I really enjoyed taking Poli Sci 30, and thought that Professor Chwe was an amazing professor. That being said, the class is tough. Definitely utilize office hours, Professor Chwe is willing to walk students through any homework problems they are struggling with-- he wants us to do well.
Also, he's pretty funny and overall a very nice person.

I agree with the person below me. Chwe's ratings are low, but that's mostly attributed to the material because it can get difficult if you don't go to class or don't pay attention. Weekly homework isn't too bad if you know how to get help and aren't afraid to get help. I struggled a lot with it in the beginning and even though a good number of my answers weren't correct, the T.A. still gave me the full point (0, 0.5, and 1 are the possible points) for every single homework I turned in. It sure helps your grade in the end, if you need a little boost. Chwe is very open to helping people and welcomes any question even in class. He's not bothered by having to go through the problem again and slower, which isn't the case for many professors. He makes jokes sometimes that I found funny and made lecture a little less tiresome. The midterm and final are structured to be difficult, but he literally has so many past midterms and finals posted dating back all the way to the early 2000's or mid 2000's, I forget. If you practice these, you should be well prepared. There's also a curve, depending on how the rest of the class did but honestly it can only benefit you. You have to be really, really lost and not giving any effort to get a bad grade because the grade distribution is really generous. The final was supposed to be 3 hours, but because 95% of the class wasn't finished, he gave us another hour and stayed. What other professor would even consider staying an extra hour to give students more time?? Anyways, Chwe is great in my opinion, the class is without a doubt challenging, but it helps that he's a good professor. Good luck! Go to class and start studying at least a week in advance for the midterm and final!

I get why other people are trashing Chwe, but that's probably more because the material is hard to grasp. I personally think he really explained everything well and is very open to helping students, he even answers personal questions in the middle of lecture. going to lecture is necessary to understanding the material. chwe is funny and does his best to make the dry subject engaging. game theory is certainly not for everyone - like math, it just clicks for some people and doesn't for others. i think the homework was extremely fucking difficult, but the tests were way easier. he has all his old midterm/finals on ccle, and if you do those for practice, i think you should be good. the class is not the easiest but if you have to take it chwe is great!

Tough topic if you've never ventured into game theory before, but taught super well by Chwe. He's super engaging and delivers the info well. If you finish all the homework plus a little extra you're good for the tests.

I tried my hardest and I got a C-. Homework is super important.

If class is Algebra, HW is calculus.
I don't blame the Professor or the TA.

They made themselves available, so shifting blame is a pointless exercise.

If you are going to take PS 30, take advantage of office hours and get help when you are struggling, for your own sake.

Good luck.

I want to begin by saying that Poli Sci 30 with Chwe was definitely an enjoyable course yet challenging one. Professor Chwe is personable. You can go to his office hours with any question and he is more than willing to help you go over what you're having trouble understanding. The material is also interesting! He tries his best to link the material taught in class to the real world. To succeed in his class make sure you get a TA that you can understand (some have extremely harsh accents) and cares a lot about their students. Utilize them! They're an awesome resource when Chwe's office hours are too busy. To succeed in the class, make sure to attend all the lectures, discussions and do all the homework to the best of your ability and also complete all the practice midterms before the midterm and all the practice finals before the final. It will take time, but if you are good at managing your time it won’t be that hard. Don’t underestimate the midterm or final! Because the class is graded on a curve, you need to gain as many points as you can. I wouldn't suggest reviewing the homework for the midterm/final, because expand upon the thought of another student mentioned earlier, "If material taught in class was like 1+1=2, then homework was calculus, and the exams were asking you to calculate the distance to mars in the unit of various fruits.” Chwe is going to really test if you know the material extremely well. If you only know the material tangentially, you won’t be able to get those crucial points on tests.

With that said, I would recommend taking Chwe. Although I was stressed after scoring a 29 out of 48 on the midterm, I really got to work and reviewed well for the final (by doing all the past finals) and scored in the top ten percent of students for the final to secure an A in the class.

There was a saying about Chwe my classmates had that I feel was appropriate. If material taught in class was like 1+1=2, then homework was calculus, and the exams were asking you to calculate the distance to mars in the unit of various fruits. Basically, he expects you to extrapolate the very basic framework taught in class to figure out very complicated problems, so most of the exams have very little to do with the questions given for homework/examples in class.

That being said, the class is not impossible and the class ranking system (which screwed me over personally) usually means the grade distribution is very generous. Basically, if the questions the TAs give are crazy, most students with miss it, and it all comes out in the wash.

