Econ 102 Just Killed My Ross Chances

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
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<p>“it is undeniably up there as one of the most difficult courses on campus.”</p>

<p>Thanks for the good laugh.</p>

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<p>Alright, so maybe I was being a bit hyperbolic there in the grand scheme of Michigan’s course guide, but I was trying to make a point. There are obviously lots of upper-level advanced courses that are harder than 102, but in terms of classes accessible to freshmen (ie students who are applying to Ross) it doesn’t get much more difficult. All of the points I made above still stand. It is still a difficult course, and you haven’t provided any evidence to oppose that statement.</p>

<p>Regardless, I really just took issue with your statement that a C+ in one intro course singlehandedly eliminates a bunch of majors from reality. That just doesn’t make sense to me.</p>

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<p>peanutmaster, what other courses have you taken? really, if someone “studied like crazy” in econ 102 and still got a C+, many majors will simply be out of the picture due to difficulty.</p>

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<p>Yeah I mean I will say that if you studied like crazy and could only muster a C+ that doesn’t really bode well for a future in Econ, but at least for a class like 102 you have to sort of assess (with brutal honesty to be sure) how strong you think you are in the subject. Similar to 101, the tests are often as much about knowing the material as simply being able to read and understand difficult and purposely-confusing questions. There also isn’t a huge gap between letter grades; one of my friends was at a B+ and his final grade went up almost a whole % into A- territory based off of one change to a multiple choice question on the final. The margin for error is really quite small and it doesn’t take too many unrelated-to-content messups to drop your grade substantively. (As an example, I lost two points on the first exam because the calculator I used couldn’t do exponents. I also lost another two points on the second exam from a misbubble. Those four points were the difference between me getting a B+ and an A- in the class. This is what I mean by assessing how much you <em>really</em> understand the course content.)</p>

<p>I took 102, Calc I, Stats, and English last semester. As I mentioned, I got a B+ in 102 FWIW.</p>

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<p>I actually think the curve is better once you’re out of Econ 101 and Econ 102. Because for those two classes, you have all the Ross preadmits, and Ross tryhards, ChemE, IOE kids. </p>

<p>What’s left after that is just Ross rejects mostly, although some will be double majors with Ross or Math</p>

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<p>“but in terms of classes accessible to freshmen (ie students who are applying to Ross) it doesn’t get much more difficult.”
“I took 102, Calc I, Stats, and English last semester. As I mentioned, I got a B+ in 102 FWIW.”</p>

<p>No wonder you thought econ 102 is difficult in comparison. It’s just because you took easy classes.</p>

<p>Econ 102 was the second easiest class I took in freshman year, after Econ 101. I never showed up to lectures, only to discussion session and stayed till right after the quizzes (for 102), barely studied and got As for both. The material and concepts are pretty much self evident and the test is just all about figuring out what they are trying to get at, which is a reflection of cognitive ability.
I don’t even buy “the class got harder”, professors like to tell students that to motivate them, and there’s only so much harder you can make simple concepts; they are still the same concepts, just applied differently, and if you understand the concepts, it’s not any more difficult.
Econ 102 concepts are extremely trivial and self-evident. The fact that OP did poorly despite “studying like crazy” should be extremely concerning because that just means he either doesn’t understand the simple concepts, or he doesn’t know how to figure out what questions are asking; both don’t bold well for quantitative subjects.</p>

<p>I would rank the freshman classes I took as follow from hard /time consuming (relatively) to easy:

  1. EECS 280 (easily the most time consuming)
  2. ME 211 (chinese prof who doesn’t communicate, leading to unnecessary studying)
  3. ENGR 100 (they deliberately make it unnecessarily time consuming)
  4. IOE 265 (just a harder version of stats 400 curved against better ppl)
  5. ENGR 101 (not hard, just can’t do things last minute unfortunately)
  6. Math 215
  7. Math 214 ( I have 215 and 214 pretty low on the list only because I have taken multivar and linear algebra junior year of HS)
  8. ME 235 (if you can balance a equation and do basic calculus, you are fine. easy concepts.)
  9. Econ 102
  10. Econ 101</p>