Shafran, Aric  

BEWARE!!! Aric Shafran's monotonous voice and boring teaching style puts you to sleep halfway through class. His midterms are pretty difficult and his final isn't extremely difficult. However, learning and trying to pay attention is difficult and others I'm sure would agree. Happy I still got a decent grade though. Don't get me wrong, Shafran is extremely intelligent and can explain topics pretty well.

Take this class! It is super easy and you basically only need to go to class once a week because the other portion is online (which usually only lasts 20 minutes max). I didn't show up to class the last 3 weeks of the quarter and I still did well on the final and got an A- in the class. The only annoying part is the online homework but it's doable. If you took AP Econ in highschool, you should be more than fine.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Honestly it was not that bad. I only went to class a total of 4 or 5 times the whole quarter and passed with a C. However, Shafran is a HORRIBLE teacher, so boring with the weirdest sense of humor that makes you feel VERY uncomfortable. Take at your own risk.

Shafran is honestly a pretty chill teacher. He is mild mannered and thoughtful, definitely fits the mold of the quiet, cerebral professor that you'd see in a movie. He is clearly a master in his field but sometimes this causes teachers to have a hard time understanding the difficulties of students, and Shafran isn't an exception. While not really an outstanding lecturer, he does present the material in a way that is palatable, even for those who are bored to tears by economics. Overall, he's a solid B as a professor.

Okay this was Shafran's first quarter teaching at Poly.. and you can tell. He came from some stupid college in Boulder and you can tell he was dealing with morons where he used to teach. So -- he lectures like the entire class are a bunch of stoners from Boulder. The class isn't hard at all, but it's extremely painful to sit through. He makes you use this stupid program online called Aplia which pretty much cuts his teacher workload to 0, at the expense of giving his students hours of homework, most of which isn't covered on his tests. That was lame, but if you can manage to stay awake in class and actually attend (attendance isn't required), you'll do fine. 1 midterm and 1 final.

Shafran requires a lot of work for his class through a program called Aplia. There are about 2-4 assignments a week on what we're learning in class, however, half of the material isn't covered on the midterms. I thought his midterm was difficult even though I studied a lot for it. He sometimes brings in real life examples of how the subject relates, which are interesting, but overall his class is really boring and really long. He's a nice guy who makes himself available through email and office hours if you need.

Shafran's class was phenomenally boring. I taught the majority of the material to myself and hated the hours of time it took to do the Aplia homework. He rarely ever went over the answers to the homework and if he did, he would give quick, loophole answers as to why it was correct. Even more, the homework didn't even lead up to preparation for the exams, and it was definitely endless hours of busy work! I pulled an A in the course, but his exams were dauntingly long and overly specific. He has a nerdy and monotonous voice, and shows little interest in getting to know his students names. But, not to bash him 100%, he was EXCELLENT at responding to emails really specifically and he tries to make class somewhat interesting with hands on experiments (through Aplia) and real world homework assignments. He is also nice in office hours, but he really doesn't seem to be the best teacher.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!! Ok, he's not THAT bad, if you are one of those people who can never attend class and still pull A's on tests. He is seemingly stoned during every lecture, and his assignments are phenomenally boring. And, whoever evaluated him for Econ 435, get a fuckin' life...who writes 6 page evaluations, honestly?

Nice guy. Just try to make the most of class, or else it will be painful to endure. Don't listen to guy in front of me. His is a loser who never came to class who doesn't appreciate a guy just trying to make a dull subject just a little more interesting.

shafran's class was not only boring, it was painful. the aplia assignments not only took up hours each week, but were hard and barely had anything to do with anything on the assignments. the experiments were stupid and to get graded on something like that is just pointless. i would not recommend taking this professor

Entertaining teacher due to socially awkward nature. Knows material and presents it well in class. All homework was done through stupid website Aplia.com - which was convenient yet incredibly time consuming. Overall good teacher, young and knows how to keep things light in large lecture.

He's a nice guy kind of awkward, but he knows what he is talking about when it comes to econ. The lectures are okay, take good notes to study and you will do fine on the tests. Aplia will get you though so just make sure you do well on that.

