2.3
Quality4.0
Difficulty31%
Would Retake85
Reviews31%
Would Retake
85
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
10
4
12
3
9
2
14
1
40
What Students Say
“Too much questions on the exam and hard quiz”
ECON100A - 1.0 rating“You have to attend the class for participation points but you can't learn anything from the class”
ECON100A - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
26%
Textbook Required
0%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.52 avg changeRatings by Course
ECO1
5.0
(1)100A
5.0
(2)ECON100ABAND2
4.0
(1)ECON3
3.5
(2)ECON100C
3.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
ECON100
5.0
ECON100C
5.0
ECON100A
4.4
ECON100B
4.1
ECON100ABAND2
4.0
Reviews (85)
Prof Tocoian is a solid choice for Econ 1. She uses the iClicker for participation so it matters. She has clear grading criteria, but the multiple choice questions on her 2 midterms can be tricky at times. She is caring for her students and hilarious at times, and I would definitely recommend taking Econ with Tocoian.
Professor Tocoian was ok. I liked how she would assign homework before lectures so when you showed up to class you had some idea of what would be covered. The examples she gave would be straightforwards. Her exams were awful. The questions were unnecessarily convoluted and there were too many instances of there being a good and best answer on MC.
Had clicker questions that scored you based on participation. Honestly, she's really great in her field, but sometimes difficult to understand.
Horrible teacher. She barely curves the tests even though the class average is very low. Gives online quizzes every week that do not reflect what was taught throughout the week in order to lower your grade for no reason. Lectures are completely pointless although attendance is mandatory. She does not prepare you whatsoever for the exams.
The power point is useless, all she teach in the cource are different from quizzes and exams, during the exam it is too many questions and you wont have time to finish them. The most important one!!! You cant learn anything from her class, she is unable to teach, keep saying you know that right and then skip.
You have to attend the class for participation points but you can't learn anything from the class. She usually just tell you about the concept but she won't teach you how to solve the problems. 50 mins for midterms but THERE'RE TOO MANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU WONT BE ABLE TO THINK ABOUT IT AND CHECK THE ANSWER AFTERWARD.
HARD!!! DON'T TAKE HER CLASS!!
Too much questions on the exam and hard quiz. No time to finish. Always delay.
She is a nice teacher. She holds extra office hours before exams to help you to understand everything. You will do well in the exams if you did every problem sets and made hard efforts. Sometimes she cannot explain concepts well but if you ask her, you will be fine. Hard quizzes at first but she will change the difficulty based on student's ability
Her materials are not hard, but her lectures are mandatory and not helpful. All the slides and writings are pretty vague. And the overall pace of lecture is slow and fragmented. I guess sometimes being a nice person doesn't equal to being a good professor....
I've taken econ 100b before, but tocoian makes it much more difficult and confusing. Lectures suck & slow & won't learn anything useful for tests or assignments, iclicker for credit, online quizzes are hard and long and barely any time, exams hard with MC w multiple answers. Cant teach but expects us to be experts on her convoluted tests. 0/10
Professor Tocoian really ares about her class and it reflects through her teaching. None-the-less, shes a very difficult professor and a very tough grader. She is readily available on Piazza, has regular office hours, and has TA discussions which help a lot. Utilize the tools she offers and its possible to get an A, but very difficult!
I took her Econ1 and it was a disaster. After taking her class, I thought of changing my major, I did not want to take any more Econ classes. I feel that Professor Oana does not prepare for the lecture. She frequently make the sound "um" loudly and it really bothers me. She does not explain the materials well. I would recommend not to have her.
A good prof.
She gives clicker questions but she kind of forgot about them as the quarter went on. Tests aren't hard and match the lectures pretty well. There's a little homework but its graded on completion.
Prof. Tocian makes the materials interesting! I learned economics before in school and it was OK, but this is better :)))
She is a good person, but not a good professor. Her lectures are very confusing and does not explain materials well. The way she explained concepts did not make sense to me even though i was paying full attention. Her practice exams are very different with actual tests. I started to thinking change my major after taking her. DONT TAKE HER!!!!
She is very bad at explaining concepts. There are chapters we study but the problems in eoc are different from the chapters. I get stuck on a question for a long time and I can't learn. I really do not want to take econ ever again.
Professor Tocoian is a super nice lady but not a great lecturer. Shes very smart and I think that sometimes she has a hard time explaining some of the concepts simply. Her tests require a lot of thinking on each question. I had to do a lot of learning on my own outside of this class, as concepts were a bit confusing because of their explanations.
