I actually really like Mel, despite what the other reviews say, I don't think she's that bad. She's a really cool human being, albeit a bit scatter-brained.

Tbh, I didn't attend a lot of the lectures, since she posted her lecture notes online. I just had a friend text me whenever there was an extra credit quiz. Sometimes when I attended lectures I would zone out/work on homework for other classes. Lecture is useful in that when she explains concepts, she does it well and she always takes the time to answer students' questions. She's not the most organized/systematic, but she covers everything and I do like the flow of lectures (this is an unpopular opinion fyi).

The homeworks are a good reflection of the midterm difficulty during my quarter. They were pretty reasonable and you were allowed to work on them with friends.

I remember the first midterm was super easy, but the second one was a bit tougher. The final was also much harder. I think you need >=85 overall to get an A in the class. Make sure you understand bonds well.

I thought the final project was pretty reasonable. Basically, all you had to do was apply the concepts from class. She gives out a sample paper. Make sure to start early though, since some parts are pretty time consuming.

The extra credit polls and discussion forum posts are actually pretty useful when it comes to boosting your grade.

Disclaimer: I took this class in Spring 2018, I heard she was super disorganized and unreasonable in terms of when she assigned homework, tests etc during Winter 2019. I also have a bunch of friends who don't like her teaching style so I may just be the exception. Also apparently the midterms/final were a lot harder that quarter??

Mel is not very organized. It took until Week 2 of Spring Quarter to receive our grade for Winter Quarter, even though ALL number scores were inputted for over a week.
The class is not very good. The only useful thing you learn is compounding interest and how to think about if you should take out a mortgage or invest elsewhere, or pay it off early.
The class is pretty boring, she goes off on weird tangents, isn't engaging, or much.
If you're taking this for a tech breadth, I recommend MGMT 108 and MGMT 160 over this class, you learn much more in those.

I think she is the most disorganized professor I have had; 1 week into spring quarter and still no grade. The notes she provided were garbage and illegible. She means well but for some reason she cannot present clear and coherent concepts very well, often giving weak examples or just a fuzzy explanation. I think there are more capable prof's out there, sorry Mel.

We simply have no choice but to stan Mel. She truly cares about your learning, and it shows, even if she can be disorganized. This class used to be much harder, as evidenced by the practice midterms/finals she releases from previous years. She's restructured it to focus on key topics that might some day be useful/relevant to your personal finances. You get a cheatsheet for exams and there's only a few homeworks throughout the quarter. The group project at the end is simple enough and boosts your grade with free points as long as you do it properly. One of my fave professors!

This class is quite an enigma to me. On the one hand, Mel is a very engaging and intelligent lecturer who clearly wants to teach better and help students understand the material. On the other hand, she struggles with this vision, rushing through concepts and not explaining them well at a pace that students like me (who don't have much of a background in economics) can understand. What made this even more difficult is the fact that those in-class quizzes other people mention in prior reviews are no longer optional; they are now part of your participation grade. So when she asks these questions right after explaining a concept, if you don't understand all of it well enough on the spot, it'll be pretty hard to get it right. The way she organizes the quizzes is kind of problematic too: she uses the UCLA online poll site, which no one could seem to log into 30% of the time. I just feel like there's a much better way to implement all this.

On the one hand, Mel is a very generous grader, with an average of 80 on all assignments being curved up to an A- (85% or above = A, 80 or above = A-, 75 or above = B+, etc.). I'm still quite confused how I got away with the grade I did, given my abysmal midterm score. On the other hand, I still felt like I was falling behind all quarter because the homeworks, practice quizzes, and some exam questions were very convoluted and confusing (sometimes completely wrong), and Mel seemed disinterested in helping resolve this. She also said she would answer questions on Piazza but then practically disappeared for days on end, which was a bit frustrating around midterm and final exams.

I can't really fault Mel for trying harder at making the course better, and I can't really complain about the generous grading either. But I feel like the concepts are being taught too fast and not being explained well enough. There are just so many wrinkles that should've been ironed out years ago.

Probably one of the most engaging lecturers I've had at UCLA.The trick to this class is to show up to every lecture and pay as close attention as possible! Mel often will explicitly state what material she's putting on the midterm and final, so just by showing up to class and listening to lecture you will be guaranteed at least 3/4 questions. We received extra credit each week by responding to a discussion forum and answering a form of clicker questions in class (no clicker required). Homeworks were pretty easy; you could work in a group on them. The best way to study for the tests are to do the practice problems in the book, and to read the textbook before class. Each lesson builds on the last one, so make sure you're staying on top of the material!

The class is terribly unorganized. The lectures are useless, but the material can be learned quite well by the textbook. Most importantly, there is 0 communication with the professor as she never responds to emails. The midterm wasn't terribly difficult, but it felt like she often gives some conflicting information about the material. In lecture half the class would fall asleep as well.

While I liked this class overall, like many of the other reviews say, Mel is an extremely disorganized teacher. Her notes are posted online, but are quite unreadable. This class is also extremely scattered with Mel jumping around between many topics. This was one of the things that disappointed me about the class, with everything seeming to just be glossed over, making the class feel like a watered-down econ class that only gives you a surface level understanding of topics. It is also extremely focussed on microeconomics with macroeconomics only coming up in the last week of class.

Mel does have an extremely lenient grading scale with anything over 85% being an A. She is also very generous with partial credit on exams. This is definitely not a difficult class and will give you an intro to economics if you have never taken it, but is a bit disappointing in the lack of depth in the topics taught.

After having taken 110 and 111 with Mel, I can now conclude that Mel is a terrible professor, but a good person. Classes are alright, but she tends to go on long tangents and the important topics aren't often gone into with much depth. She uses UCLA's online poll for participation. Half the time, you can't even sign into it or get it to load, but she doesn't care.
The tests aren't that hard so you can definitely get a good grade in the class, but that requires her actually posting the grade. That brings me to the worst part of this class: the utter lack of communication. It was impossible to get any response from Mel in the last couple weeks of the quarter, which in itself was masked with uncertainty. I can understand struggles to adapt to an online format, but I will never understand why she signs every email with "Please let me know if you have any questions", if she refuses to respond to ANY emails. Moreover, she started having Q&A forums for the homework, but she would seldom respond before the homework's DUE DATE. What's the point in answering the questions that students had on the homework after it's due?

All things being said, the class isn't that bad, but I would never take a class with this professor again because it's very difficult to be in a class where there is little to no communication with the professor.

First off, don't expect lectures to be that helpful. Mel is super disorganized and not a great lecturer. Unfortunately, you still have to attend because she has online poll questions and only gives the passwords to do them in-class. Don't think about having a buddy text you the password because she might literally take attendance to ensure no one does that.

THAT BEING SAID... Mel is a VERY NICE professor. I went to her office hours after the midterm and raised some questions about problems that I'd gotten wrong. Mel was nice enough to give me 6 EXTRA POINTS (which saved my grade from a B+ to an A-) just because she felt that I'd been graded too harshly. That really tells you about someone's character. Mel is an amazing and friendly professor!

PRACTICAL TIPS: Focus on discussion sections, homework problems, and practice exams. Those are the things that'll help you do good on the midterm/final. There's a group project but it's pretty easy — don't stress too much about it. Overall, this course is relatively easy-to-moderate difficulty. If you need a small GPA boost, this will do the trick!