ECON 3010

Other reviews got it right, this class is very very hard. Kripalani is a nice person, but I recieved my first F in this class and I am not that dumb.

I have many qualms with this class. First of all, Professor Kripalani does not use Canvas. Everything is in Teams and Gradescope, so you already have to add 2 extra platforms to your daily routine. Additionally, she does not post completed lecture slides, nor does she record lecture. This means that during lecture, everyone has their phones out to take photos of every slide because she goes so fast that it is impossible to keep up. She also would frequently skip small steps when solving problems, which would add confusion and students would have to stop her mid lecture to clarify things when she could have just gone slower. On top of that, we would frequently end lecture 30 minutes early after speeding through the slides. Students also frequently had to correct her during lecture for making simple algebra mistakes. It is also sometimes very hard to hear her because sometimes she would not use a microphone, and would sometimes speak very softly or mutter things that were unintelligible.

For the grading, 75% of the class is based off your exam scores. There are 3 midterms and a final. If you have sit in all 3 midterms and have a a high enough grade average, then the final is optional. Our class averages were between a 70% and 73%. The exams are usually between 6 and 12 questions, and are multiple parts, so if you get the first part wrong, you’re screwed for the rest of the question. The questions are all short answer and very math heavy. She is very stingy with exam regrade requests, but you can sometimes get a few points back if you make a strong enough argument. The exams are “curved,” but actually this means nothing and you might get half a point added to your raw score.

The rest of your grade is made up lecture quizzes, homework, and PACE, which is basically just career events with the Economics Career Office. You have a lecture quiz due after every class, and a homework each week. The PACE is spread out throughout the semester. After the first midterm, we started getting extra credit assignments that were worth one point and due 12 hours after we had just learned the material, which was extremely frustrating because we weren’t given any assistance on these assignments from her or the TAs (per her instructions), and were just expected how to know how to do them.

Finally, you will need to go to office hours in order to know how to complete the HWs, unless you are an econ/math genius. Lecture will only give you so much, and you will have to review the material outside of class to apply it. Overall, I would not recommend taking this class with Professor Kripalani, as I think her exams set you up for failure and she is also not the best instructor. With all of this being said, while the class if very difficult, it is possible to succeed if you really put in maximum effort and exert all of your energy and time towards this class, but it will be hell. Professor Kripalani genuinely cares about her students and is willing to meet with you if you ask, however your ultimate overall success will come from your own effort. I easily spent over 10 hours a week every week this semester and more during exam weeks, all to perform average on the exams and I don't think this was due to my laziness or lack of work ethic - I think this class was just structured in a way that is unfair to students and sets you up to fail.

3010 is hard. It’s meant to be. Kripalani does a fantastic job teaching the material and offering support individually and during office hours. She’s very responsive and the TAs are super helpful with the lecture quizzes and homework’s. 2 lecture quizzes and 1 hw are dropped and the lowest of your 4 exam scores is dropped meaning taking the final isn’t even necessary. The average on our 3 exams were 72, 72, and 76. I believe with adequate studying and doing all the problems presented to you, you can easily achieve an A in the class. There’s also a lot of EC that can boost your grade, the only annoying thing is you have to calculate this in yourself because all you get in grade scope is point values for each assignment (each exam is 25% of your grade and hw/lecture quizzes are the other 25%). I highly recommend taking 3010 with Kripalani, she is truly wonderful!

She made this class way harder than it needed to be. The homeworks didn't correlate with lecture (like the other reviews have said), so you had to go to office hours to get them done. You would have a lecture quiz after every lecture but they weren't bad compared to the homeworks. Exams were reasonable but you never feel prepared. The first exam was definitely the hardest for me. The other two were difficult but not as bad. If you take the final and sat for the other three exams, then you get to drop the lowest score. You can also not take the final if you took the other 3 exams. She honestly just wasn't the best at teaching the material. Also, she does not post the slides, so if you're the type of person to skip class, I would not take it with Kripalani. My advice is to redo ALLLLL the problems she gives you throughout the material (i.e., lecture slide questions, lecture quiz questions, discussions, etc.). Make sure you thoroughly understand the process of getting to the answer. You can always message her on Teams with your questions and she gets back to you pretty quickly.

This class is one of the hardest in the econ department for sure. It mainly consists of lecture quizzes (2 per week) and a homework (1 a week). This class definitely requires you go to lecture and office hours and put in a lot of work. Kripalani is a really good professor and cares about her students' success, but you will not succeed in this class without a lot of effort. It's manageable, but it's definitely a struggle.