How to succeed in this class (or at least get a B or higher): read the textbook & practice using her prep material that she posts on canvas before each exam. Economics is honestly it's either you know or you don't. Professor T is kind and she's not as bad as everyone says she is but this class will be more self-learning. Her exams are confusing...
She's a good prof and you can do well but you have to study the ENTIRE TIME. On the first midterm I figured I could just look over solutions and practice exams on the days before (this always worked for me), but the problems we got were different enough that I got a B-. After that I studied every week and I ended up getting A- in the class.
I attended every lecture and did the online assignments but didn't use the textbook otherwise. One time in lecture I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just said that and she patiently explained it again. Usually no one asks anything so I thought I was the dumb one, until the exam scores came back. Just ASK when you're confused!
Dr. Tocoian is a great lecturer and explained concepts well in class. I found her very helpful when asking questions in class and going to her office hours. She is very approachable and is willing to help you if you put in the effort. Do the homework carefully, go to discussion, participate in class, and you will do well!
Tocoian is a very accesible outside of lecture time and she is a kind person. Her exams can be a bit tricky but has a nice curve that she has at the end of the class. It can be a little difficult to understand her, but i think she is a solid teacher!
She is a real angel and her class is funny all the time. I learned a lot from her class.
Very paranoid about this online format and heavily proctors her tests to prevent cheating. Lockdown Browser is mandatory for the first midterm and Lockdown+Zoom proctor for the second midterm and final. Mix lectures with live discussion which drags out the lecture.
Reading the words on PowerPoint is her daily lecture. We followed her instructions to take the exam on Lockdown. She once decided to cancel all midterm scores because she suspected some of the students in the class have cheated but couldn't give out evidence. Fortunately, she kept our scores.
Prof. Oana maybe a really nice person but she is exactly the worst professor I have ever take. She could not explain clearly an even simple economic concept and always distracting students by breaking in sound. I really don't think she prepared well or even prepared for the the lectures as she always intermittently give concept.
She's maybe a nice person but she doesn't trust her students at all. Lockdown browser and Zoom are required for taking midterms remotely but lectures weren't very helpful for doing good on the exams which makes up 90% of the grade. Neither were her practice problems. Homework are easy and helpful (but 10% of the grade only)
I haven't really learned anything in this class. The only reason I'm passing is because of Khan Academy. Professor Tocoian is a nice lady, but she doesn't seem to be able to explain even the simplest concepts clearly. She went overkill on test proctoring using Lockdown AND Zoom, which stressed me out. And the lectures were not helpful.
Tocoian lacks comprehension on the subject she teaches. Tocoian cannot command a lecture nor accurately express ideas. The course is extremely test heavy and homework is not graded for accuracy but rather completion. As a student during the pandemic, Tocoian was not lenient with her principles and often caused additional stress to her students.
Ok. She's nice. BUT her testing method is extreme w/ lockdown browser + zoom proctoring and although it's not the hugest deal, it can be annoying. She is HYPERPARANOID, but why won't she just write better tests that dont require all of that? Anyway I stopped going to class, and let my ap macro/microecon knowledge carry me through (taking p/np).
This was by far the worst class I have ever taken. Prof. Tocoian did not go over topics well enough for students to understand the exams or hw. Exams made up over 90% of the grade and were written poorly to the point almost everyone got different answers because no one understood the questions. I never want to take Econ again.
She is very nice and willing to help, but I honestly didn't learn much in her class. A lot of her explanations were vague and weren't that helpful. She used Lockdown Browser AND Zoom meetings for exams, which honestly stressed me out more. HW problems weren't really helpful in my understanding of the material. Be prepared for self-teaching.
She is horrible at teaching. The stuff she give out for the homework is never fully explained in her lecture. With careful reading with the textbook, I was able to finish the homework. If this is the case, why do we have the professor teaching...? Her lecture is incredibly hard to understand compared to other professors.
Lectures are needlessly convoluted and difficult to understand. Problem sets, quiz content, and textbook assignments are frequently inconsistent with what is covered during class. Expect to self-study most concepts and be sure to seize office hour opportunities in order to pass.
She is straight dogwater bruh. Don't take her
Not very good at lecturing and her midterms did not correlate with any of her homework or lectures. Makes me want to reconsider my major.
She's a nice person, but not a good teacher. She didn't prepare well for the lectures. And she's a tough grader. She once suspected that a lot of people cheated because she received a lot of red flags on the Lockdown browser, but couldn't give valid evidence to prove. She once decided to cancel all the scores of this exam, which is unfair.
