Professor Smith was a pretty good professor--covered the material extremely clearly. However, he kept asking the class questions, which slowed down lecture so much that we did not cover the entire syllabus (we missed out on signalling and asymmetric information). It's also extremely annoying for a lecture hall to sit silently at 8AM waiting for someone to answer his questions. Teaches well, but terrible lecture style.

I read the reviews on Professor Smith and either they were misleading or Professor Smith has improved greatly because he has been one of the best Econ professors I've had at UCLA. He gives plenty of examples both on the problem sets and in class to prepare you for the exams, and he tries to make lecture engaging either through small in-class demonstrations for Game Theory problems or in the way he presents the topics. If you enjoy Econ for the concepts, you'll love this class because he really sets that foundation on concept in addition to the mathematical solving. I cannot recommend Professor Smith more.

THESE BAD REVIEWS ARE MISLEADING. I originally was waitlisted for Kung's class, did not get in and was worried about being in this class because of the reviews on here, but honestly, professor Smith is great. He is engaging even at 8am as he really tries to show us how the content is relevant in the real world and his tests were very fair. Problem sets are excellent exam prep, a mistake that I'd made for a midterm was not understanding the analysis behind every question of the problem set - do that and your concepts are pretty much solid and you are probably going to do well. He is also very approachable so do not ever hesitate to clarify concepts or ask doubts. He mentioned to us once that he takes feedback seriously and I don't doubt it at all as he was constantly revising and improving exam format because of previous suggestions. tl;dr Take the class with him. He does his best and you will learn a lot.

As far as I know, 2018 winter is Pro. Smith's second quarter of teaching ECON 101 in UCLA. I know 2017, every student in his class had a hard time in Midterm 2. Anyway, it's his first quarter of teaching. Even though, the overall point 2.9 is absolutely unfair to him. He just dedicated to teach, to inspire and to help us. I am so regret I didn't voice record his lecture (if I am allowed to) since his lecture is so clear and organized. Even though our class had more than 150 students enrolled, he still very cared about interaction with student, by questioning, by eye contact, and by volunteer activities. He dedicated to make us understand and tried to trigger our interests to economics.

His tests are fair. I can tell he's trying to adjust and refine each midterm and final. He posed practice exams (last year midterms and final) before our exams. And he had problem set about each topics we discussed in class. It's very comprehensive and some of its problems are challenging. BUT, everything on the test were taught in the lectures. So it's totally fair and it's your responsibility to go to his lectures and ENJOY.

As far as I know, 2018 winter is Pro. Smith's second quarter of teaching ECON 101 in UCLA. I know 2017, every student in his class had a hard time in Midterm 2. Anyway, it's his first quarter of teaching. Even though, the overall point 2.9 is absolutely unfair to him. He just dedicated to teach, to inspire and to help us. I am so regret I didn't voice record his lecture (if I am allowed to) since his lecture is so clear and organized. Even though our class had more than 150 students enrolled, he still very cared about interaction with student, by questioning, by eye contact, and by volunteer activities. He dedicated to make us understand and tried to trigger our interests to economics.

His tests are fair. I can tell he's trying to adjust and refine each midterm and final. He posed practice exams (last year midterms and final) before our exams. And he had problem set about each topics we discussed in class. It's very comprehensive and some of its problems are challenging. BUT, everything on the test were taught in the lectures. So it's totally fair and it's your responsibility to go to his lectures and ENJOY.

Troy is super helpful, very engaging with his students and gives really interesting and informative lectures. His tests closely match practice tests he posts and problem sets (that aren't due for credit). Grading: 2 midterms - 30% each, Final is 40%. The tests have multiple choice and short answer and they can be tricky but all the info is in his slides. He ALWAYS is there to answer questions and even extends his office hours if people still need help. This is a hard class and you have to put in the work to get a good grade but if you do poorly don't blame it on the professor because he is exceptionally clear and fair.

Maybe he is a good researcher or economist, but he can't teach. period.
78% average for mid 1, but 35% for mid term? None of the hardcore contents taught during the second half of the quarter were covered in the final? Are you kidding me, Professor Troy Smith?

