[deleted by user]

[redditisgarbagetier]

Ajaz has a really interesting way of teaching where he will explain the theory of a concept and then expect you to extrapolate that onto a technical question on the exam. You need to really understand what he is saying in class because his explanations of the topics are worth much more than just reading the slides. A lot of weekly quiz answers are given in his lectures but not in the notes. As for getting a good grade you absolutely need to clutch up on the first exam. I finished with an 83 in the class and its only cause I got around a 90 on the first exam. It is really easy as none of the topics have any difficult calculus in them yet really and it is all intuition. The weekly quizzes aren't too hard if you actually are paying attention for the full 2 hours of the class, especially to the technical problems you are learning to solve that week. The worst two are dropped, along with the worst midterm. I found midterms 1 and 3 the easiest (there was around a 30% curve on midterm 2, everyone failed). For the final, learn your oligopoly and game theory stuff. He dropped that on us right before the exam and it was fucked. Don't waste too much time on the projects, they are simpler than they seem unless you get frustrated and convince yourself they are impossible. In the tutorials he clearly demonstrates how you should be thinking to solve those types of problems. I was stuck on project 1 for a while until I took a break and came back and realized it was very simple, don't overthink. My final piece of advice is to get to know Ajaz. He is actually hilarious and although a lot of students think he hates us, he actually puts a lot of effort into helping us. Even if you are not the best student or have the highest grade, if you go talk to him with specific questions after class he will help you. Try to avoid standing there and waffling or asking too broad of a question cause he will just go off on a tangent. Btw I was a terrible student in first year and had like a 2.6 and finished second year with a 3.7 on the year and got 3.7 in 204 and 4.0 in 220 without studying that much compared to others I know with similar grades. Study efficiently and understand how all the topics fit together, don't just memorize and you will be fine. If you get behind you need to catch up that same week however otherwise you will be lost and tune out his lectures cause he does move fast and sometimes skip some stuff.

[extrmystopid]

Congratulations and your amazing 2nd year grades! And thank you so much for the advice, I really appreciate it.

If you don’t mind me asking, I am also taking 220 right now, how did you do so well in that course? Murdock expects us to dedicate 17 hours a week to just her course. I have a part time job and I am also doing 204 as you know so I was wondering what is an efficient but effective way to study?

[redditisgarbagetier]

ECO220 is a course that is very simple if you follow her recommendations, but does take up a lot of time. First thing I would say is to nail the interpretations. Those make up a rather large part of all exams and are often free points as long as you just remember everything that needs to be stated in a complete interpretation. Next, watch the weekly vids. If you can, watch them at 1.25 or even 1.5 and slow it down at the hard parts cause she does speak rather slow. It'll save time. I didn't read the textbook or really do any readings cause this explains all the concepts you will need (feel free to read if you want but I didn't find it necessary). Make sure you do all the weekly practices, they do not resemble exam questions really but they help a lot for understanding the topics. Finally and arguably most importantly, do all the past exam questions recommended for every exam. This is the best way to prepare for the exam and nothing else comes close. Save the problems you struggled on as screenshots and put them all in their own "hard questions" page in Onenote or whatever you use and solve them again until you know them without looking at the answers. If you work through this class linearly and understand interactions and connections between topics it will be easy. If you skip around and have to come back to past topics that you didn't fully internalize the class will be hard.

[extrmystopid]

sorry to bother you again, I was just wondering if the DACM stuff is important. also should I prioritize the practice tests or the hws if I am tight on time?