Class is not hard nor easy, but he taught all material without any order. It was very difficult to review the materials without any orderness.

Any positive reputation this professor had in the past is completely gone. He has completely checked out as a teacher this year and doesn't care about anyone. You will never get an email response. You will waste 40 hours a week on homework working on unrelated questions. He said we will be tested on R studio and coding, but not a single piece of code was needed for any of the tests. We started with the ability to take tests using R studio, but by the second midterm we were not allowed R studio, limited notes, testing via respondus, and a webcam proctor in addition to testing. While previous reviews say there is a curve, there really isn't. I bombed the first test because I studied to be tested on code. I got B and above on midterm and final. Raw score 79% because of the first exam, C+ as final grade. So basically no curve, couldn't even bump me to a B-. Students were so frustrated with him the entire class wrote a formal letter of complaints to the head of the econ department. One student went as far as chewing him out during one of the class sessions. The material isn't that hard but he made it a very toxic learning environment.

Having taken Econ 1 with Rojas (and having had a pretty good experience), I was shocked by how unorganized and poorly planned this course was. This class began with a ridiculous homework assignment in R that took days and ended with Respondus crashing over and over again on the final. In between, Rojas basically seemed to give up on trying to teach - it really felt like the pandemic had taken a lot out of him. He also decided to teach off of an R Markdown document, which sort of made sense because he was trying to teach us R, but was a lot more difficult to follow than a traditional powerpoint. If you can, I would recommend that you wait a couple of quarters before taking 103 so that the Econ department can figure out how to run this class.

I took this class during the pandemic so things may be different during a normal quarter, but either way I strongly recommend against taking this class. Professor Rojas was highly uncommunicative, rarely responded to emails, and was not very understanding. He assumed we knew material from Econ 41 that we hadn’t actually learned and refused to teach it to us. Lectures were basically Rojas moving his mouse around the screen and reading through the notes, which were extremely long, disorganized, and often incorrect, and he sometimes entirely skipped important sections. You’re required to code in R for homework assignments and interpret it on exams. While R is a useful language to know, there is a disconnect between the amount and difficulty of coding that is required for homework and the basic knowledge you need to have of R for exams. Additionally, the homework took at least five hours to complete each week, and during the first week it took around fifteen hours because of the steep learning curve. Rojas was not very helpful with teaching us R and told us to look up everything online whenever someone had a question rather than answering. Grades consisted of homework (15%), two midterms (20% each), and the final (45%). The first midterm went well, but since the average was higher than what the professor expected he assumed there was cheating and made the second exam heavily proctored. The final was also proctored, but everyone had so many technical difficulties with the software that it was removed and just proctored over Zoom. All exams were open note, which was helpful, but while we had no restrictions on the length of our study guide for the first exam the rest had some page limits. There was very little practice material for the midterms and none for the final, and what was given was often incorrect. While Professor Rojas is knowledgeable about the subject, I did not find his teaching very effective and I would not take this class again.

Prof. Rojas was an extremely boring lecturer. He took forever going over very basic concepts, and didn't end up going through the entire syllabus (skipped the entire section on heteroskedacity). Overall, the class was extremely easy--no assignments, only two midterms and a final, all of which are fairly straightforward and similar to what was covered in class. The recommended textbook problems are significantly harder than what shows up on actual exams. He's very boring and wastes too much time answering student questions, but if you want an easy A, take this class with Professor Rojas.

Professor Rojas is very clear in his lectures and slides. He has a very good TA team so even if he is not available for office hours, his TA's are. He gives lots of practice midterms and questions and they are pretty similar to the actual tests. Not the easiest class but definitely the best professor to take it with.

Rojas is nice... but he's overrated. There's no reason to delay taking 103 just to take it with him. Like others have said, his tests are similar to the practice exams and homework problems that he assigns. However, his tests are really, really time crunched.

I enjoyed Rojas' lectures. I am an econ major so I enjoyed to be able to have a class that is more applicable to real life situations than theory. I attend school full time and also work 30 hrs per week which makes the whole school schedule difficult to balance. Thus, any student who puts a little bit of effort will be able to get a good grade in this class. Like the other person mentioned, exams are very similar to practice exams/homework problems. It is a little pressed for time (practice to solve the problems fast). The MC questions are a little more conceptual. I think that he was one of the best professors that I had so far. He actually teaches the material.

Rojas is legitimately one of the best professors at UCLA. He is very neat and organized during lectures. His tests are extremely fair. All of the material comes straight from the book. If you read the textbook and understand it, then you will do very well on tests.

His midterms are a bit time sensitive and a lot of the problems require tedious work. However it is not a difficult class. I've noticed a lot of people complain about not doing well, but then they admit they never open the book. As a math major I think this is a bit ridiculous. If you want to do well in the class open the book and read it. Rojas has less than 3 hours a week to cover the material he needs in a 400 person lecture hall. You can't expect him to explain every detail.

You don't really need to go to lecture, or lab, or learn STATA (outputs on exams are pretty common sense once you read the book). Great class and very useful.

Rojas has a specialization in statistics, which is why he is really great for teaching this class. If you had a hard time in Econ 41, then it'll be difficult in this class too because in delves into the theory and practicality of the topics from 41. I had a solid foundation in stats and therefore didn't have much trouble with the subject matter. 103 heavily focuses on regression and variable testing, such as t-tests, F-tests, chi-tests, etc. Rojas does not use slides for the main lecture, rather goes at a slower pace by writing it all out on the board. While the lecture notes were clearly provided, the symbols and equation styles might make it hard to understand, however, if you do your hw, you will understand where everything is coming from. You do not need to memorize any equations because we are provided with a formula sheet that includes nearly everything you need to know. The exams test whether or not you know what and how to use a particular tool, and summarize the significance of it - therefore, the word problems were fairly decent if you did your hw and practiced on some practice tests. The multiple choice questions mostly test theory, and are a bit more difficult, but certainty not impossible. Two midterms (25% each), had 5 word problems, 5 MC. Final (50%) had 10 word problems and 10 MC. The lab lecture focuses on Stata tools and uses for the topics learned in lecture. Stata is easy to learn if you go to discussion and work it yourself along with the TA, and use the Stata book for hw guidance.