WORST CLASS EVER.

This class was a dumpster fire, made worse by the pretentiousness of the professor. The professor graded harshly because in her mind, we were making errors. In reality, however, it is her that made fundamental errors in the wording of questions and answer choices on the quizzes. Moreover, to add insult to injury, she graded the group projects harshly for lack of thoroughness when she made the decision to enforce a page limit. It is also ironic that she nitpicked so much in her judgement of the group projects when her lack of competency in writing the weekly quizzes was embarrassing.

This class gave me my first ever B at UCLA. In every class, I go above and beyond when it comes to working hard for the class, especially with stem courses because math doesn’t come naturally to me. I thought I would be fine with this class since econ one doesn’t use any calculus, but I was wrong. My TA consistently gave us the wrong answers for the weekly section quizzes, and on one of the most important questions, the answer key was incorrect and the professor never sent an email to the class making a correction. It wasn’t until I discovered this mistake and emailed both my TA and professor that the professor emailed out the correct answer on THE DAY OF THE FINAL. The final was worth 50% of the final grade, so even though I got a 98% on the midterm, my hard work in the class didn’t matter unless I did really well on the final. Even after giving myself ample time to study, the final was so hard for me, and clearly it was difficult for the rest of the class because the average was a 74%. If this wasn’t an intro course, I’d understand that average, but I felt the final was much too difficult for a class that’s supposed to be “easy”. Overall, I thought I would enjoy this class much more than I did and it’s disappointing because the professor seemed like a really nice lady.

I am selling my 120 pages typed-up notes for this class for only $15. I received an A. They can be shared right away. Email me at ************* if interested.

This class is ridiculous. A significant portion of your grade in the class is completely irrelevant to the lecture material and solely based on outside knowledge. If you are a hardworking, independent student who likes to study material and be evaluated solely on that material I would avoid this class. I don't think background knowledge on the United States and/or another country should weigh so heavily in your performance in a class.

TAKEN IN WINTER 2020 - ONLINE

40% quizzes - 4 quizzes @ 10% each
40% group project
20% final exam

BEWARE of this grading scheme. Also beware of a grade distribution if one is posted. She ended up giving us all 3% to our grade since she messed up wording on one of our quizzes. I doubt she will do this again, and in future classes you practically will have to do perfectly on quizzes to earn an A since you won't have the extra 3% cushion like us. 3% is one whole letter grade practically, so all the A-'s you see would probably be B+ if not for the cushion. Looks generous because of the 20% final but I actually think the final was okay content-wise. The quizzes will pull you down fast. You can't afford to make many mistakes on them or you will quickly tank your grade.

This professor provided the class a lot of grief. She was practically impossible to reach, which was made worse due to the online format. She was only reached through office hours. She held 2 a week on the same day, so if you had a question the day after, tough luck. I think she was also late often and did not show up to office hours on FINALS WEEK. You had to email her to attend her night office hours and I heard she wouldn't email you back confirming she'd be there. How had is it to reply? 3 keystrokes - O, K, send. Pretty sure because of this she wouldn't even hold her 2nd office hour, so if you have class in the morning, tough luck. We meme "sent from iPhone" but she couldn't even do that. She specifically told us NOT to email her and to come to office hours if we had questions. However, you could easily wait the entire office hours and not get your questions answered since other people were there as well. Honestly, all of this grief was unnecessary since the class material is relatively interesting and easy. However, she worded the questions really questionably and provided 0 practice. It was easy to see where she gave up since she gave practice week 1 and 2 and never again. So you literally go in to quizzes blind. Lecture is all easy, teaching stuff a lot of people know intuitively (Wow, building heights rise in the center since land rent is higher there... Most people know this vaguely.) and then with our 0 practice she's like ok apply all the knowledge together and also it's not really clear what I'm asking you and also I'm going to assume you know things about Los Angeles, New York, and Europe even though I didn't go over it. The final was better since you go in less blind after taking the quizzes, but quizzes are actually a lot more important. Part of taking the exam is you trying to figure out what she's asking and then getting it wrong because she emphasized something in lecture, so you assume it is that, but it's something else. Also, a lot of questions are dependent on each other (especially the tough ones) so expect to not get 9s and 10s consistently, if you mess up your score can take down easily.

