I am a graduating senior and I thought I should give my input on some of the comments regarding one of the most important classes I took at UCLA.
I read a comment about her not showing up for class and it was in the same quarter I took the class. She missed a couple classes due to a car accident and food poisoning and notified us immediately through emails.

A few of the comments complain that her exam questions are mostly similar to previous exam questions. I am surprised this is even worth complaining about. It gives us an opportunity to study and do better in the exams. Even then as can be seen in the grade distribution only about 25% of the students get As.

Similarly, I read some comments complaining about she uses the publisher’s lecture notes after some minor revisions. I mean, if the publisher has good notes and if they help us understand the material, what are you really complaining about? Many other professors use notes from publishers too. I personally love the slides.

I noticed some people referred to her as “this woman”. C’mon, that’s just being disrespectful.

Another comment or complaint I read is about the final exam we did for the spring 2012 class, we can actually see it at the counselor’s office and if you choose, you can ask for it to be regraded.

Two suggestions:
One, I took advantage of her office hours when I have questions (she held office hour on a weekly basis). If you don’t take advantage of that, it is not her fault.

Two, if you studied even a fraction of the time she spent on this class there is no reason for you not to have a good grade.

Need more reason to not take this professor? Want to see how she really doesn't care for her students?

Here's an email she sent out to her Spring Class:

"Dear Students,

The rules do not allow you to contact the grader.

I am on leave from UCLA until the Winter quarter. I will not be answering any questions about the finals or your grades until then.

Best wishes,

Sule Ozler"

i could tell you i've taken a worse class at UCLA but i'd be lying. this woman does not teach. her final was the most god-awful compilation of previous tests i'd ever seen. exactly 90 pts of the 100 points were exact duplicates of previous finals, which she offers the entire class as practice tests. those of you looking to get an easy A better have fantastic memory, because unless you memorize the answer key word for word, you'll hit the median same as everyone else and get forced down to a B whether you scored in the 90's or not.
there's about a 5-6% drop per grade, meaning 90=85 and 70=65. if you're not careful, you won't even pass the class.

as for the professor, she:
* missed two classes unannounced
* doesn't answer questions without telling students to "look at the book"
* left town two weeks before the final, so no office hours
* didn't come to her own final

overall:
drop it, while you still have a chance

There are some pretty false evaluations on this page. Especially the "this is the best class I've ever taken and she grades fairly" and the "I learned so much from this class".

How far from the truth.

Out of the 100+ people that were in this class, only maybe 40 people actually came to lecture. She posts slides, and 90% of the questions on exams come from previous tests which are posted on the website. It's really quite sad, I have never seen a median of an 87 in an economics class before. Meaning, a 70 is a D+ and not passing. She wants to flunk 15% of the class (5% F, 10% D) in an upper division class where she DOES NOT DO ANYTHING TO DIFFERENTIATE STUDENTS FROM EACH OTHER.

She didn't show up to class twice, for excuses that I think are quite made up. Better for you, as that means less class!

You can not come to class, memorize ALL THE TESTS (hint: first midterm questions may come from finals), and get a shot at a high grade. As a lazy college senior, I did not study at all and got in the B range.

This woman is pathetic and gives the econ department a bad name. Whoever graded the tests is equally terrible, as I was not given 4 points on my first midterm, and 10 points on my second midterm. Regrades for our second midterm took 3 weeks to go through, even more terrible. Who knows what they missed on my final, but I don't really care as I passed and will graduate.

If you are a junior, you will hate this class because the curve hurts your GPA. If you are a senior, you will love this because you do no work and can get a B easy.

ECON 121 SPRING 2012
I like this class very much. Here are the reasons why:
1) The materials are presented clearly and very straight forward. 2)Students always know what is needed to be done in order to understand the course materials and do well in the exams.
3) Prof Ozler did a very good job on pointing out what is important and connect the dots for us in lectures.
4) No surprises... as in no curve ball in the exams. Smilar to Prof Mcdevitt HW questions (his exams questions are based on his hw questions), Professor Ozler posts previous exams AND show us how to do some of the more important end-of-chapter problems, and the exams are based on all these materials.

Response to some of the comments posted here:
I don't know what is better for everyone, having a professor write everything on the board with a chalk or use slides. I personally like the clean slides, because I don't have to worry about if I missed writing down anything in lectures.
Another common theme I read here, Straight forward exams vs other type of exams questions:
Majority of the exams questions can be found from previous exams and end of chapters HW professor Ozler post online and show in lectures. So, If you go to class and do the work, you should be able to do well.
Again, this class is for student who want to learn some of the foundation for International Economics.

