engaging and active lecturer. He tends to paint a picture with stories to really engage us in economic concepts. He wrote the textbook, which is actually a really entertaining textbook. I don't dread reading for the class. You don't have to outline the textbook or take notes on the chapters because he lectures pretty much straight from the textbook. I'd rather go to class than read the textbook because his lectures are really good, productive, and entertaining. You can make do without doing the readings but his textbook has great summary and practice problems -so you should still buy the textbook. Don't get the Inquisitive. I don't have it and I am still doing pretty well without it (and by well, I mean, so far I've done pretty well above the class average on tests). So don't waste your money. He first emphasizes to buy the UVA version of the textbook, but its honestly the same thing - so the regular or UVA - either is fine.

The tests are kinda hard. You have study a lot and know your material well. There is just so much material so it can be hard to learn everything for one test. But if you study right (not hard-- but study the correct material), then the tests can be predictable.

Having a good TA is extremely important since a lot of the practice comes from discussion. Go to Discussion. I truly ingrained all of the economics material through discussion. I HIGHLY recommend Ben Leyden. He is the Head TA but he knows his shitzz. His discussions are basically reteaching the lectures but with practice problems. His discussions are extremely useful and he explains concepts with almost immaculate clarity. Although I have discussion at 8:30am, I don't mind going to his discussion because they are actually extremely helpful. I almost prefer Mr. Leyden's discussions over Coppock's lectures more -- but that's also really hard since I enjoy attending them both.

Both of these classes made me think about majoring in Economics. Coppock - great lecturer, reading the textbook is not important but still useful to have the textbook. Regular or UVA version DOES NOT matter. Don't waste money on Inquisitive. Test can be hard if you don't study. Study right and you'll be fine. Discussion TA matters. Highly Recommend Ben Leyden.

After reading quite a few of these reviews out of curiosity, I'd say the majority of them are fairly close to my own opinion. Coppock is definitely one of my favorite lecturers so far. I'd recommend going to every lecture, reading the textbook, and hoping you get a decent TA. Some are great, some are useless. Overall, a recommended course for pretty much every college student.

I actually liked the course, I just hate the way that it's graded. It's very easy to lose points on the written exams for very silly reasons (i.e. forgetting a single word) and the fact that it's Dutch KO means that those who put in effort throughout the semester but just came short on the final get punished by there not being a curve at the end. In summary, the final is weighted so heavily that it's very difficult to get an A in the class without getting an A on the final. And because there is Dutch KO at the end means the grade distributions get messed up and the end result is no curve.

Like most other people reviewing this class recently, I think that Coppock is a really good lecturer, one of the best I've had at UVA. He's very engaging and keeps lecture interesting. However, I have two reasons why I wouldn't take this class again if I could do the semester over again.
1. TAs: The variance from TA to TA is enormous. Most TAs are alright, some are very good, but some are very bad. Thankfully having a bad TA doesn't ruin your chances of getting an A in the class, though. I know this is a common problem in large classes, so it's a factor in determining whether to take the class (if you aren't required to).
2. Tests: If we're being honest, intro to macro shouldn't really be a hard class, rather more of a class designed to give you a good taste of what economics is. The material covered in the course wasn't especially difficult to understand and the concepts are fairly straightforward. The tests, on the other hand, don't accurately assess your knowledge of economics. They're graded in such a way that stresses verbatim memorization of terms, which isn't strongly related to how well you understand the subject. If you're an economics major and get bad grades on the tests, don't worry-you probably know the material decently. If you aren't extremely interested in economics (maybe just taking the class as a tangential interest, like I did), then you're in for a surprise on the tests.

TL;DR If you've got to take the class, memorize terms for the test. If you aren't enthusiastic about economics and willing to put a lot of study time into it, I can't say I would recommend the course to you.

Don't get me wrong, Professor Coppock is a great professor in lecture--very articulate, witty and clear. But the guy needs to get off his high horse when it comes to grades. The first two tests were all short answer and if you didn't get the wording exactly how he wanted it, he took all points off. The final was pretty representative of all the material in the course, but the "curve" actually hurt a lot of people--instead of going up from a B+ raw I went down to a B. In other words, don't rely on Dutch Knockout. It sucks how frustrating the grading is in this class because he really does teach the material well, his expectations are just a little too unrealistic in an intro class. Overall I recommend taking Macro with Coppock, but be warned that you may not get the grade you think you deserve.