ECON 3720

Do the HWs and read the collab PDFs, they are the most helpful for the exams. Michener uses (what I thought were) interesting and practical examples. Not the most engaging lecturer by any means, so reading the handouts will help you a lot more than going to class. I found the class to be pretty interesting & applicable to real life. Definitely recommend taking the class with him than anyone else.

It's a tough course, and because the exams are only 20 questions, it's very easy to screw up big time. Michener is a good teacher..a lot of dry humor (which I found hilarious) and his classes can be interesting at times. You're probably taking this class because you have to so take it with Michener.

The labs will probably take you at least a few hours a week. Put the time into these and know his collab notes like the back of your hand, and you'll be okay.

Boring lectures. Textbook is not useful and much of the lectures are spent pointing out flaws in it. If you take this class study from his online handouts.
You'll need to to use a program called Stata and is more or less like like excel on steroids, which can be tough at times. The labs are long, but manageable and the tests are very challenging. There is a curve at the end.
Overall, very difficult and dry course that I would advise everyone to avoid this course unless they are an ECON major or STAT minor which both require Econometrics.

The Good:
In my opinion, although his lectures are sometimes dry, he has great examples for explaining the subjects at hand. His handouts are also extremely helpful. The class is very straightforward. Do the labs, you'll get through the class.

The Bad:
I did very well in this class. I beat the average by about 17%. However, I still received a B+. I worked so hard, yet it didn't matter in the end. His grade distributions were actually based on not just the semester, but on other recent semesters he has taught the class. Our semester did very poorly, so he decided to make the grade cutoff very harsh. The average must have been at best a C+.

Ugh. This class. This class was a struggle. A large part of the reason this class is so difficult is that it’s so boring that it’s difficult to pay attention. Michener is pretty much an expert on the subject matter. He will continuously point out how useless the textbook is, so your best bet for doing well is to study thoroughly the handouts he has written up himself. The course uses software called STATA, and 15% of your final grade consists of a final exam testing your ability to use it. The rest of the grading consists of midterm and final exams, clicker questions, and labs. The midterm average was 64% and the final average was 56% (the average on the STATA final was 55%). He told my class that we are essentially dumber than previous semesters, scoring about 5% lower on all of these. The practice exams were not particularly helpful, as the practice midterm was much too short and the practice final was entirely the wrong format. Clicker questions are actually pretty tough, but you get partial credit for answering. The centerpiece of this course is the labs. You submit a rough draft done by yourself (graded pass/fail) and then submit a final draft done with your assigned group. They take about 5-6 hours apiece, and are unevenly paced throughout the semester (slow at the beginning, rapid fire at the end). He also says recitation section is mandatory, but its not. As for the TAs, Power was pretty useless, Taheya was better. Neither was particularly helpful. There is a fairly generous curve, but even so I still did pretty poorly. I would not recommend this course to anyone who is not an Economics or Statistics major.

Okay. So, I had a love-hate (7% love, 93% hate) relationship with this class. Ron has no chill -- I mean this in both the best and the worst ways. Professor Michener really really knows his stuff which is a good quality to have as a professor for sure, but this often manifests itself in him having very very high standards for his students -- again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The biggest problem I had with this class was the disconnect between labs (homework assignments) and exams. Neither the midterm, nor the Stata final, nor the written final resembled the Lab Assignments very much. The practice exams that Michener gave us also bared no resemblance to the actual exams. This was problematic because there is SO much information that is taught over the course of the semester, that without a good example of what the exam will look like, it is extremely difficult (read: impossible) to study everything in an efficient and intentional way. This resulted in failing averages for the class (somewhere in the 60s% for the midterm, and somewhere in the low 50s% for the Stata final and the other portion of the final).

Like I said, there is a lot lot LOT of material that is covered over the course of the semester (it is a 4-credit class after all). Along with the massive amounts of material comes a massive amount of homework. We had Lab Assignments that grew in frequency as the semester went on and as the material got harder (so that was a fun dynamic). These were partly individual work, partly group work, and they took several hours to complete. The good news about these though is that the handouts that Michener puts online are VERY helpful (read: essential) to completing the labs accurately, and averages for labs were pretty high (it is very possible to get 90-100% on these).

Lectures were boring, but every class Michener has at least one sufficiently engaging anecdote concerning what we are learning. I did laugh during lecture many times (sometimes at Ron's jokes, sometimes at my misery). I would recommend going to class, though, because 1. There are clicker questions, and 2. It actually can be helpful sometimes. But most of what he goes over in class is based on his handouts that are on Collab, so if you don't fully pay attention in class, you can still be okay when you go over the handouts (ie when you are forced to read the handouts in order to complete the labs (ie that reason I was actually thankful for Lab Assignments)).

