Michael Miller

Two papers (one of which is a very dry poll analysis) and a midterm and final. Also reading quizzes but these are literally two sentences and very surface level. The format for the exams are pretty interesting and honestly quite nice for an in class essay. He will give you the prompts beforehand and then choose two randomly. Basically, come up with an outline and memorize it and you will be fine.

2 midterms and 1 final, all in-person writing prompts. Gives the questions two weeks in advance but the questions are ultra-specific to what the professor thinks. Poli sci course so lots of reading, but you can skim and still do well.

There are 3 take home quizzes As well as 3 seperate 12-15 page papers, A literature review of 15 sources, a interview section where you conduct the interviews and review them, and a final coding project where you run calculations in R studio.

This class has one large paper (approximately 40-50 pages) broken up into 3 steps: Literature Review (40 points), Interviews (60 points), and Quantitative (R)(80 points). At the end of the three steps, you have the chance to throw away any/all parts for a new grade at the end. Additionally, there are three small quizzes at the beginning of the semester, which you can retake once after Professor Miller has graded it. Half of your assignments will be graded by the TA, and the other half will be graded by Professor Miller himself. For my TA, I had Cameron Arnzen who was a lifesaver. Before our Step 3 was due he offered an extra Office Hours on a Saturday, where he helped me for an hour. He also is very responsive to emails. Both of them grade fairly. On weeks where we did not have any assignments due, I didn't spend any time on this class. But on the weeks that I had a Step due I would spend approximately 30 hours (4 days x 8 hours). Each quiz took approximately 30 minutes.

Every class there is a reading from either a textbook or a political science journal and a supreme court case but you do not have to read the opinion, just read oyez or wikipedia to get the summary to prepare to be cold called in class. Then there is a midterm and final - both in class handwritten essays where you are given of a bunch of prompts and then he randomly chooses one. And lastly there is either the simulation project or a data analysis paper. The simulation project is a supreme court case simulation.

Sometimes the course content could be a bit common sense-ish but also sometimes was super interesting. All in all, really liked this class. Miller is super passionate and knowledgable about the subject. Definitely rec. He's quite a character and some people didn't seem to really get it, but honestly, he's the best so take it. He does have some weird idiosyncrasies (esp. when it comes to appealing your grade), but other than that, he's great.

I came from a very poor public school with no access to AP classes, so this course was pretty fun for me. However, I do not disagree that the concepts are very simple, and could be learned easily in high school. If you have any historical American knowledge, this class is not hard, and honestly, I found Prof Millers' dramatic monologues pretty engaging, and I thought he was all right when it came to how he presented the material. My main issue was his exam questions. Not that they were hard, he gave the questions to us in advance, but the fact that he was looking for a specific answer. Oftentimes, he would have us argue against one of his beliefs, and even if you used facts, it did not really matter if it was not the answer he was looking for. We also had some cheaters during the final, which caused him to grade everyone harsher instead of just giving consequences to those who cheated, so even though I left the exam confidently I didn't get as great a score as I thought I would. Overall, it was a pretty easy class, but he is opinionated and focuses much on his personal beliefs instead of factual information. I did well in this class, though, and I commend my TA due to all the TAs being the main graders for everybody.

This class should just be called "coding in R studio, and writing pointless literature/interview reviews to survive your quantitive mandate for political science" it is absolutely absurd you will write three 12-15 page projects for this class resulting in likely 40 pages of work. The lectures are slightly helpful but overall pointless, the labs are pretty much to clarify the coding, but in reality you will learn very little "hard skills" that actually translate to your own project as none of the data you are working with will match your own. Honestly you should not take this class I am pretty sure the only reason 90% of the people took it is because it was the only thing available to fulfill the requirement as a sophomore or junior with a later registration period. The grading will be hard and they will act like it is a god send that you can redo portions of your project in the end to resubmit for regrading...as if you have time/ even want to redo massive chunks of work at finals to get a good grade? The TA is nice and the professor is reasonable, but it's way too much work for an undergraduate introductory class to quantitative methods. I cannot believe this class did not have a culpa review to save me, this is the first one I have ever wrote. DO NOT TAKE THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE TO....literally he most pointless over the top class I have ever taken. Band together and just start…

For context, I am a psychology major taking this class with majority Political Science majors. I expected this class to be like Professor Miller's Introduction to American Politics class, but it is incredibly different with a lot of quantitative information. Pros: - Professor Miller is incredibly engaging - The whole class is about learning how to do Poli Sci research skills so you have lots of opportunities to redo after being given feedback - You learn how to use R - You can do research on any topic you like Cons: - Professor Miller can be intimidating - Lots of time on R coding - Professor Miller uses a randomly generated name list in class to ask coding questions - Sometimes if you ask a question, he will make you try to figure it out instead of answering it - A lot of time lecturing on his previous work Despite the longer list of cons, I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot of applicable skills for research, even outside the field of Political Science.

*This was not a Colloquium** It was just American Elections. I have taken two courses with Professor Miller so I knew what I was getting into - it's very similar to his other classes. He has a lot of energy, and is very passionate but can be rude sometimes. I thought the course was interesting - a lot more Supreme Court Cases/pre-law than I anticipated.