Last quarter I took macroeconomics with Marlow and enjoyed it a lot. When I signed up for micro, I thought I was getting one teacher but apparently it switched and I got Shafran. I wasn't very impressed even from the first day. He was very unprepared for teaching in the Silo, and he had to figure out how everything worked in the room. He wrote all the notes on the blackboard, which were hard to read. It would have been way better if he did powerpoint. I didn't learn very much from him, if anything at all. I don't know if there are any good micro teachers but I would not recommend him.

Man, this guy was the worst. First off, I signed up for a different teacher and they switched without telling anyone which sucked. He seemed like he had no idea what he was talking about since he just wrote notes on the chalkboard from some other person's notes. He did not explain anything, the homework made very little sense, and the tests were just retarded. AVOID!

I quite enjoyed Shafran's class. Although he is a little spacey he is a funny guy and does know his material. The midterm was pretty easy and clickers and Aplia homework helped keep my grade up. The load overall was not too bad, and the experiments were quite fun. My only complaint is how much the final was worth. I had a low A going into the final and did bad on the final and it dropped my grade 10%! This was a very unpleasant surprise, other than that however I did like this class much better than my macro class.

I personally did not like Shafran. He didnt seem confident in what he was talking about. All the homework is online and there is one midterm and a final. His lectures did not help me though and I would not recommend taking him.

Professor Shafran knows a lot about economics and wants his students to do well. There are multiple homework assignment due every week online, but they aren't too bad. The midterm was kind of hard but not horrible. The class itself was kind of boring for me, but I think a lot of that has to do with the subject, not the teacher. He is a funny guy. Funnier than he looks.

OK here's a quick lowdown on Shafran: He graduated from Cornell with a bachelor's and master's in computer science. Then decided being a programmer was incredibly boring, so he got a PhD in economics. which, imo, is incredibly funny. He is definitely extremely intelligent, and follows the genius stereotype, i.e. super nerdy, socially awkward, and because of that, sort a funny. This translates into a teaching style that makes it sort of hard to understand, but he is not trying to screw people over. He will go over things again and again if you ASK, which no one does. but go to his office hours-he is better at teaching this way. Trust me-it got me the 2nd highest grade on the final which meant an A in the test even though i had a B- after the midterm. Biggest problem-aplia, the online hw program. sucked big ones. all in all, I would recommend Shafran

This class is not difficult to pass...just incredibly boring and Professor Shafran makes lectures as boring as possible. His notes are fairly helpful for the midterm and final, yet nothing can prepare you for the online homeworks. There are one or two online \"homeworks\" each week. They are more like quizzes, and the only way to get an A on them is to go to his office hours every week. The homeworks DO NOT AT ALL prepare you for the midterm and final. I got an A on both the midterm and final, yet a B- in homework which left me with a B in the class. Overall a bad experience...a shame because the material itself is quite interesting.

Shafran is a good professor of econ because he actually tries to keep his students awake! His midterm and final were pretty easy, but the homework he assigned on MyEconLab was waaaaay too hard. It was much more challenging than his lectures or tests, but since this was his first quarter using it, he may make some adjustments for future classes.

He is a solid teacher. What he explains in class although quickly and sometimes unorganized, helps on his midterm and final which were not too difficult. However the online quizzes every week are very difficult because they do not directly correspond to what he teaches. He helps moderatly well in office hours which you should expect to spend some time in.

He lectures to the class the whole time! He\'s not bad, a bit boring, but economics is not the most entertaining subject. He tries his hardest to counter that though. Class consists of one midterm, one final and weekly myeconlab quizzes. It\'s not too tough unless you give up.

soooo boring. shafran sucks. his lectures are dry and awful. tests were simple, i sat on my computer every class, never took notes, skimmed the book the night before the test for 10 minutes and got A\'s on all 3 tests. I dont recommend his class to anyone unless you want an extra 2 hours of naptime

Over I would recommend this class because the requirements are simple. He uses aplia for the homeworks and his midterms are relatively simple and follow his lectures pretty well. His lectures are pretty boring and he doesn\'t always clarify concepts very well but he gets the point across.