I do suggest to go to office hours to see her if you have any questions regarding the course materials.

People can say what they like about her depending on their grade, but hands down Ozler is the driest professor I've had at UCLA. She reads off the publisher's power points, and her idea of "teaching" is to draw the graphs the publishers provide on the blackboard.

The tests are awful, not because they're hard (they're very easy) but because you will have seen at least 1/2 of the problems on previous exams (which you use to practice). This means the curve is ridiculously high (95% = A-) because there's always that bunch of people that go and memorize the answer key instead of actually learning econ.
Overall, if you want an easy A, memorize the answer key. If you want to actually learn economics, got find another professor/ class.

Ozler is pretty lazy. Her slides are from the textbook, pretty much all of her test questions are from the textbook, if you go to her asking a question, she will refer you to the textbook. Upside is that she posts previous tests and all of your test questions will come from them. If you can memorize answers, you will get an A in this class, but don't expect to get anything from the professor.

I completely agree with the person below me. Despite what many people say, Professor Ozler is extremely fair, makes the material clear and understandable, and wants her students to succeed. I have taken over 10 Economics courses at UCLA, and unfortunately there have not been many good economics professors. Professor Ozler stands out as one of the few that made Economics fun, interesting, and manageable.

I highly recommend taking a course with Professor Ozler.

If you do the follow things, there is no reason why you should not succeed in this class:
1) Take notes during class, in addition to the slides that she has posted.
2) Do all of the practice problems from the book.
3) Do all of the practice midterms and finals multiple times.

By just doing those 3 things, you should get an A.

I had Ozler for Econ 121 Fall quarter 2011. Here is a breakdown of the professor/ class:

1) YES, her lecture slides do come directly from the textbook publishing company, and YES she does read directly off of them. However, she does attempt to be interactive with the class and ask questions that prompt us to think more deeply.... but then nobody answers her & she just gets frustrated. She definitely has a love-hate (more hate for my quarter) relationship with her classes, depending on how much people participate in discussion.

2) On top of lecture slides, she also does sample multiple choice questions and long-answer questions from the book. There's almost NO variation whatsoever between the book's practice questions she shows in class and the questions she puts on her exams.

3) She posts past midterms/ finals for us to study with. Her ACTUAL exams are fairly similar to her past exams, and I have even seen a few repeating questions.

Overall, while the class and the material itself is pretty boring, Ozler is a FAIR teacher. I got an A+ in the class and economics is NOT my forte (I got B's & B+'s in Econ 2 and 11). To do well in the class, I highly recommend you:

1) Record her lectures. When she reads through her notes, she clarifies a lot of things that the slides don't. Then listen to the lectures again and take notes in your own words so you know what the hell is going on.

2) Memorize ALL the graphs she shows and understand what theories they refer to. On her exams, she'll ask you to draw graphs to accompany certain problems, and you literally have to just spit back the exact graphs from class. You'll never have to really think "outside the box" and you will never encounter some crazy, hybrid problem that was not covered. Everything will be things you've seen before. Also, if you don't understand a graph, they are taken directly from the textbook, so just flip to the textbook & read the description. It's pretty helpful!

3) Make sure you understand the long answer problems she shows in class. All you have to do is copy down what she writes on the board and memorize the steps. The concepts aren't that hard to understand either.

Do all these things, and you'll definitely beat the curve in the class.

She is terrible! WORST ECON PROFESSOR at UCLA! In conclusion, she simply doesn't know how to teach. She is TOO LAZY to prepare her own lecture notes so she just uses the slides provided by the publisher and make some small changes on it. She also 'generously' holds a 45 minutes office hour per week and keeps changing it afterwards to fit her own schedule. She also does not willing to answer student's question BEFORE OR AFTER the lecture as she would always need to prepare the lecture before the class starts and enjoy a 'quick lunch' after the class ends. What she knows best is to COPY AND PASTE- copy the questions provided by the publisher and directly place it into the test. She expects you to learn all the materials yourself so she could just sit over there and collect the check. I hope you don't have a high expectation for the class since there is nothing worth to learn from her. Those who registered for the class, here is my advice- drop it to get your money back before its too late.