ECON 3010

Discussions were useless, but lectures weren't awful. Occasionally Zirkle goes off-topic, but it makes class interesting. Pretty simple if you're comfortable with math and pay attention in lecture; didn't have to read that much.

This is definitely the weed-out course for economics majors (and minors). The difficulty and depth of the material is definitely beyond that of ECON201; if you struggled with introductory, intermediate won't be any easier. That said, Zirkle is a relatively good teacher and goes over lecture material and sample problems in an easy to follow manner. Be warned though, his tests are all free response, so you can't BS your way through his class. Class averages vary: low 80s for the first midterm, 64 for the second. The layout of the class is: two midterms, two quizzes in discussion sections, and a final. I'd definitely recommend Zirkle if you want to learn economics.

Zirkle is a pretty good professor :) I would recommend taking this class with Zirkle as well. As long as you do the problem sets he assigned, it should be fine. However, this class being at an intermediate level is indeed tougher and in fact contains a lot of maths. ECON 3010 uses maths to built upon the microeconomics theories learnt in ECON 2010.

really nice guy

Zirkle's class is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. This is absolutely the weed out course for econ, and it shows. Zirkle is not a bad lecturer, but there's a discrepancy between the difficulty of the homework he assigns (difficult) and the questions on the exam (extremely difficult to the point where he admitted one was almost impossible). He's a really nice guy, and has to cancel his office hours a lot on account of taking care of his daughter. You can't really hold that against him, but it does make catching him for help a little tricky.

Class is a weed-out. Tough, but keep up on the homework problems and ask questions if you need to.

Classes are informative. Discussions are helpful. Exams are extremely hard. Ask questions if you don't understand something. Prerequisite for Econ major, so you can't really avoid it. But if you have to take it, take it with Zirkle!

Zirkle isn't the most helpful professor when it comes to explaining the material. It's important to fully understand the problem sets he assigns. Go to the TA's office hours more than his own because he sometimes confuses the students more than he helps them.

Reading the chapters can be very helpful since he isn't so great at teaching the material.

The lectures were rather confusing. The professor seems knowledgeable, but often he isn't able to effectively convey the course material well to the class. However, he seems to stick to the textbook for the most part, and going to the discussion section and watching your TAs doing the problems helps greatly. Tests were a bit sporadic in terms of difficulty, but grading seemed consistent.

He makes easy stuff pretty complicated. Despite the fact that I got an A in this course I think Zirkle could have done a better job at explaining.
The curve is also quite brutal average is something like C+/B-