Shafran\'s lectures are a bit boring, but he presents the material in the best way possible. Microeconomics is not an exciting subject so it\'s hard to pay attention, but Shafran is good teacher. I went to every class and the online Aplia assignments were the perfect way to clarify anything that he went over in class and is an easy way to raise your grade

Aric is a good teacher, but can get a bit boring at times. He really knows his stuff and I learned a lot. His lectures were easy to understand and he shows short video\'s that relate to what we were learning that day. I really recommend this class.

Awkward guy, straight forward class, tests aren't that bad, knows his stuff, I would recommend him

Shafran isn't the best or most interesting teacher, but he covers everything in class that will be on the test so there isn't any surprises if you go to class and do the Aplia assignments. He drops your lowest midterm so there is a lot of leeway if you do bad on one of them it won't ruin your entire grade. He is a little quirky in his personality but he answers questions well most of the time and keeps his lectures focused on the material rather than extraneous confusing topics.

Prof. Shafran was very helpful throughout the course of the whole year. He was entertaining and tried to keep the class light. 2 midterms (each work 20%) and online aplia everyweek (20%) and 40% midterm. It isn't too bad, because you can drop one of them to make the final worth more if you need it. Extremely helpful guy, econ, like most classes at Poly have been a struggle for me, but Aric went above and beyond helping me to study for the midterms and final. Highly recommend if your looking for a good teacher that is challenging, but fair.

This is a professor who really knows his stuff. as far as economics goes, hes a genius. now, his teaching style is very fast paced and sometime you might feel a bit lost. best way to get a good grade in this class is to go over the lecture note the same day after the lecture, otherwise you won't retain any of the information you learned and you will just have to learn it again.

pretty boring/kinda awkward dude with a monotone voice, but if you can get over that, he is a pretty good teacher. he presents the material very clearly and relates different topics to each other which makes learning easier. the homework is really easy and is worth a lot, and the tests aren't too tough. i recommend him.

Worst class I've taken at poly so far. Avoid this class at all costs, seriously. He is a horrible lecturer, he's disorganized, and definitely should't be responsible for teaching this subject to 100+ students. Take my advice and don't take shafran.

This class was PAINFUL. Shafran is obviously a smart guy who, if he could teach, you could learn a lot from. It's not that he's a particularly bad teacher, he's just disorganized and extremely boring. Econ is a boring subject to begin with, but my god. My advice to him would to use some real life examples and apply it to actual economies and businesses so I'm not sitting there listen to you talk (in monotone might I add) about the trade off between bagels and orange juice for TWO HOURS! Way too much theory and not enough application of the knowledge. I honestly could've done a lot better in this class, and should've, but I definitely put it on the back burner.

Shafran was an interesting professor. He's kind of an awkward guy, but he rocks it. The class wasn't too bad either. Lectures are boring, but at least listening is better than reading the book. 2 midterms and a cumulative final, which sucks to study for. My advice is to do the Aplia's, which are like homeworks, but you dont HAVE to do them. if you choose not to, the final will just be worth more (and you don't want that). He also talks about broccoli a lot...

Really funny guy and extremely smart, but can be boring but i feel like every 2 hour lecture in the silo can and will be somewhat boring. Don't listen to other people who say his class is hard and that his teaching style is disorganized and makes no sense. Like half the class would show up for lectures and people who I talked to didnt do the online hw until like 15 minutes before it was due. This class is extremely straightforward and an easy A or high B if you show up to class, take notes, do the reading (about 20-30 pgs per week), and give yourself a reasonable amount of time to do the HW (like 1-2 hrs per week). I just did that and hardly studied and got an A on both midterms and a B on the final. Easier than most other college classes to get an A in. I would definitely take this class again if I could go bak in time.

Professor Shafran is a decent teacher to start off with. His lectures however are a complete mess as he scrambles to cover more information in a two hour period than is even close to possible. This results in certain key facts that will be on tests being either ignored completely or given much too little care to cover for a lecture hall off 200+ people. Taking a class with Shafran isn't the best idea, but he's far from the worst teacher at Poly.

