ECON 3020

Syllabus: MC Average 10%, Problem Set Average 10%, Exam 1 20%, Exam 2 20%, iClicker 5%, Final 35%

Overview: I think people should take Intermediate Macro with Westerfield, but there definitely should be some warnings when it comes to her class. Intermediate Macro is a lot of content and Westerfield uses slides that make it difficult to capture all lesson info when in-class. She moves through slides very quickly and draws graphs by hand, which in my opinion, made it difficult to follow along at certain points. This resulted in me having to practically review all posted slides in entirety before taking exams.

As an econ major, I enjoyed this course and found a majority of the content to be interesting. It consists of a lot of economic models involving graphs (like most econ courses), so be prepared to plot supply-demand in many different variations during the course.

There will be times that lecture can be quite boring, but in order to earn the iClicker points, you need to answer questions during class to meet a requirement to get the full 5% on your grade. I found this to be frustrating because lecture was not the most beneficial to my learning.

MCs and Problem Sets were manageable. In both it is possible to achieve near perfect scores if you put time and effort into completing them. For the problem sets, you can work with a group of 4 or 5, which is very helpful. Problem sets are organized by your TA and my section was not required to attend discussions to earn points.

Exams are the bulk of this class and to prepare for them you will need to study a lot. Questions are not extremely difficult, but they will test your in-depth knowledge of the course units. Make sure to understand each model in its entirety when going into exams. The average exam grades tend to sit around the mid-80s. They are the key to your grade, and it seems like a majority of course scores tend to sit in the B to A- range.

I really enjoy Westerfield as a professor, as I had her for ECON 3010 and knew I wanted to take ECON 3020 with her. I'm not sure I would recommend taking it with her going forward or if she'll be teaching it again after this semester. She had a heart attack that caused her to take about half of the semester off which I think made the class a lot more difficult for us and there weren't any major adjustments on grades to account for that gap in learning. I think Westerfield is an incredible professor, but I would be hesitant to register to another one of her courses (if she teaches any more) just because of how difficult this semester ended up being without her there. Additionally, I think the organization of her ECON 3010 class is much easier to follow, and she switched her On Calls to using iClicker which I almost feel like was worse and didn't aid our learning much. Incredible lecturer and thankful for the classes I did get to take with her.

This class was not hard at all. The material is very simple and there isn't really any hard math that you need to be able to do. I'd say the two things that bothered me were (1) the amount of work we had and (2) the amount of information we needed to know for exams (lecture material, certain articles and podcasts). Though the material is easy, it is fast-paced so you need to keep up with it. To be honest, though, a lot of it was pretty intuitive and/or repetitive so the second complaint that I have isn't that significant.

Professor Westerfield is also very kind and understanding, so she's very flexible when it comes to scheduling on-call dates which I really appreciated, as my on-call dates tended to fall on weeks when I had a lot of homework or exams. Definitely one of the nicest professors I've ever had. I would 100% recommend taking this class with her. #tCFS24

Overall I enjoyed this class. I think Westerfield is a really good lecturer though, and I for sure recommend her. She’s engaging and knows what she’s talking about. Exams are not the easiest but there are plenty of other assingments to even it out like questions of the day, MEL assignments, and problem sets which are never too bad. The content is hard but she really tries to make sure people understand it which is nice. #tCFspring2021

Hopefully, this review will be irrelevant with the return to in-person classes, but I found this class to be extremely tedious. The course content is definitely important, yet Professor Westerfield's lectures were often hard to take notes from and were extremely lengthy.

This is one of those courses that has a million assignments because the professor doesn't want the majority of the grade to rely on a single exam. The breakdown is 2x midterms [20%+20%], Online HW [7.5%], Lecture Questions [5%], Paper [5%], Problem Sets (groupwork) [7.5%], Final [35%]. Extra Credit can be achieved by filling out the course evaluations, office hours, and various other things that add up to 1 point extra on your final grade. The exams are comprised of a math/graph portion which was take-home and a timed MC portion later on. On average, the exams weren't awful -- the average floats around a high B. None of the material is rocket science, but it's just the sheer quantity of the information, especially for the final (cumulative). Pay attention to the units, which for some reason results in a point deduction greater than a mathematical mistake. Westerfield is super nice and always open to questions. In addition, never opened the textbook once.

TLDR: Westerfield has a lot of assignments but it helps you learn the material. She's very nice and willing to help you understand. Highly recommend taking this requirement with her.

Westerfield really cares about her students and wants you to understand the material. She is engaging, fun, and a really fair grader. She doesn't curve the class but gives you many opportunities to do well. Really recommend taking it with her and going to office hours.

Terrific course to take and I couldn't recommend Prof. Westerfield more. I took this course during the infamous Summer of 2020, during Summer Session I (and mind you, the pandemic was happening; hopefully this review will stand the test of time), and I will say that online classes at home went very smoothly with Westerfield. Her lectures are a bit dry at times, but she explains things incredibly well and puts a ton of real world examples within her course (note: the dryness issue is solved by putting prerecorded lectures on a higher speed haha; I normally watched things at 2x). Overall, super helpful professor who was quick to respond to emails, course was open book, and if you have the opportunity to take this class over the summer to finish an Econ req. early, Westerfield is your best bet. Disclaimer, and I'm just realizing this: this really only applies if the pandemic renders us all at home for a while, but my jurisdiction on her teaching still stands!

Maria teaches the course content extremely well, perhaps is a little repetitive at times. Overall great lecturer, and does a great job at bringing in real world applications. Her tests can be tricky if you don't study correctly for them. The multiple choice especially on the final was a little difficult. It isn't too hard to pull out a B/B+ and I hear she is the best to take the class with. She explains things very well and doesn't try to confuse you.

Very glad that I took this course with Westerfield. Material is very straightforward, and she does a good job of making lecture interesting every day. Assignments and tests were very fair, and you knew exactly what you had to know beforehand. I think the challenging part of this class is the amount of material - its just a dense amount of stuff to remember. I found the textbook to be really helpful with this, especially if I missed lecture/wasn't paying attention for a particular point or example. Before tests, I would read the textbook chapters we had to know, and then go through problems sets, which were very similar to the tests, and it worked for me. She does take attendance with the question of the day, as well as on call, so don't miss too many lectures.