TL;DR Michener is a well-intentioned man in my opinion. This class is extremely difficult, not because the concepts are that difficult (in my opinion), but because there is SOOOOO much material, and the exams are not appropriate given the tools for learning that we are given (labs, handouts, textbook). That being said, there are students who did well in this class (LOL not I) and the grade distributions on the exam grades were ridiculous, you would just have to put in a lot more work than the already absurd amount of work that the average 55%-earning student puts in.

First, everything every reviewer has said is true. Read other reviews for specifics about Michener's teaching style, anecdotes, practice test problems, etc.

The biggest problems are the following: 1) So much information and it is all cumulative. Everything builds. You must understand everything that came before the current topic in order to understand future topics 2) Practice tests do not prepare you for actual tests 3) Stata labs take HOURS. 4) He is vague about what will be on the final. 5) The Stata final is very difficult, and accounts for 15% of your grade.

Here is how you do well. Pay attention in lecture, and get as many clicker questions correct as possible (15% of your grade). Read the handouts before class, pay attention, and then read them again after class. Work on labs ahead of time and understand them completely (this is critical for the Stata final). Ignore the textbook and enjoy his funny anecdotes about the author. For the Stata final & The regular final, be able to do all of the labs again, very quickly. If you know Stata, you can do the Stata final. Review concepts for the in-class final.

Our class performed average on the midterm (64% mean, ha!) and below average on the Stata final and the in-class final (~55% mean on each). This despite many remarking that the in-class final was easy. But what was this final? Just the multiple choice clicker questions again! Paying attention pays off.

If you want to learn statistics and how to use Stata, this is the class for you. You learn A LOT and if you somehow have 10+ hours a week to put in, you will at least get a B. This is one of those courses where you may not get the grade you want, but you will learn. For this reason I give Michener high marks despite our class's poor performance.

P.S. Recitation sections simply go over what you learned that week, which overlaps with the labs, which you may have already done for that week. No one attended mine. I found this a good time to go over concepts with the TA if I was confused.

This class was awesome and this professor was awesome. ECON 3720 teaches you all about the many aspects of regression analysis and very useful statistical methodologies for evaluating the strength of a model. Professor Michener is very clear in his presentation of the material and extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter so definitely use his office hours or ask questions in class.
Doing well in the class takes a good amount of time outside of the classroom though. The homework assignments (labs) were not too difficult, but they will take around 4 hours each to complete. If you read the textbook (which isn’t very long) and thoroughly study his Collab handouts, then you should do fine in his class. Going to lab section should not be overlooked because learning how to use STATA is paramount to getting a good grade in this class.
I’d also recommend using the HIVE for access to STATA because it works well and makes life simpler.

This class was by far my least and most favorite all semester. The material is interesting enough, especially for Econ/Stats majors, since everything you learn you put into real life scenarios with the labs. Michener also incorporates generally helpful examples to add to his lectures and handouts.
I personally found Michener's lectures to range from painfully boring to mildly interesting. He's clearly extremely smart, but he tends to go off on random tangents that were completely irrelevant. He even mentioned good times to check Facebook on occasion. He doesn't necessarily promote taking notes in class, since his lectures are almost completely out of his handouts.
The labs aren't terribly difficult, especially since you do them individually at first to submit as a rough draft, and then collaborate with a group to submit a final copy. Your groups are 3-4 people, and change 3 times throughout the semester. You only have to complete about 70% of the lab as a rough draft copy to get credit (pass/fail, not accuracy). The grader is typically pretty particular about what you need to have in the final copy with your group, but throughout the semester you'll get a feel for what the grader is looking for in a final copy. Doing your best on the Stata labs is one of the best ways to study and understand the material. It's important not to get behind on the material, since the final is cumulative. Bring questions to your group and work it out.
The midterm/final/Stata final were all challenging. The range of scores was extremely wide - for the midterm, the scores ranged from 100 to 17. They're possible, you just have to study a lot on your own. The best advice is to not only read the book, but also the pages upon pages of handouts he has on Collab. They're practically his own lectures written into articles.