Shafran is a cool guy, but not a great teacher. He lectures at the chalkboard and barely answers questions. If you go back and redo all of your Aplia homework assignments and go through practice tests thoroughly, you should do well.

I don't think Shafran gets as much credit as he deserves. Yeah, the weekly homework assignments you have to do on Aplia are kind of annoying, but they're easy points that count for 10% of your grade. Otherwise, there are two exams that are worth 25% each, and a final that's worth 40% (or 50%; he'll drop your Aplia grade if your final grade is better than your Aplia average) of your grade. That being said, Shafran knows his shit. He's an awkward person in general, but a pretty solid professor. He periodically asks if anyone has questions, tries to get his entire 250 person class involved in the lectures, and is really helpful if you go to him with a question. I went to probably half the lectures, and regretted it at the end because they honestly weren't too bad. If you want a straightforward, relatively easy A class with a manageable professor, take Shafran.

Terrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He has a high horse and is the most unhelpful teacher ever in office hours. He wont help you and he only wants to screw you. Take this class from another teacher and you will enjoy it far more and it will be far far far far less painful. I hope you never have to take a class from this professor.

After seeing all of Shafran's reviews were by little freshman/sophomore, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. I wasn't initially impressed by the subject of Urban Economics, and not much of it made sense at first. It didn't help that my first impression of Shafran wasn't too great either: his first couple of lectures were scattered all over the place and it was hard to take good notes. But then it was time to turn in the first homework assignment, and I emailed Shafran for help. He promptly responded with great instructions on how to complete the homework. On another problem, I found myself stumped and I decided to drop by his office hours for help. He was a great help in office hours as well. After this, the whole class started to come together. The material began to make sense and so did Shafran. It took me a while to realize that the material is a really specific and applied area of economics. But once I figured it out, the rest of the class wasnt too bad. There were 6 homework assignments and 2 tests. Shafran is a really good grader, and if you thought a certain problem was abnormally hard, he will make up for it with the way he grades. I think you will get the best experience with shafran if you get to know him and correspond through emails and drop by his office hours. I strongly recommend him, and have no major complaints at all.

Urban Economics with Shafran was definitely a hard class, but it is doable if you put the effort and work into it. He is a pretty strict grader, but is pretty generous with partial credit points. His lectures are long and very detailed. Be prepared to take lots and lots of notes. He uses both the whiteboard and powerpoint and makes the powerpoints available through blackboard. There is a lot required of you in this class and constantly checking blackboard and communicating via email is necessary. This class had 6 homework assignments and 2 tests. The homework assignments were problem sets of some very difficult problems. I had a bit of trouble with these and I highly recommend seeing Shafran in his office during his office hours for help. He is very helpful and will spend lots of extra time with you going over the material and explaining it in different ways in order to help you understand it, which is great and more than most teachers do. There was also a statistical regression problem and a few other assignments. These homework sets took a lot of time and I recommend working on them early so you can get help from him before they are due. The tests were very challenging as well. The first test was very thorough and very detailed. This class requires a lot of memorization and a lot of studying. Reading the book helps and it is always a good idea to go over the material from a little bit of a different perspective. The final was also very challenging and I felt pretty bad when I left, as did the whole class. It was unfortunate that the test was so difficult, even after studying for hours and hours. It seemed that there wasn't enough time to finish it, even when using the whole three hours! I think only 2 people left early. The test was very difficult and I think most of the class did poorly on it. Overall Shafran is a pretty fair teacher and I recommend visiting his office regularly to answer all of your questions on the complex and detailed material.

434 with Shafran is nothing more than pseudo science.

poor instructor. cant read his sloopy handwriting. does not answer questions well. harsh grader. unclear on questions. akward infront of class. hope to never take again.

Terrible. Avoid at all costs!!!!!

I couldn't remember why I didn't like him and the first class I. Took with him and now after taking a second one with him I painfully remember why. Hope to never take a class from again.

