The class was harder than expected, and I probably should have read much more than I did. The Problem Sets are graded on completion which is really helpful, and they aren't that frequent. Professor Doyle knows a lot about financial markets and the material, but sometimes his lectures can be really boring and feel to drag on even though they're only 50 minutes. He moves through the slides kinda fast but he posts all of them and they make more sense if you read beforehand. The Quizzes are pretty difficult, but he does post review videos which I highly recommend watching, as about 80% of the material comes directly from those. Overall not terrible but you definitely need to put in the work to get a good grade. There is basically no curve at all, and the cutoff for an A is a 95 which I would think is borderline impossible, but apparently people do it each semester.

This class is not as easy as you think it will be. The lectures Doyle provides are NOT helpful for his exams. The class average on exam 1 was lower C, upper D range. Doyle teaches the absolute basics of the class and then expects the student to read a thousand pages of a textbook then put it all together. It is only twice a week, and isn't very helpful. The class is almost never on pace to the schedule and Doyle has many anecdotes that distract the class. If you don't have to take this class, don't. Overall it was a waste of time and mostly consisted of cramming for the final which was worth around 40% of your total grade or 100% if you happen to Dutch Knockout (score higher on the exam than the whole semester combined). He essentially hands out 100 free points through 40 being participating in Kahoot! questions and 60 being homeworks that get graded on participation. These are essential or else I'd guarantee you the class average would be in the C range. Overall Doyle is not the best professor to take this with unless you really enjoy self-teaching. Not super exciting and fun especially since it is usually an early course.

This course teaches about the banking system and some investment tools. After taking it, the strongest feeling that I have is that this course should not be called "Money and Banking". Rather, it should be "Investment tools and Currency". Like ECON 2010 and ECON 2020, to be successful in this course, you have to read the textbook repeatedly. For the lecture, the only thing that you need to memorize is the formula for calculation. The course also has the Dutch Knockout which saved my GPA, but you should not expect to succeed in the final easily if you had knowledge about the course previously.

For the course structure and syllabus design, even though the structure may not be the best in best, I could definitely say that it ensures basic fairness and clearness. The content distribution may not be very suitable for me at the end of the term, but remnant parts are good.

For TA sessions, TAs will only go over the course contents and give some exercises which have a relatively great difference between the exam questions, so you cannot work like an ECON3030 student. I didn't realize this at the beginning and suffered great pressure from my grade.

For the professor, I would give a neutral opinion. I highly suspected if people got a high score on their finals since the grade instruction was hard and most of my friends did not get a high grade. The course could crash your GPA if you didn't put enough effort into it.

At the beginning and the midway of the course, I seldom went to the lecture. At that time, I always thought that I would still get a high grade even though I only watched the recordings and did not join the lecture because I have previously learned this field. However, the reality was I got an extremely low score on the two midterms. For this course, my only suggestion would be to act like a normal student. If you follow his instructions, read the book, and take notes, you can definitely get a good grade on this course.

Professor Doyle is a great guy, and I am not quite sure why so many people say this class is so difficult. Full disclosure, however: I am a finance concentrator in the Comm School.

I agree the fact that ~80% of your grade comes from three exams does not leave a lot of room for error if you aren't a great test taker like myself, but I did not find much of the material itself to be difficult. If you are fairly financially inclined or are familiar with the basics of value investing (e.g. you are comfortable with the time value of money and have a basic understanding of how stocks are valued), you should find the first exam to be very easy. The second exam was a bit trickier and more abstract, but it's not terrible. The last part of the course is a lot of review from Intermediate Macro with some new topics. Some of the exam questions are poorly worded/confusing, but for the most part, I thought the exams were very straightforward. A large portion of the questions on all three exams revolve around plugging numbers into a formula. Additionally, there is very little work from week to week, with only 6 problem sets that are simply graded for completion.

I will say that I had two main complaints about the course. The first is that the lectures often felt disjointed from one another, but I found them to be sufficient as I never read a single page of the textbook. Second, I found the TA to be rather arrogant and even obnoxious at times. That said, he seems like a good guy at heart.

