ECON 290Models of Choice in Competitive Markets

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From 33 ratings and 10 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• Anqi Li.
  The content is straightforward, but there are no good resources to learn it, and the course overall is disorganized.
  There were a lot of red flags from day one that I ignored. 1) The syllabus did not provide a clear schedule for when each topic will be covered, making it difficult to plan ahead, same problem for when the Assignments will be released/due. 2) The assignments (problem sets) are not actually checked, so free marks, yes, but no feedback. 3) No practice exams. So the only resources you have are the textbook and the lectures and slides. The textbook has way too much fluff that's unrelated to the course, making it very inefficient to read through, and the lectures/slides…

  Apr 2025 · didn’t like it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• If there was a perfect representation of a class with a lot of potential that was completely ruined by a professor, econ 290 would be it.
  I had this class with Anqi Li, arguably the most confusing and elusive professor I will ever have in my entire university experience.
  There were a lot of things that really turned me off about this class, all of which led to me avoiding attending whatsoever and just teaching myself the content.
  For starters, Anqi is a very quiet talker. When she wore a covid mask for nearly the entire semester, it made it very hard to hear her. The content was also very brief and forced you to rely on past classes to understand a lot of the concepts.
  In my opinion,…

  Apr 2025 · didn’t like it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• ANQI LI. I genuinely have never had a harder class to follow. I bet she's a great person, but she is not a helpful professor.
  1. She wore a mask in class for the majority of the semester, WHICH IS FINE, but she was so incredibly quiet and faced the board the whole time. So classes are hard to follow, especially if you dont get a seat in the front.
  2. The content is not super hard, but her lessons seem like she put her notes into ChatGPT and asked for it to condense the content as much as possible. It is basically all mathematical jargon, and there was never enough explanation.
  3. She had no practice questions for any midterms, any exams, nothing. There were no resources to access, and…

  Apr 2025 · didn’t like it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• There were no course notes or slides. We had just the textbook and a rough outline of what each stretch of classes would cover.
  The textbook itself was painfully long and frustrating to get through (at least in my opinion).
  The first few weeks were awful for me because the professor kept referring to concepts from ECON 211, a course that math majors aren’t required to take.
  I had no idea what a utility curve was, and we sped through so much content so quickly that it definitely wasn’t enjoyable.
  More than half the class failed the first midterm, but things improved afterward.
  The course only had three midterms and no final exam, which was a relief.
  It sometimes felt like we were jumping…

  Jul 2025 · didn’t like it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• Questions in the problem sets are not explained in class, and the solutions are done in a very confusing way with too much emphasis on explaining why we do it rather than how to do it.

  Jan 2020 · didn’t like it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this