Prof. Smith is well spoken and a decent lecturer considering that this is his first time teaching at UCLA. His tests are fair but there are certain factors that make them difficult to study for. If he teaches this course again, he might change his method, but I thought I'd share my experiences in case they still apply:

Material: I found the material of this course more difficult than previous econ classes I've taken, just because there are similar concepts that are easy to mix up. There is quite a bit of memorization for how to solve the problems, and some of them are multi-step. You definitely need a good grasp of the intuition behind basic economic concepts.

Exams: The exams are split up into MC and free response.
The MC questions are very conceptual (basically no math), and reviewing all the definitions in the lecture slides and paying attention during lecture to what he emphasizes would be the best way to prepare for them. I reviewed the slides more carefully for the final and found the MC a lot easier.
The free response questions are worth a lot of points, but only cover a few of the topics taught. For the second midterm, there were so many topics they could have tested us on, but the two free response questions are both on this one topic that we only briefly discussed in class. And as a result, the midterm average was around 30%. I think Prfo. Smith learned from this and improved for the final, but some topics that he spent a long time teaching were still not tested. This makes studying for the free response questions frustrating because we don't know which topics to focus on and have to know essentially everything.
The homework problems helped a lot for the final- some of the questions are almost exact copies of them, but this wasn't the case for the midterms. I think he only made it that way because people did poorly on the second midterm.
The good thing about his exams is that there is no time crunch. Just make sure you memorize all the types of problems and know how to distinguish them.

Overall, this class is manageable. It was more difficult to study for because there aren't any previous exams to practice with, but Prof. Smith is very willing to answer questions and give clarifications. My TA was Jacob and while there are always a lot of people at his sections, I didn't find him very helpful. His explanations are a bit too abstract/conceptual for me. The TA's make the questions for the exams, though, so I would recommend attending office hours- just choose a TA who can answer your questions well.

I think that the class was not that hard overall. I messed up the final because I mainly focused on different parts of the course that were not covered in the exam. The pace of the class goes by fast and the student needs to put in some extra time out of the classroom. The main problem of this class was that I believe that the exams were poorly made by the TA's without too much reflexion of what material was taught in the classroom. For instance, both midterms 1 and 2 had multiple choices questions that were worth in total 30% of the grade, however, the remaining 70% of the grade was based on 2 problems of 35 points each. Are you kidding me? Out of 20+ different types of problems and variations that could be on the test they choose 2 and placed 35% on each, I think that was the major flaw of this class, they could have easily made 4-5 problems to dilute the weight of the questions. Another issue was that they took way too much time to post the problem sets and the solutions online. Other than that I enjoyed Troy, he is a nice guy and I believe he meant well (the exams questions could be improved - 35% weight on one problem is ridiculous). I ended up with a B+, I took McDevitt for 11 and thought that it was way harder than 101. I also work 25-30 hrs per week including weekends and I took 12 units this quarter which means that any UCLA student can get a good grade with him in this class. I would take him again.

For those who prefer self-study or simply don't attend lectures regularly, you probably want to read this!!

Professor Smith is a nice guy. His teaching is clear and logic. However, you need to attend his lectures to survive this class. Most of the examples, key points, contents covered, and exam info are discussed only during the lectures. His slides are just a very brief summary of basic concepts and do not contain examples/concepts that will be covered in the exam. Meanwhile, he neither uses the textbook for teaching nor for designing the exams. What makes it even harder is that his lectures are extremely fast paced.

I personally prefer self-study over lectures, especially for courses like econ or math, and this strategy was working fine for me. (all A+s for Econ 1~41). However, I had a really hard time with this 101. I checked those slides and found them useless. Reading the textbook is useful, but most of the chapters either contain way too much information or too limited. And there were no comprehensive notes provided. For instance, I felt really confused when I frequently saw questions that would not be covered in the exam (but in the textbook) appear in suggested additional exercise.

That said, this class is not a difficult one, though the exams are a bit tricky and unpredictable. But you really need to attend those lectures to know what exactly is being taught.