Seyhan Arkonac

Medium to Heavy. 15 hours/ Week because problem sets can be very long, repetitive and I got stuck often on STATA.

5 hard psets Midterm, pretty hard, big spread Final Grade = .25*PS + .25*min(MT,F) + .5*max(MT,F)

Professor Erden seems very patient and approachable. However, she is one of the two worst economic lecturers I have had at Columbia. This course's contents are very interesting to me, as they are relevant to my interest in policy research and socio-economics studies. However, Professor Erden failed to deliver in a clear, engaging, and interesting manner. She could also come off as a very mean person at times. I remember in the second lecture she told the class that there would be a pop-up quiz given out WHEN THE ATTENDANCE RATE WAS LOW. It's like saying "I know I'm boring but you have to pay your due in this room." Her academic standards are not high either because problem sets usually contain mistakes and she recycled problem sets from previous years. I knew this only after the second midterm. People who got the solutions from the previous year were copying like nuts. Advice for Prospective Students: - READ THE TEXTBOOK! It's so concise and well-written by Harvard Economists! Let's just say Professor Erden would repeat many of these examples in her classes. If you figure out these examples, this class is an easy A! - Identify one or two grad TAs who have talents in this field and are helpful. I had Gustavo. He's so knowledgeable, clear and an awesome sensei!

*Now Seyhan Erden. Professor Erden is a very kind and approachable professor, and she can competently teach Introduction to Econometrics. However, for Advanced Econometrics, her very presence in the room was harmful. She clearly did not understand most of the material, and during class, she would just copy down information from her slides, not really explaining anything. This would almost be acceptable if what she wrote wasn't riddled with errors. Professor Erden has just about zero attention to detail. I do not know how she has a PhD. Several times each class, students would point out these errors, and eventually convince her she was wrong. But so many were never caught (for example, only giving half of the definition of ergodicity), because the class was so completely lost. Probably the worst professor I have ever had. Sure, it was her first time teaching the course, but she put in no effort to make up for that fact. On top of that, the substance of the class itself is pretty challenging. The midterm and final covered more material than any other tests I have ever taken, and with only 5 problem sets, you don't get much opportunity to practice applications. Most of your time will be spent wrapping your head around the theory and derivations. If you enjoyed Intro, are comfortable with Linear Algebra, and are smart, this class is probably worth it. But DO NOT take it if Erden i…

Heavier workload than the other section not taught by herself.

Horrible Professor! Extremely rude during office hours. I've been to her office hours a couple of times, and she literally keeps students waiting up to 15 minutes while she plays on her phone. Sure she knows the material, but so does anyone who has spent a decent amount of time looking at the textbook. I really don't know why she has a silver star. Avoid at all costs!

9 psets (all solutions online) midterm final

Pros - 1. Very straight forward exams - no tricks 2. Problem set solutions are all available online/people have the old solutions 3. One midterm, one final - no projects Cons - 1. Class is boring 2. Lecture slides are not posted beforehand, so it's hard to pay attention in class - you will find yourself scrambling to copy everything down instead of absorbing the material 3. Very, very slight curve in the class (but this means that the class average is already high, and this should say something about the exams - they aren't hard) FAQ: Do I need to go to class? No Are the exams hard? No, not really. Very straight forward - just study old exams, problem set solutions, etc.. Is the class time consuming? It doesn't have to be if you just copy the problem set solutions for the homework. It only gets busy before the midterm and the final - just go hard then. Overall assessment: Prob the best and least stressful metrics class you can take. B+ overall assessment of the course.

9 Problem sets, which can take many hours (if you don't acquire the solution sets from internet or otherwise, which I've heard many a student does). Midterm - meh. Also peculiar that the through the first four or five problems sets the class average was in the low- to mid-90s, and yet the midterm average was about a 70. The content was was also a lot easier than the problem sets, except too long to properly work them through and proof them. Success in life is rarely about speed. Accuracy and clarity are often the important things, something that doesn't come through in the course very much. Final - TBD.

Not a good class, but what are you going to do? Mandatory for the Econ major. The class through to the midterm were taught by Professor Miikka Rokkanen, who I believe is only a year or so into his time at Columbia. He was very adept at distilling the important pieces from the textbook readings and provided a manageable amount of slides ("Just the facts, ma'am"). Most importantly, his self-effacing presence and genuine enthusiasm shone through. Show me someone who loves what they're doing, and I'll be his audience. But this review is to be about Professor Seyhan (Erden). My sense is that Professor Seyhan has grown tired with teaching the course at a count now in/near the double digits. That's no slight against her character. It's normal for people at work to get stuck with tedium. If you had a PhD and were working at one of the most famous research universities in the world, would you really want to be teaching introductory material year after year to bunch of kids? Smart people don't like routine. I keep an open mind that her performance and overt interest is there, but for her graduate courses where she has a chance to pursue the hard and interesting parts of her work. Having checked through the previews on Coursehero it would seem that the problem sets haven't been updated very much or at all. What's confounding is how riddled with mistakes both the problems and the solution…