ECON 4720

Hardest class I've ever taken at UVA by a country mile (And Im an Econ major), especially if you take this class over the summer as it is taught at breakneck speed. There are 10-14 problem homework assignments due every few days (once a week if you take this during regular semesters) that take 10+ hours to complete due to extreme difficulty. Vast majority of the answers cannot be found online. Exams were ridiculously hard. Lidia seemed to struggle with the remote nature of this class, as lectures were sporadically uploaded, often leaving insufficient time to complete the problem sets. That being said, she was really nice and was as helpful as possible during office hours. TA was quick to respond to emails and fairly lenient on problem set grading. But seriously, the 4 weeks of the summer I took this class were pure torture. Don't do this to yourself unless you need to.

This class is not as hard as I thought it would be. Prof. Kosenkova and the TA Emily Cook were both very helpful and responsive. Grading was done pretty quickly, especially for exams, so you always know where you stand. Going into this class as a statistics major definitely put me in a better position than other students but it's definitely doable for everyone if you take the time to understand lectures and read the book. Although participation isn't mandatory, I found going to lecture more helpful than trying to understand the book, especially when it came to topics like linear algebra. Homeworks fluctuated in difficulty: some took me only 2 hours to complete and others took me closer to 7. There is 1 homework assignment due almost every week; all homework assignments together are worth 10% of your grade. The rest of the grade is exams. If you understand and review all of your homework assignments, then the exam won't be that hard because it's the same topics. However there definitely is a time crunch component to the exams. This class is very much based on theory/proofs - there's very little real data assignments.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS ! DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS ! DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS !
This is so far the worst econ class that I've ever taken. Tbh, I learnt nothing new from this class. Prof Kosenkova spend the whole semester going through stuffs like "review to statistics", "review to linear algebra", "review to probability" etc. . She does not care about applications. You will most likely find yourself in class struggling with tons of proof of equations and properties. Homework is REAL NIGHTMARE: due WEEKLY; each has 10+ comprehensive questions (60+ individual questions); No answer can be found online; Heavy proof-based ; normally takes up to 12 hours to finish. Exams are even worse. They have nothing to do with what she taught in class, and sometimes the instructions given are very confusing. 90% of the final grade comes from exams and only 10% comes from homework. This is class is just useless and destroys your gpa. Seriously, econ department should either get another professor for this class or delete it from financial econ concentration. This is the kind of class that makes you feel bad about yourself and start to hate economics :(