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Took Econ 1 with Rojas and I enjoyed 103 with him! Probably the best professor to take 103 with. Clear and concise. No coding is tested (yay!) just know how to read the outputs! Curve is pretty generous!

Rojas is probably the most chill Econ professor you will ever get. Take advantage of that. Here are some key points.

1. Lectures IMO are optional. Slides are posted on CCLE and Rojas mostly reads off his slides. By the end of the quarter, you will notice only 20% of kids actually show up.

2. Discussions IMO are a waste of time. I could not understand my TA and he was no help.

3. Grade breakdown: 25% midterm 1 (25 Questions), 25% midterm 2 (25 Questions), 50% final (75 Questions Cumulative). All multiple choice.

4. Each test gets a bit harder. Averages were 90% (midterm 1), 79% (midterm 2), 72% (final).

5. Rojas curves the overall class, not individual tests. Though I ended with a raw 93%, the curve brought me up to an A+. To be fair there were only 9 A's on the final (out of a class of 127).

Professor Rojas is incredibly intelligent. Unfortunately that makes him a terrible teacher. His notes are structured so poorly and don't follow any sort of structure to make any sort of cohesive sense. To make things worse, his lectures consist of him reading the notes, and thats about it. The notes are written like a script for him to read, which makes them no use looking back on them trying to decipher which things relate, or how to actually do the things we are supposed to learn about.

If there is another professor available, take them, but otherwise good luck charlie

Apparently Econ 103 has become the prerequisite for Econ 104, so the material has changed. There is A LOT OF coding in R, and the professor expects you to have a basic knowledge of R before entering the class( or you need to self-teach during the first two weeks). ALL homework is done in R, which requires A LOT OF time. (the professor has cut down the number of questions due to complaints, but the workload is still huge) For me, every homework takes AT LEAST 5 hours to finish (have taken Stats 20). However, the is No relevance between HW and exams. The exams are more doable than HW, but there is no room for dumb mistakes since it's a curved class. NO practice final is offered and No similar exercise for the exam! Still waiting for the grades, I don't know what the curve will be like..
Overall, you will find yourself spending 70% of time doing HW that counts for 10% of this class since No homework will be dropped. No exercise or practice is offered when you try to prepare for the exam. The professor is not responsive, but it's understandable. I do think there is an issue with the structure of this class.

Rojas is really thorough and slow. He presented the material in a very nice manner, using different color chalks and bullet points to make everything pop out. He provides a good amount of practice tests and ungraded homework.

With that said, the material is not that easy. You have to stay on top of it. Don't wait to do the homework the day before the midterm. Also, it would help to practice some integration beforehand (simple and parts).

I would also recommend taking Stats 10 or an equivalent class for the hypothesis tests at the very end. That class helped me a lot!

Professor Rojas is a solid instructor that has straightforward slides and a free online textbook that has plenty of practice and preparation for the tests. There's two midterms that are each 20% of your grade, a final that's 45% of your grade, and the mostly weekly homework that are easy to get 100 on are 15% of your grade. He also provides practice midterms that have questions similar to the actual midterms. I took AP Microeconomics a few months before taking this class so it was not that difficult, but the people I know that didn't take AP Micro still were able to do well as long as they studied and looked over the practice midterms. Also, the lectures are hybrid and most people end up not going to lectures in-person as it's not really necessary as you get the same information by attending on Zoom or watching the recorded lectures. I will note that if you attend the Zoom lectures, be sure to log in on-time as he does not see people in the waiting room, so you won't be let in if you are late online. Also, the TA sections are optional, which is nice, and they are only necessary if you are confused with the material or want to look over a midterm you took. Overall, a fairly easy, strait-forward intro class.

I genuinely don't understand why Econ students think Rojas is a good professor, because this class was dogshit. Rojas isn't good at explaining concepts, his lectures are unengaging, and the lectures do hardly anything to prepare you for the homework and group projects. The single shining upside for this class is that it is, hands-down, the most practical Econ class you will ever take if you want to get a job. Learning how to forecast in R is very useful, I just wish Rojas wasn't so shit at teaching it.

The homework/group projects are assigned roughly weekly (except for the first week and the midterm week) and require several hours to complete. They're all focused around coding in R, and you have to figure out a lot of it yourself. Rojas tries to demonstrate some R coding in lecture, but it's completely unhelpful. This is the only class where I've ever actually wished for a discussion section, and it doesn't have one. The feedback on homework/projects is generally unhelpful, and gives you little chance to improve.

Rojas assigns three (yes, three!) textbooks for the class, with hours of optional weekly reading for each of them. I don't think it's possible to read everything he suggests and still take other classes, so I ignored textbook B and focused mainly on C (Forecasting Principles and Practices 3rd edition, by Hyndman and Athanasopoulos) and some of textbook A. If you only read one of the textbooks, I recommend FPP 3rd edition, as it's the clearest and the best resource for doing the homework. I wouldn't recommend skipping the reading entirely, as Rojas can't lecture for shit.

The midterm was online, and involved doing coding analysis questions live, which was a time crunch. The final was in-person, and was the worst final I've had in any Econ class (worse than anything in the 11/101/102 series). Rojas asked questions on every single concept ever mentioned in lecture, no matter how briefly (like models that never appeared on the slides, and which he never demonstrated in R, but only spoke about for 20 minutes). He also asked inane questions about the specifics of model implementations in R, which shouldn't really be relevant to the final (you can look those up easily in the R documentation if you ever forgot). At least we got 4 pages of "cheat sheets" for the final, but God help you if you didn't take excruciatingly detailed notes in lecture.

Rojas seems to focus the lectures as if you took 104 with him the quarter right before. He constantly referenced his 104 slides, and the class as a whole felt more like an extension of 104 (which I hadn't taken). 104 isn't listed as a prerequisite for this class, but maybe it should be. Then it would be less of a shitshow.

I took Econ 147 at the same time as this class, and that was a good pairing. The second half of 147 covers introductory time series concepts, and some of the same models (like ARMA, ARCH/GARCH) and concepts (covariance stationarity, white noise processes) covered in 144. It also has a very small amount of coding in R. If you can take 104 and 147 before 144, I highly recommend it, even though they're not prerequisites. The class is doable without them (I still got an A), but it could probably be made much easier if you prepare for it. The Econ department ought to update the prerequisites so students don't make the same mistake I did.

I actually really enjoyed his course. This is the first Econ class I got an A in, so I'm definitely not one of those genius econ students who are always setting the curve. I came into this class expecting it to be hard (my older friends warned me) so I only took 3 courses this quarter and spent a LOT of time on the homework. Yes, it took a lot of time but I think it was doable as I had never coded before in my life and managed to keep up, I just had to ask my TAs a lot of questions. Also I think the homework actually helped my understanding because I would never do my optional homeworks in previous econ classes....so I guess that was a learning moment for me lol.

I had the opportunity to schedule an office hours with him and he gave a lot of nice advice to me in terms of career and research. He was really nice and accommodating and even made our homeworks shorter after the class complained, BUT I did not love that he didn't give a final exam practice which kind of stressed me out.

I had Rojas for Econ 1 last spring and, like last time, the one word that I could best use to describe him is lazy. Although his class is easy, his lack of organization and sheer lack of sincerity will likely drive you insane.