ECON 3720

I was very intimidated to take this class. However, Michener is an effective lecturer and provides many resources. Even if you don't like his lectures, he provides handouts on all of the important topics and the corresponding commands on STATA. He also has videos that are basically a mini lecture you can go back and watch if you need it. The handouts and videos are almost identical to lecture, but more to the point. My biggest advice would be to do the labs well. Most everything you need to do the labs correctly can be found in the handouts or in the dofiles from discussion sections. You can get 95-100 on labs consistently with some effort. Also, the geometric mean of the labs and the STATA final is worth 45% of your grade, so the labs are an opportunity to get good grades even if the final isn't as great. This class takes a lot of time, but you definitely get what you put in. Memorization (and understanding) is key. Even though Michener clicks through STATA to get the commands in lecture, I’d recommend memorizing how to type the commands to help you for the final. The STATA final is 50 minutes for 20 questions which is hardly enough time. Review the handouts and use the textbook to understand properties of estimators in different scenarios and characteristics/applications of different issues and tests.
I’m not going to lie this class was hard. Our midterm grades followed a normal distribution with an average of 57 and a 19 point standard deviation. The range of scores went from a 15 to 100, so this just goes to show that you need to put in the time studying before exams and trying to review handouts weekly. It's definitely possible to do well, and Michener is low key nice (consider the grade distribution given how bad our test grades were) and can be funny at times. TAs are also good.

Read the hand-outs he gives, or you will fail.

Econometrics can be a difficult subject for those students who are studying Economics without genuine interest in the science. If you are one of this people, save yourself from taking this class with Michener. If, on the other hand, you are planning to do a master or PHD work in Economics, Michener will probably be your best choice among the professors. My advice when taking this class is the same advice you read in the previous comments. Read the handouts and rely on the textbook for those topics that you can't understand. At the same time don't get caught into passive studying, take a hands-on role when preparing for the classes, divide the screen in two and read the handouts while following the steps in STATA. When preparing for the test I would recommend paying CLOSE ATTENTION to the details in the handout. He loves tricky questions in the exams. Memorization is KEY to your success.

What you should be paying attention to when you receive your midterm and final back is where you are in the distribution of grades, don't freak out if you get a 30 in the midterm. Our average midterm grade was a 57, but getting a 57 in the exam meant getting a B. One standard deviation below means a C, one above an A. Of course he doesn't say this, but the curve shows at the end of the semester.

DIFFICULTY: 9/10
RECOMMENDABILITY: 9/10 (if you are genuinely interested in economics), 4/10 (if you are not)

This class is BY FAR the hardest I have taken at UVA. The class consists of one midterm (the average was a 57), weekly labs, clicker questions, and a two-part final. The weekly labs were not too bad, although they occasionally took a while to do. (READ the handouts!! so many people didn't know that they laid out exactly how to do stata commands for the labs until halfway through the semester). He assigns random lab groups three times during the semester and you are expected to compile your weekly lab answers into one shared lab report that is submitted on Collab and graded for accuracy. I actually really liked the groupwork because it definitely helped our grades (you could get between a 95-100% average on labs this way), but since they were randomly assigned it was really hard to find good times to meet. Since there are clicker questions (worth 5% of the grade) it is worth it to show up to lecture and Michener does try to make lectures somewhat interesting with stories. My biggest complaint about this class is that the exams are graded way too harshly. The average for the midterm was a 57 which made a lot of people nervous. Then he sent an email saying that he wasn't going to curve the exam since the entire class would be curved so we shouldn't worry too much about our grade. However, the fact that our grades were basically up in the air until the final freaked me out!! The final was two parts: a stata final that you bring your laptop for and a regular written final. He designs the stata final so that you don't have enough time to finish it and then this grade gets averaged with your lab grade (with a geometric average) and is worth 45% of the overall grade, The second part of the final is like the midterm and worth 25%. That means the pressure to do well on the two-part final is insane because it determines basically your ENTIRE grade (minus the midterm and clicker questions). That being said, I wish I hadn't taken this class with Michener but at least I can put STATA on my resume lol

Yes, Intro to Econometrics is one of the most difficult classes you'll ever take through the Economics department at UVA. I still definitely recommend taking it. Here's why it's not as scary as some might tell you, at least with Michener.

The weekly problem sets are a massive portion of your grade, and as long as you approach them correctly you can get an A on every single one. Michener has you turn in an individual rough draft at the beginning of every week that is graded on completion only; the second copy you turn in is done with a group of 4 or 5 people and is graded on accuracy. As long as your entire group can meet up for a few hours every week and at least one person has a good grasp on the material, you all should be fine. The handouts have reasonably clear step-by-step instructions on what to do to find the answers, which significantly eases the difficulty.