Had the opportunity to take this class over the eight week summer session, and would definitely recommend it if you're an Econ major who has time to devote their efforts to a summer class. Before I dive into my review, I do want to point out one thing: If you're taking ECON 3720 in the school year I would suggest not taking another horribly time-consuming course unless you're a masochist and into that kind of thing. As others have said before, the workload is incredibly rigorous, consisting entirely of labs and readings. The labs themselves aren't actually that difficult, but are fairly repetitive and take two to four hours to complete (we had two a week during the summer term, so during the regular semester you could probably expect one a week and every once in awhile two). Even if you're entirely burnt out by having to devote your time to them every week do every single one of them on time. I got a 97% as my average and it was a huge bonus to my grade as it's worth 25% and our class average was in the mid 80s (the actual average score of each group lab was in the mid 90s, the individual averages were lower because people either forgot to do them or turned them in late which would probably be even more common during the semester). While Michener and some of the other reviewers say the Studenmund readings (textbook) are not paramount in understanding the class material, definitely read certain sections in each chapter when you feel lecture or the handouts don't give you the greatest insight, and always skim them. I personally read the first four chapters and found them extremely helpful in laying the groundwork for the class, skimmed the rest, and read sections or chapters I felt Michener could not explain as well as Studenmund (identifying restrictions in simultaneous equations is probably the first of these that comes to mind).

As for Michener and the lectures: pay attention for the first few weeks and after hypothesis testing you can feel free to tune out for the rest of the semester. Michener is incredibly intelligent and honestly amazing at relaying the information in the early chapters, which are essentially just a review of your intro stats course, an introduction to the classical assumptions of econometrics, and a guide on the basics of STATA. However, once you start getting into the more convoluted topics, I found he was too all over the place for me to seriously understand the concepts being covered. Just for reference, I had probably fifteen pages of notes for the few weeks, but I don't think I wrote more than a few lines worth of notes for the rest of the semester. I just followed along with what he said during class (albeit halfheartedly), read the handouts, did as much of all the labs as I could, and skimmed the textbook and I did fine. Yes, you will suffer on your clicker grade a little bit, but when it's only worth 5% of your total it really isn't going to kill you (don't skip though because you can get partial credit, I skipped a few times and ended with a 60% clicker average). Basically, if you at least answer all of them and are entirely guessing, statistically speaking, you'll get around a 63% on your clickers and be at about the average in the class (yes, I did run this test because I'm a loser... You get zero points for missing the question, one point for answering, and two points for answering correctly, so if you answer all of them you're guaranteed a 50% and if you get 25% of those right out of about 32-40 clickers you should get between a 60 and 70%). Sorry for the digression, but the main takeaway for clickers should be to do them all, because while they don't help you too much they can be the border between letter grades, so at least being near the average is vital.

For the midterm and finals my best advice would be to reread your handouts, skim the textbook, review your notes, and look at the practice tests. A few people on here have mentioned that Michener's practice exams are nothing like the actual exams, but I honestly couldn't disagree with that more. Sometimes he switches the formatting a bit, but the midterm was almost a carbon copy of the practice test he offered us. The midterm was incredibly straightforward, and while the in-class final was significantly harder (average was a 62, which is about two points below the average during the semester) it was basically just a mix of the hardest clicker questions he asked during the lecture and a review of how to set up and interpret each of the equations we learned in the latter half of the semester (study for both halves of the class, though, as he asked questions pertaining to the first part, too). The STATA final was also fairly difficult, but reviewing the commands in his handouts and toying with the program some before the exam proved very beneficial. The two finals, worth 45% of your grade, are undoubtedly an uphill battle, but if you put in the effort (I studied a total of about 15 hours combined for them) you will do very well. I got a mediocre grade in stats and was slightly below the class average on our midterm in econometrics, but did quite well in this class because of how hard I studied for the final. The grade distribution was enormous, too. The highest grade was an 88 for the in-class final, and the fourth best score was almost twenty points higher than the next best score. The STATA final was the same, with a four or five scores in the 90s and the next best grade was fifteen points behind that.

Apologies for this behemoth of a review, I felt it was worth sharing as much as possible because the class is often considered the hardest in the major. While I had assumed I was on the borderline between a B/B+ in the class, I somehow got a flat A in the course, so I guess how I handled the class actually worked quite well and I hope that my advice is beneficial to anyone else who takes the course. I am by no means one of those kids that has always done well at UVA (my GPA is right at the university average), so if you don't have the highest GPA never for a second assume this class is beyond you in terms of difficulty.

Michener is tough, but he is undoubtedly fair. If you devote your time to this class you will do well, and you will learn and feel satisfied with the mountain of helpful material you've had shoved down your throat over the course of the semester.