Advice from students with high score, in their own words.
In the following text reference is made to the following books:
Thank you Mr. Rai for teaching an excellent course.
I want to state that the depth which this class reached
was excellent. I feel very confident in applying my skills as well.
If you want to do well in this class reading Salvatore is
crucial. I actually sold Gwartney earlier this week and only
took notes from Salvatore. When reading Salvatore it is
just as important to study the solved solutions along with the
summary notes.
You may post my grade and name.
Have a Merry Christmas,
~Kyle Galle
Econ201 Grade:A
Fall 2007
Feel free to include any of this (including my name or grade) on your website.
The one aspect of this class that I would emphasize as being a necessity, would definitely be attending lectures. The lectures were good additions to what the books illustrated; and it helped to see the concepts worked out step by step on the board.
In all honesty, I rarely read all of Gwartney. It seemed excessively wordy, so I would skim through it before class, then read Salvatore as a review. If there were any questions, the lectures usually clarified them, as the slides seemed to be taken right
from the book. Also, the practice assignments were really helpful.
I also found it much easier to learn and be engaged when the class got more comfortable with each other (e.g. we joked around, asked more questions, etc). I really liked how it was obvious that you went out of your way to make the class a friendly environ
ment.
The only real difficulty I had was in the beginning when I was apprehensive about asking questions... that really hurt me. So, asking questions is really important.
Overall, I enjoyed the class.
Thanks for the semester,
~Ethan Cox
Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007
First off, I just wanted to thank you for teaching the class. You did an
excellent job. As far as my studying stategy, I typicall read the material in
Gwartney, as it provided what I felt was a more complete view of the subject,
generally offering examples and a thorough explanation. I used Salvatore after I
already understood the material, as it often had much more detailed graphs, and
it was espeially useful for quick review. I felt the usefulness of attending
lecture really varied from week to week- some weeks, the material was very easy,
and I understood it thoroughly before the lecture. Other weeks, I would have
struggled significantly without the lecture. For the most part, however, the
examples given in class effectively served to clarify any possible confusion. My
personal strategy was to read the section from Gwartney before lecture, attend
lecture, and then read the corresponding section in Salvatore, and I felt that
worked well for me, as I had a reasonable understanding of the material coming
in to lecture, where I had the opportunity to ask questions and request
clarification, and then I would use Salvatore to get a little more depth on the
material.
As far as using this response, feel free to post it/include name/grade, etc.
~Daniel Gizinski
BS ENGINEERING
Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007
I found that the Gwartney book was easier to
understand than Salvatore. I thought that attending class was useful and
necessary in order to successfully complete the course. I generally found that
reading before class helped me to better understand the material covered in
class. I would prefer that my name and grade are not provided together with this
response. You could say that a student who received an "A" in this class gave
this response or you can put my name with the response without including the
grade. Thanks for all your help this semester!
~Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007
This is my advice/response:
For me the most helpful was reading and outlining Gwartney's book to understand the concepts.
The other book was a good summary of the concepts and it was useful to review before the exams.
Salvatore's book is also much better in explaining graphs and has solved example problems,
which were really helpful for the preparation for the exam. Going to class was sometimes helpful,
mostly for understanding the graphs/problems. The homework problems were great and very good
practice before midterms and finals. Overall, I did not think that the class is hard if you do
the readings and homework.
Thank you very much for the semester.
You can post my response/grade, but i would appreciate if you did not put my name.
~Econ201 Grade:A
Fall 2007
I have jotted down some thoughts about the course. They are just below this message. Thank you for teaching the course and you have a good break. I am quite excited I will be leaving for Nepal the day after tomorrow.
My study strategy was to get the bigger picture. I always wanted to see if the
concepts taught in class made sense in the “real world.” Besides that, I
regularly skimmed over the economic news of the world just to keep myself up to
date.
I guess both Gwartney and Salvatore are important in their own way. For me, to
get a comprehensive understanding of the economic concepts, Gwartney was the
best. It had very good explanations and different stories and case studies about
the concepts. And Salvatore was for filling in the details and brushing up what
was learnt from Gwartney.
In preparation for exam, I basically went over the lecture slides and went back
and forth from Gwartney and Salvatore. Also, I went over the homeworks and past
mid terms to be careful not to repeat silly mistakes in the final.
I have been a science student for a good part of my student life. This was the
first time I took a non-scientific course in college, and I liked it. Economics
gave some sorts of “tools” to make sense of what was going on locally,
nationally or globally.
Thank you for teaching this course. It was an awesome, worthwhile course. I
really enjoyed it.