As for the use of this class, which seems to come into question in many of these reviews, I thought the silly examples given were the professor's way of making light of some interesting concepts. Sure, no one thinks like the people in the questions, but the overall concept of thinking many turns ahead is used a great deal in strategic situations. Don't take this class too seriously, and you'll hate it less.

My TA was also not the best (she tried but had difficulties with Englsh) and I never went to office hours. I suggest you take advantage of the materials given on the class website and before exams do EVERY practice final and midterm. This gives you the ability to time yourself, and while the questions and difficulty of each exam varies greatly, by taking all of them you are more likely to be prepared for what is thrown at you on your day.

*Shrug* If you have to take it, take it if another lower division is also available, maybe take that one.

Game Theory was the most useless polisci class I have ever taken. I agree with the person below me. Chwe gave silly examples and I never understood how any of the material presented would ever relate to the real world.

There was weekly homework, which was pretty time consuming imo. The class is webcasted. Midterm was hard, so I decided to switch to p/np because there was no way I could have gotten an A or B by then. The class median for the midterm was 50%, which gives you a pretty good sense that a good chunk of the class didn't learn anything. I barely scraped by with a C towards the end.

Game theory sounded so interesting. But the first two weeks of lecture consisted of charts and tables of the silliest, most meaningless things that did not seem at all to pertain to anything educational. Finally, when Chwe started to get into game theory and teaching "strategy", I often wondered how anything he said pertained to real-world decision making, because really, who thinks of "playing A or playing B" simultaneously with another player? Or who calculates probability that somebody will do A over B? I guess that either way, some of what Chwe taught was interesting in its analytical viewpoint of decision-making. But when it comes down to it, I feel that I wasted a quarter on yet another class that sounded interesting but often felt like such a joke.

Chwe himself was just an okay professor. Much too often, he mumbled to himself, confused himself and the rest of the class, neglected to answer questions he didn't want to get too in depth with (probably because he wanted to lure us into taking the upper division version of this course), and shuffled around in front of the chalkboard deciding what of his numerical nonsense to erase. While he was extremely, annoyingly hesitant and inarticulate during lecture, he was always helpful during office hours. Just email him if you cannot meet him during regular office hour and he will gladly accommodate you. That was the one thing I liked about him.

He also has a very particular sense of humor in that most of his homework problems involve a boy stalking a girl that he likes, a girl choosing the boy with the Lamborghini, etc. It sometimes made me wonder if all the "games" he presented stemmed from his own experiences...

Anyway, back to the course itself... Homework (20%) was weekly (the first few assignments take a very long time, but the course goes on, the homework problems get fewer and less time-consuming). There is one midterm (20%) and one final (50%). Neither is difficult, but the midterm is almost impossible to finish on time because it's so long and you have only the regular classtime to do it. But that's why the final is worth so much more: you have much more time and almost the same number of problems. This quarter, he provided "midterm insurance": if you end up doing better on the final than midterm, the final grade will replace your midterm grade. However, if you do better on the midterm than final, nothing changes.

Lastly, I MUST speak of the T.A.'s. There were three, and two of them were absolutely HORRIBLE. Koo--he made me SO ANGRY. Twice in three weeks, he cancelled discussion without notice. Once was right after the midterm. The second time was right before the final (granted, he supposedly got sick this time). In discussion, he would ask fragmented questions and take a whole minute to process the simplest of questions we asked. He, too, was often reluctant to let out particular information. But one time, he did the opposite of that by drawing out a whole graph and number line, taking up 40 minutes of class, and finally telling us, "Oh, but you do not need to know any of this. Just know how to do the easy way." ... Seriously, though, every time he spoke, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. He is one of the two worst t.a.'s I have had thus far.

If you can pick your t.a., pick Danielson. I can't believe I didn't find him until two days before the final, during the review session he generously held. I sincerely think that he should be the professor instead. During the session, a guy behind me said, "I don't know if I should be glad about all this information, or mad about the rest of the class," meaning that this t.a. had wrapped up the entire PS30 course in two hours than the professor and the other t.a.'s did in 10 weeks.

TL;DR: Not a difficult class, but the professor/ t.a.'s get very frustrating. Patience recommended.

At least there's no textbook!

I couldn't agree more with the person below me. The material taught in class is basic, easy to understand for the most part. The exams are extremely difficult. The only material there really is to study comes from old exams, but that doesn't adequately help prepare for exams as they require deep understanding of the material which you can't get from simply having a few old exams (and homework) to study from. In and outside of class Chwe is nice, but I don't feel he helps us learn the material to the extent he expects us to know it. Overall, not a good experience.