Extremely heavy problem sets which have instructions that keep changing because she realized she made a mistake with something. Not enjoyable, nor worth-while to actually put effort as it's just a never-ending uphill battle. Take anyone else except her
She assumes that you've already known everything she would talk in the class. It's good for her to give some examples of concepts but she never explained them clearly. She makes some mistakes in powerpoint. Seems like she doesn't prepare well before every class. And one of her TAs can be annoyed sometimes.
Her lectures are boring and don't offer much. Gives tons of problem sets that barely reflect the real difficulty of the exams. Her exams are unnecessarily complex where everything could just be done through lockdown browser.
Her exams are hard but she did give curve if the whole class is underperformed.
I would recommend not taking her class online if possible, makes taking tests extremely difficult and overall a lot more stressful than it needs to be with her proctoring style. She assigned a "practice test" 2 weeks into the quarter that was actually graded based on correctness. Not very fair when you are told not to study and then start off bad.
Lecture's itself aren't terrible, other than the fact that she only goes over maybe 20% of the material on the exams. The rest you have to learn by watching videos and reading the textbook. Why even pay for school at this point I shoulda just bought the book. Great person, subpar teacher
I have a technical problem when I did the rehearsal test on Zoom, and Prof.T replies to my email quickly and helps me to solve the issue I have.
The professor under this course should be those on IMVH videos instead of her. Besides the lecture, you have to watch a huge amount of videos and read all the textbooks in order to understand what she is talking about in class. Absolutely rediculous.
Didn't really learn anything from it. You'll never know how to do the problems on the test and HW. So hard and waste my time.
Lectures are trash, doesn't explain anything clearly and is paranoid of cheating. She's a nice person though and is willing to try to help if you need it, but the actual help you'll get isn't much since she's just physically not good at teaching the material. You'll pretty much have to self study the course with videos/books.
You need to watch videos on the IMVH as the lectures are only 25% of the entire course. She is just reading off the slides and give no further explanation on topics.
Don' take I took 2 different professors on Econ100A and oana, is the worst professor I saw in UCSD. she just read off the slide and doesn't explain anything. Her voice literally just becomes quiet and skip through important and difficult parts, I feel like I am learning from my former high school classmate than a PROFESSOR at UCSD.
Nice prof, hard tests, impossible course.
She is absolutely the worst professor I have met in UCSD, and I am so glad that I did not take the course for a letter grade. Her lectures are basically reading the material and PowerPoint all the time. Moreover, I think she was extremely rude to students, sending emails with no greeting or closing, and her tone was also very unpleasant.
Professor T is knowledgeable about ECON, but not very good at lecturing. I felt like I knew how to answer the questions on the midterm and then got marked down for very small things. I was considering adding econ as a second major, but think class made me drop that idea.
DO NOT TAKE HER. She can't explain things clearly in her lecture, I think TAs explain those concepts much better than her. Grade scale of exams is literally mean. She has trivial and strict criteria for the zoom recording of your exams and orders make-up tests for small issues. The whole quarter was terrible because of this course.
Exams accounted for 85% of the total score. You can't complete the homework and exams just by listening to her lectures. You need to study by yourself and look for other material to complete the homework and do a little bit better in the exams. The content of the exam is much more difficult than what is taught in class. Just reading the ppt in clas
I have never taken a class like this. Honestly, I don't like to talk bad behind my professors. But her class is so difficult and requires so much work that it is out of your imagination. So if you have to take this class, I can't give you any suggestions except I wish you "Good Luck."
Didn't really learn in lecture, but straightforward tests. Provides practice exams, and you can just learn from EVH lectures (she assigns them anyways and I highly recommend)
I'm shocked by the amount of bad reviews on Dr. T. I'm currently taking my 3rd class with her so no need to say I'm a fan. None of her classes are easy as Econ classes are hard no matter what, but she does everything she can to make it enjoyable. Her slides are amazing and she makes sure to give everything you need to succeed! Exams are very fair.
Dr. T's lectures are boring and she can't seem to speak into her microphone (if she even has one). Exam questions are overly difficult. Although she is a nice and caring individual, that does not make her a good professor.
To me, Prof Oana was really approachable and kind professor. Her contents are very well organized. She also uses Discord, and when someone asks a question on discord she always replies very quickly. I really dont understand the hate toward Prof Oana. If she isnt a good professor idk if there is any good professor at UCSD at all.
I wish I could have another choice but I don't. The worst professor I ever had. She basically taught nothing and let TA to explain the concepts. You can not finish her homework and pass the test by just listening to her lectures. There is no way to get a good grade, even after you study hard and do everything you could.
Well she doesn't teach at all and let us watch video recorded by someone else. Get ready to learn by yourself. And tbh you could skip all her lectures and attend only the discussion session, you could learn more there:(
Professor Tocoian is a good lecturer and is always open to providing extra examples or elaborating on any point on demand. Exams were very difficult and many students thought that they were a little too far off the practices, although Tocoian does curve exam scores and the final grade. Homework and discussions sections are essential to doing well.