Yes, you can include my name, grade and my comment online.
~Roshan K Bhattarai
Grade: A
BS Electrical Engineering & Economics
Fall 2007
One single most reason that motivated me
to do well in the last two exams is my poor score in the first midterm. It is
true that i studied more hours to prepare for the last two exams compared to the
first. However, I also think the material for the first midterm was easier
indeed; we were all a little bit surprised because the materials from homework
problems weren't as reflected on the first midterm. I was too proud because i
did well on the first homework, and thought the first midterm would be as easy!
Also it was my misunderstanding that the last section we covered for the first
midterm wouldn't be as heavily represented on the exam since there was no hw on
it (my bad for not studying taxes, subsidies, and externalities as much).
i think the multiple choice questions, which i think you obtain from an
educational source, were "better type" of questions for me, because of their
consistancy, and plus all the homework questions were the same type of
questions, from the same source i believe. Over time i also developed skills to
tackle these type of multiple choice questions, and often you can predict what
type of questions will be on the exams. One thing that helped me a lot was the
types of questions based on data in tables; they test your mathematical ability
to calculate numbers, which i can do very quickly as an engineer with a math
minor! When solving a problem, i first try to catch if the question is testing a
knowledge learned straight from the textbook. For a few questions that doesn't
ring a bell to me as asking for a specific fact, the question usually can be
solved intuitively.
My studying routine was different than most others. All other classmates seemed
to prefer the Gwartney text. However, i greatly prefer Salvatore. It is shorter,
more concise, and straight to the point. I read the outline of each chapter in
Salvatore, try to memorize as much while reading it the first time, quickly read
through problems especially paying more attention to those problems mentioned in
outline, and read the chapter outline again to make sure i know all the stuff.
And then i also review the slides you post, which highlight the points in
Gwartney text that may not be included in Salvatore. By the time i have done
this, when i go to Gwartney text, it is almost unnecessary to read it. I don't
like Gwartney because the writing in it is excessively long and time-consuming.
The "economy" of the writing is very poor compared to Salvatore (less material
contained per word).
Gwartney's long writing might help to give a bigger picture, but to pick the
right answer in multiple choice questions, the outline in the salvatore text is
very helpful as it straightforwardly points out the facts you need to know.
I hope i did well on the final.. overall it was fair and took me about 2 hrs to
complete.. there were a couple questions that i was unsure about that needed to
be solved intuitively/guessed.
I hope this helps, and i hope you continue to at least suggest Salvatore text to
students!
~Nah Youn Lee
BS BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Econ201 Grade: A+
Fall 2007
Gwartney was helpful in getting a basic understanding of the material.
It is easy to read and understand. If you want a more detailed look at the
material, you should read Salvatore. It gives a college level understanding of
economics whereas Gwartney is more basic.
I would recommend at least skimming the readings before class so that you
understand the graphs and abbreviations used in class. When I did not read
before class, I found it very difficult to understand the notation used for
different concepts.
For the class overall:
As for more general commentary, I struggled with chapter 19 (I believe).
Particularly, there were a lot of slides in the notes that did not make sense to
me. Most of the graphs you made, I understood. For instance, the ones with dead
weight loss were very helpful (back a few chapters). However, for those taken
from a different source, it was sometimes difficult to see why the graph was
true.
The lecture slides were helpful especially as a review and to reinforce the
material. Personally, the lectures themselves were only somewhat helpful because
I tended to rely on the readings and slides more than lecture. This is not
necessarily bad but rather, it reflects the way I study. Also, visiting you in
office hours was very helpful.
You are welcome to post my first name, letter grade, and advice.
Thank you for a good semester. I know you put a lot of effort into the class and
it showed.
Happy Holidays!
~Davina
Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007
I would be happy to help. I found that going to class
definitely helped me understand concepts, but a lot of the time I would get
really lost in class and not understand what we were talking about. I really got
the most out of the material by working out the practice exams and homeworks and
figuring out the answers by using Gwartney. I found Gwartney, though longer,
more helpful in my understanding of economics than Salvatore.
You may post this response and my grade, but I would prefer that you didn't
include my name.
Thanks for a great semester
~Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007
Study strategy for me was pretty much sitting down and reading the text intensely. To be honest I spent a lot more time with Gwartney. While the Salvatore readings were much more concise, I found them impossible to understand, and when reviewing for the
final I didn't even bother struggling with it. Basically reading the Gwartney text and working my way through the powerpoints was the path I took, and it turned out to work effectively.
feel free to post my grade and the response on your website.
you can hold off on the name
~Econ201 Grade: A
Fall 2007