Miguel Urquiola

Taking AP micro in high school I knew a lot going into the course regarding that half of it. I never really went to a single recitation or office hours except before the final. Pretty light and he goes over the stuff well. Nice guy too. Honestly this is the type of class you could never go to a lecture and still do good on the exams...

The class is pretty chill. You (unsurprisingly) review papers on the economics of education, but you don't have to read them too closely. The midterm isn't too bad, and at the end of the semester you have to give a presentation but that isn't too bad either -- the hard part is coming up with an original idea. The class lets you see the point of many of the tools you learned in micro and macro (although not really macro). Urquiola is also great. I'd recommend the class if you can get in.

Professor Urquiola is probably my favorite professor this semester. He's funny and engaging but also teaches the content very clearly. The content of the class is very simple -- Basic conceptual economic theory with very basic math. I'm taking the course as an elective and I'd definitely recommend taking it with this professor whether you're majoring in econ or not.

Urquiola is an engaging professor who puts the basics of economics into the real world and tangible facts. His lectures are not absolutely boring, there's always some kind of joke or fun. The only annoying thing is the midterm is worth 42.5% of your grade and so is the final, so beware. His TAs, at least during my semester, were unhelpful and often didn't even know how to do the P-set themselves. Urquiola himself though is great and you will learn econ thoroughly.

Miguel was a fair lecturer. He presented the material pretty clearly and used both black boards and lecture slides. The TAs did a good job reinforcing the lecture material in recitations. However, the content in his syllabus deviates slightly from the conventional AP micro/macro/Principles of Econ curriculum (particularly Macro, where Malthusian & Solow models that were taught are nowhere to be found in other sections' syllabus). Moreover, his midterm was slightly too long and the average grade was below other sections, although he did make up for it by giving a similar length final with twice the midterm's allotted time (it is understandable since I suppose this is his first time teaching Principles). All in all, there are probably better sections than Miguel's, but I certainly couldn't deter anyone from taking him. He is a very nice person and taught well. But if you took AP Econs and just want an easy A, take another section since the material doesn't translate well into Miguel's curriculum.

Basic concepts and models of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Basic macro and micro concepts. With my knowledge from this class, I was able to understand most of the headlines on Bloomberg.

I learned a lot of foundational information about the economy

I learned about Demand and Supply curves and their meanings. I also learned about Solow, Malthusian, and AS-AD models.

Typical economics topics. Had interesting education section. Learned how to study for midterms and finals