Michener's lectures can be dry at times, but the material itself is usually at least a little bit engaging. Several of my friends and I found ourselves taking fewer and fewer notes as the semester went on as the class moved away from specific techniques and more towards theory. Michener also posts chapter handouts on Collab, which are often just slightly more in-depth versions of his lecture. You can easily reference these whenever you get stuck on specifics. If you pay attention to the lectures and read the handouts, the textbook is almost completely unneeded.

The exams are tough and typically average scores in the 50s to 70s. As long as you can land a class-average score on the exam or higher, you should be on track for at least a B since the class is curved HEAVILY. The study guides posted before each exam are very helpful; make sure you can do those before you go into each exam. I found that doing the study guides, reviewing the problem sets, and re-reading all the unit's handouts was enough to do very well on the tests. You will be given an unlabeled list of formulas for each exam, so you don't have to memorize those. Just memorize their names and when to use them.

In person, this class is much easier than online. In the transition to online coursework, Professor Michener increased the homework and changed up the exam formats in pretty awful ways. Most notably, he made our midterm a one-question, 24 hour exam and then set the average (after excluding the lower outliers) to a 75. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the character of Ron Michener, I don't know what would.

Okay so I actually really enjoyed this class. I found that everything Michener asked of us was pretty straight forward and he outlines everything in his documents if you don't understand something. The labs were never impossible. While tedious at times, he explains all the answers in his handouts and the tas were super helpful. I personally find him hilarious and he has a very dry sense of humor (others do not find him the most entertaining lecturer), but you will pick up fun new words like "persnickety" and "smidgeon", so hey thats fun. The midterm was kind of a disaster but he was trying his best in quarantine to adjust to new technology and keep things fair. If anything you will get some wild stories from this man, he sends out like paragraphs explaining his thinking and sometimes they have a lot of plot twists. Overall, I think I enjoyed this class because he was fair. If you put in time to understand the concepts, you will do well.

It's a wild ride to take this class with Michener. That said, I wouldn't necessarily tell you not to. The way he teaches the class and the fact that it is very stata-intensive means that if you really put in a lot of work, you can learn a ton—as another reviewer has already said, if you're thinking about grad school in Econ or something, I think Michener is your guy. But do be warned. The problem sets can take a long time and be very repetitive. The tests have ridiculously low averages (but you can count on a huge curve). Over email, Michener can seem like a completely heartless, emotionless jerk—this was particularly evident Spring 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak, in which he came up with a pretty arbitrary measure for the midterm, and mostly stuck to his guns when nearly the whole class complained it was unfair. However, he's a lot nicer in person, or if you go to office hours, and he's really smart and teaches the class well. Ultimately I think he's pretty fair too, you'll get out what you put in—but that's not always totally evident while you're in the class. You'll probably fear you're going to fail until the last second when you end up with an A or a B.

the feeling of relief after being done with this class >> Econ 3720 is basically the hurdle you need to jump over to major in Econ, and I don’t know how the other profs are, but I feel like it’s prob rough with whoever. Michener exhibits some boomer energy. The labs are very long but Michener’s handouts basically offer 90% of the info you need to do the labs, so the labs are not that hard, just a bit time-consuming. Michener’s lectures were basically useless for me (especially after spring break) because they’re just SO long and boring. It’s my fault probably, but I just couldn’t pay attention or understand anything because of how dry and boring his lectures are. Before SB, he did tell some funny stories and jokes. after SB, it was just fuzzy quality prerecorded lectures and I struggled — not michener’s fault, I just couldn’t focus with the dry material. Fortunately, Michener is nice enough to provide handouts for each chapter, and they usually consist of his lectures on paper (like you can hear his voice in the words lol). I feel like the majority of class was about applying Stata to econometrics concepts, so it was a very application-based class. It’s kinda nice that you get to learn Stata skills. However, I don’t think I really understood in depth the concepts. I don’t really think Michener explains the concepts very clearly or that well - (also my fault kinda) but the non-Stata final wrecked me just because I understood very little conceptually. He emailed us a lot (due to all the academic changes) and I enjoyed Michener’s emails lol. On the plus side, I found the TAs (especially Taheya) to be extremely helpful and discussion sections were really beneficial imo in understanding Stata. Basically, Econ 3720 is the hardest class I’ve taken so far at UVA and I considered it an obstacle I just had to pass.

Michener is not as awful as ppl say but I would still recommend taking this class with other profs. You will know how to use Stata properly by the time you get out of this class. You will also gain a solid understanding of basic econometrics. Basically, you will learn lots of things you cant if you take this class with other professors. ( at least that's my impression after talking to my friends.) However, you will worry about your grades until it is been posted on sis and the time commitment for this class is huge(labs/meetings/handouts). I do not know if it is worth it. You are also more likely to do well in this class if you are a stats/math major based on my experience. This class is remotely a Econ class. If you took stats a long time ago like I do, you will probably need to recall some of them while doing the labs.
In addition, Michener seems to set the average of this class to a C/C+/B-, so some might want to take it p/f.