All in all, I highly recommend this class if you are interested in financial markets and/or investing.

This class is interesting, I've had friends who've really liked it and those who've wanted nothing to do with it. Lectures were pretty ineffective, and I found myself zoning out a lot. The problem sets are very similar to the tests however, and I also found reading the textbook to be extremely helpful - it covered for Doyle's mistakes/inabilities to explain concepts clearly and correctly/flat out failure to mention things. Grading is all on putting in the time - if you read and understand the material beforehand, you'll be fine. Just assuming that this course is a cakewalk though is where it gets dangerous from some kids, so make sure you put it the time that you need.

This is the review you need before deciding to take this class:
DO NOT TAKE IT. DO NOT TAKE IT.

Doyle is a nice guy. But lectures aren't really helpful unless you read the powerpoints/textbook ahead of time. He is definitely an interesting professor, but you don't really get the material from him. TAs are borderline useless, and rarely in line with the professor. Exams are kind of random and graded very harshly. Overall, if you are extremely interested in this class and have some background knowledge or willing to read the textbook word for word, take it. Otherwise, not really worth the struggle. Dutch knockout is applied so most people ride on that. Doyle basically gives full points for all the work except exams and quizzes.

Carter Doyle is a great person, and an above average lecturer. He has tons of knowledge on how the financial industry works and will help you tremendously if you want to go that route. He also will do his best to help you with any career questions you have.

The first exam was a bit of a surprise, the grades were really low. I think people not knowing the formulas for stock and bond pricing hurt a lot. Definitely study those hard because they are the bulk of the first exam. The second exam was pretty easy and the final was in between.

Take it, it will help you with pretty much any career path.

I cannot recommend this course. This is the second-hardest Econ course I've taken, after 3720 and, unlike 3720, this one isn't mandatory for the major. No matter how much interest you have in the subject matter, it is not worth the hit to your GPA. Doyle is first and foremost a professional, not an academic. He has experience working as an economist for a bank and, therefore, can reinforce the course material with real-world application. He is not the best teacher. The course is broken down into three units: money; banking; and monetary policy. The subject matter is interesting and useful, but the grading is way too difficult. There is no required homework for this course; rather, you are encouraged to read the textbook and do practice problems. THIS IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR SUCCESS. Attendance at lecture, while necessary for doing well, is also not sufficient for doing well. Lecture will teach you some things the textbook won't, and the textbook will teach you other things that lecture won't. There are clicker quizzes in lecture, though these are usually participation-based. There are two mid-term exams and a final exam. The first exam covers money, the second exam covers banking, and the final exam is cumulative (though weighted more heavily toward monetary policy). There is also the option of a Dutch knockout on the final exam. Otherwise, the course is graded on a total points system. There are also three quizzes, one in the days before each exam. We took one of these in class and two were take-home. There are also take-home portions for the mid-term exams, which are essentially free points. As for the discussion section, my TA was Albert. He allocated our discussion section points by way of quizzes, which were generally difficult. He did curve us somewhat at the end but, given that one of the other TAs allocated points by way of completion of homework assignments, Albert is probably not the best TA to take. I say this because the TAs are not too helpful with learning the course material. Albert is smart and speaks good English. However, it was obvious there was little communication between Doyle and the TAs and they often knew less about what was going on in class than we did. Therefore, the best TA is probably the one that grades discussion section the easiest. All told, this is a very difficult, if interesting, class. In my opinion, it is not worth taking - at least not with Doyle.

Don't look at Doyle as someone who will teach you everything you need to know for the test, but rather as someone who will convert the information from the textbook into knowledge that is applicable to current events. Read the book chapters before going to class, and you will get so much more out of his lectures. However, there are some formulas that are only on his slides and not the textbook, so be sure to copy all of these down. I am not an Econ major or minor but did well in the class- it certainly isn't easy, but it is undoubtedly one of the most applicable classes you will take here