Horrible person. Anything hergives has no help on homework,exams, and teaches nothing. Her lecture and talking has no logic at all. If you really want to learn something, dont choose her. I am actually a good learner with gpa3.97 and got A for her class. But still, she is not teaching! The exam grading is so funny only focusing on some dumb point
There is a course called ECON 195 (Teaching Economics) in UCSD, and I sincerely wish that she would take that class even before start teaching any other economics classes.
Not a really good lecturer, but give fair test and exam
Do. T The worst professor(in the teaching area) I've ever met at UCSD. She is a nice person, care about her student. But she really really DON'T know how to teach materials. Unless you want to teach by yourself, otherwise, please never take her class.
Not an econ major, so this was my first experience with econ. Do not take this professor. She is really nice, but is not good at teaching the material. Lectures were pretty much pointless and exams were pretty harsh.
Took both Maxim Sinitsyn and Oana Tocoian for ECON100A. Comparing both Professors, Tocoain really helps guide students with what math to master for the concepts she has in class. Her lecture slides and lectures are way better than Sinistyn's and have a discord where she responds to questions in a timely matter.
4th course with Dr. T. Exams are not very easy but represents the course materials and you should have some math foundation before taking the course (but true for most of Econ courses anyway). Lecture explains the concepts well but does not caught my attention and some times not easy to take note. Dr. T is also a nice person besides lecture.
Get ready to teach yourself everything. Terrible professor
Pros: Organized Canvas page and hosts a class discord Cons: Lectures in nebulous manner- it's not clear what the intution/nor helpful towards exams, the exams are absolutely brutal and it's the only thing you get graded on (the average is 50~ range, so that should tell you something). You don't have many options, but if you can avoid her- do it.
I acknowledge that Economics at UCSD is harder, however- it felt almost cruel taking this class. Unfortunately the department weeds out by having harder professors for the major mandatory courses, so you don't really get options. Listen to the reviews- lectures make no sense, exam are EXTREMELY hard and grading is tough. Get external tutoring, GL.
Just like all the other reviews suggest, she's not a good teacher at all. You watch pre-recorded videos by other professors to learn everything. If you have a question, she tells you to go back to those videos and figure it out. Very frustrating
Dr. T is not the best lecturer. However, she is a kind and fair professor who actually knows how to use discord. If you don't get bogged down in her lectures and focus instead on her practice tests and certain parts of the homework you will do well. 100B is HARD, but her tests are FAIR, and she CURVES hella 15% + avg. curve
Dr. T is generous with exam curves and is always there to answer our questions on Discord. However, her lectures are not good at all and are virtually pointless. She cannot explain topics well and rushes. If you want to understand the content, you have to attend discussion sections and redo problem sets/practice exams multiple times.
hard class overall, cannot explain concepts well, discord really helps, IMVH can save your life, exams are hard but curves are nice.
I received an A- without watching a single lecture. To be honest, I don't even know what she sounds like. You can get a good grade if you just repeatedly do the problem sets and practice exams. Good luck.
Just look at the ratings. 40 Awfuls compared to 8 Awesomes. On CAPES, her class average grade was a C.
BY THE GRACE OF GODS I PASSED! I attended all lectures, paid attention and the quizzes and midterms were very hard for me. I failed all the test/final, and passed because of her generous curve. Still try to do your best bc it was nerve-racking. Prof even recommend I drop bc I was struggling. She's nice but not the best at explaining concepts.
The course is extremely hard, but she is a great instructor.
I bombed the first midterm (C after curve) and was about to drop the class. Prof. T said to talk to her if we have questions about the exam so I figured why not. She went over my exam with me and I realized that I had been studying wrong (I had memorized solutions, but she always changes things up). Luckily, that exam was dropped so I did well!
I had her last quarter for 120a and for 100b this quarter. This material is a lot harder for me and I did poorly on both midterms. I am hoping to pass her class since its the last econ course I need to take for my business major. She is understanding and her office hours helped. I wish I had asked for help sooner.
Curve needed for the test. By doing her ps and practice exams will be helpful for the test.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
26%
Textbook Required
0%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.52 avg changeRatings by Course
ECO1
5.0
(1)100A
5.0
(2)ECON100ABAND2
4.0
(1)ECON3
3.5
(2)ECON100C
3.0
(1)Difficulty by Course
ECON100
5.0
ECON100C
5.0
ECON100A
4.4
ECON100B
4.1
ECON100ABAND2
4.0