If you genuinely put in the work the class will not be too hard. In this course, you are largely relying on calculus (specifically derivations and partial derivatives) to complete the work. I think how she taught was helpful to me.

The class has three exams (25% each), quizzes for each lecture (10%), homework due every week (10%), and a professional career development component or PANE (5%). The PANE category is an easy 100%. As for the other, if you try, you can get a good grade. For the lecture quizzes, I went either to her or my TA to check over them and basically got perfect scores on each assignment.

I will say though many of the homework assignments are not something you can do on your own in my opinion. In each discussion session, the TA would always give us hints or flat-out solve most of the hw for us. She did say they were made to be hard and you won't necessarily find problems like it on the exams. I would say still go to office hours so you know what is going on. Before each exam, there are extra credit homework sheets that I think are important to do because it not only gives you more practice but you can gain back points you earned.

The tests are not cumulative, and if you sit for all 3 tests, you do not have to take the final. To study for the exams, go over lecture quizzes, discussion problems, and examples done in class. This will most likely be the things you see on the exam. After the first exam, she started giving us extra credit problems where points could be added back to the lecture quiz category.

In all, I think this class was very informative and you could easily get an A if you put in the work. My advice is to GO TO LECTURE and PRACTICEE. She did not post the completed slides so if you don't know anyone, you probably won't get the slides unless you ask. Practicing problems honestly helped me because at times it could get confusing. After all, what is being asked is similar to other concepts. I ended the class with an A- and I think this was due to my work ethic.

I'm going to try to be as fair and balanced as possible in this review, keeping in mind that Kripalani is a first year professor at UVA. This means she realistically does not have the freedom to structure the course however she wants, and has to match her grade distribution with that of Santugini's class, which is designed to have a 3.0 average.

About my experience with her in this course:
1) At the beginning of the semester, I felt as if the lecture slides did not have math problems that accurately reflected the exam. She asked us for feedback on her teaching after the first exam, however, and this improved dramatically + she gave a more step-by-step approach to solving problems which I think helped our class a lot. She was very receptive to feedback which I appreciated.
2) She is overwhelmingly fair, more so than she needs to be. She insisted that we all submit regrade requests and that it will likely only help us (I don't remember if she said it definitely can't hurt us or not, so I'm throwing in the "likely"). I got 8% back on exam 2 and 9% back on exam 3 through regrade requests, and it took my final grade from a C/C+ to a B (haven't received final grades yet, if there is a curve it might end up being a B+) I'd like to note that a lot of these were not from grading errors, and that she told us to argue for points and that if we have a compelling case she will consider it.

Advice for this class:
1) You cannot skip class and expect to do well. If you have an ipad, I'd highly recommend downloading and annotating the slides, she posts unannotated slides on canvas and it's hard to follow along if you only have paper notes.
2) Do ALL of the extra credit. My lecture quiz average was well over 100%, and it saved my ass in this class.
3) Go to your TA's office hours before every homework assignment. Homeworks take time and are hard, and the TA's are amazing. My advice is honestly to do homeworks on your own because it's hard to understand everything when you're in a group imo, but ymmv.
4) Submit regrade requests. She made it very clear that she wants us to-- I didn't for the first exam because I felt like I would be annoying, but I wish I had, it probably cost me the difference between a B+ and a B.
5) Talk to her after class if you have questions, she's super kind and will help.

This class was hell, but I learned a ton.

#tCFF23

She laid out all the course material in a very effective way. The course was basically set up with 3 midterms (the third was on the last day of class) that were worth 25% each. The lecture quizzes were after every lecture and were 10% of your grade. Weekly homeworks were 10% of your grade. 5% came from career related activities (linkin profile, attending career event, resume...). After the first midterm she began to offer random assignment for extra credit that came from lecture that ended up being very helpful. She also was very accesible and was very good about office hours before exams where she would go through lots of students questions that I found to be extremely helpful. While the exams were not extremely difficult, there were certain things (cases, graphs, parameters) that you really needed to remember that sometimes were difficult to memorize before the exam. She did make the exams so that you could essentially get partial credit for setting up problems,etc. She also offered extra credit questions on exams that were helpful. However, my TA was not great and Kripalani would give us problems to do in discussion that would teach us some more concepts from lecture but my TA was not good at explaining any of them so I felt at a disadvantage because of my TA.