For the final she gave us 2 hours instead of 3. I think a lot of people, including me, had a huge time crunch because of this. I think 3 hours would not be too much time so I have no idea why she did this to us, in fact, it might have been perfect. A good example of her lack of compassion is that she emailed us saying she could not offer a 3rd exam time since it would take too long. Just to be clear, I did not feel entitled to a 3rd exam time and wasn't expecting it to happen or anything, but I could admit it sucked for international students. The reason it seems so tone deaf is because she cut our exam time to 2 hours so if we had a 3rd exam time she'd only proctor it for the same time as other professors who provided 2 exam slots: 6 hours. I realize she has to make another exam, but I just think she should not have cut our final time. Was 2 hours of her time really that valuable that she couldn't sit and watch us?

I think another review for another one of her classes said that she expects you to already know about a region. In this case, she expects you to be pretty familiar with LA. This is unfair to international/out-of-state students. She does go over some stuff about LA, but not enough to cover what she expects.

The professor does not care for the students of the class nor our learning. She was impossible to reach and did not give much elaborate or give much outside information (no practice or lenience). So the workload was not bad, you just watched youtube videos basically, but why pay so much tuition to learn stuff you intuitively know? It's not even an easy A either. I would not take this class again, it gave me and my classmates more grief than we expected. It's too bad, because a lot of it is interesting. Do not underestimate how wonky quizzes can be going in blind and with her weird phrasing, especially because you need to get practically perfect scores to get an A.

Selling the textbook call me at 212-654... haha just kidding she uses a free textbook so not spending 200 dollars for one class like econ 1. This is definetely a good class to take if you are an econ major and want an easy A for your major. Dont read the textbook before she goes over her slides because she skips certain sections (the hard ones) so the best way to study is the slides. It is certainly possible to come into the final with an 100%. The grading was 25% a midterm which I got a 95 on and was super easy, it was also 10% going to discussion and 15% this graph project which was also super easy to get a 100 on if you follow the rubric and took me only 1 hour to do the entire thing. The final also wasnt hard but it requires that you study. Final also wasnt cumulative which was nice. Final and midterm consist of vocab, multiple choice and some short answer which are really easy if you look over the graphs. Going to lecture is important because she explains everything really well but if you were to skip lecture youd be fine teaching yourself. Also she has office hours which usually dont get busy so if youre confused she can try to teach it again. Shes super nice and the most engaging econ professor you will find at UCLA so taking basic econ classes like econ 1 and 2 with her is a good move because you will learn without completely falling asleep.

This class is one of the best economics classes I've ever taken and would highly recommend. Not only does the variety of assessment formats (quizzes, a group presentation, discussion forum posts) benefit most students in allowing us to demonstrate our understanding of the subject beyond traditional exams, the exams and quizzes are super fair. Practice exercises reflect the kind of math and problem-solving that we see in the exams so it's not one of those classes where the exams are ridiculously harder. And she's really responsive on email, available during office hours as promised, and works hard to make sure that the way she communicates class materials is clear. The class itself covers content that is applicable to real world contexts and is engaging, containing a blend of intuitive principles (e.g. that rent is higher per sqft closer to the city center) and case studies that are less intuitively obvious but are challenging and interesting all the same.

Everything besides grading for this class is fine. If you care about your grade do NOT take this class. She gave us an 8/10 for assignments that were each worth 10% of your grade if you did a “good” job. However, someone who did a good job on these would lose points significantly. I quite literally would do way too much on these assignments, but still get an 8 no matter what. The test questions were also very subjective and had us do matching for extremely similar concepts.

This is one of my favorite classes at UCLA. I always like those professors who have a true passion for what they are teaching, and I think Professor Osei definitely loves what she teaches even in this pandemic period. The topic is development economics so we covered a lot of information about various countries around the world -- even the poorest countries in Africa. It is just so exciting to learn about theories of how to develop a country. Maybe not everyone gets the chance to change the fate of a country, but remember we all are part of some country or organization. The assignments are also meaningful -- you pick a country and research thoroughly about it and write case studies throughout the quarter. This makes me an "expert" at the country I selected lol. I would say the final is easy as long as you study at the same pace as Professor Osei wants you to. If you are considering taking econ upper div, choose Professor Osei and you would not regret it.