Took this class to fulfill a 400 level requirement for my ECON minor thinking that it wouldn't be as intensive as some of the others. I was dead wrong. But not necessarily because the class is inherently difficult, it is difficult because of who teaches it. Shafran is a very intelligent and gifted man but teaching undergrad is not one of those skills. He is very monotonous and goes over things very quickly. Paying attention in class is difficult to say the least. Questions are inadvertently treated with disdain as he comes off as if he can't believe you would be asking such a question. Furthermore the reading materials don't help much at all if you weren't able to follow what happened in class. HE is not very helpful in office hours and seems amazed that you don't already understand the material. Overall I would not recommend taking this teacher at all. There are weekly assignments worth a total of 12%, two quizzes worth 12% each and two (very difficult) projects also worth 12% each. The final (yet to take) is worth 40%.

I genuinely enjoyed this class. Professor Shafran is incredibly knowledgeable about the subject, has no issues stopping to answer questions and is very helpful in office hours. He cracks small jokes and you can tell he's a smart human being. If you're an econ major or even an econ minor I would recommend this class

Class: 2 midterms, 1 final, homework, 2 projects - either the homework or one of the two midterm grades can be replaced by the final. Dude is insanely smart but ridiculously lazy. I'm honestly stoked for him being as far up in the department as he is. The first half of the class was hard and the second half was easy. If you can make it through the first 3 weeks you will be fine. In the end he kind of talks down to you because he is certainly smarter than you and its offensive at first since he is so lazy but I eventually grew to respect the dude and I actually learned a lot from the class

Trash can. Easy professor but this guy doesn't realize some of us want jobs and not to be theory babbling monkeys.

The class is based off of one midterm, one final, homework, two quizes, and a research paper. There was a bit of reading to go along with this class and it didn't really go over a lot of what we were talking about. I found out that it did help clarify some concepts, but it didn't follow the lecture material very well and it was disgustingly expensive ($150)! The midterm is a pretty large test and consists of all short answer problems. There are lots of problems and they all contain multiple parts. One good thing that Shafran does is that if you get something wrong in the first part of the question, if you use the incorrect numbers later in the problem using the correct formula, he won't count points off for the later part of the question. This was helpful and I think very fair. The final was cumulative and covered a lot of material. It was pretty hard and I'm sad to say that one girl cried while taking the test. The homework was very annoying, because we almost had an assignment due every time we came to class. It did keep us up to date on the material, which was important, but lots of times the homework was difficult. Thankfully, we reviewed it in class and this helped out a bunch. The quizes were also pretty difficult and contained multiple short answer problems. I always felt that Shafran never gave us enough time to complete the problems on the quizes and tests comfortably. The research paper was pretty long 5-7 pages and it required a lot of research on your local water quality and local water utility district. It required a lot of time and effort. The class overall was pretty hard and most of the questions on the tests were numerical based, with a few short answer explaining and theory questions. The numerical questions were difficult and required a lot of thought. Definitions are also key to know on some of the quizes and tests. Shafran's teaching was a little disorganized at times even though he had notes to go off of. His notes were sometimes incorrect and a few times he got stuck while solving problems. This is not good for the students because if the teacher is having trouble explaining the material and solving the equations, how are the students supposed to know it fully? Shafran loves to be right and has a very dry sense of humor. Sometimes he walks on students a little bit in explaining that he is right and sometimes he isn't very nice. He occasionally makes students feel dumb for asking a certain question or doesn't answer them fully. At first, Shafran did most of the lectures on the whiteboard and wrote everything out for us. That was very helpful and it was unfortunate when he started doing his lectures through powerpoint. This made the class much more boring (which is hard to do because the economics of land and water isn't all that interesting), and it disengaged the students. Many students seemed to not pay attention to the lectures when he started using powerpoint. Overall, the class was pretty hard and the teacher didn't help the matter all that much. He would help you if you asked him specifically, but lots of times I felt that I didn't fully grasp the material and his explainations seemed lacking and incomplete. The class is a lot of work, and interesting at times, but I think you should take another professor if you can.

First of all: To all the freshmen below, I WISH I had a professor like Shafran for micro/macro. You all have nothing to compare him to, and you really don't know how good you had it. Personally, Shafran is one of my favorite teachers I've ever had. At first it might be kind of hard to understand what he is teaching/saying because he has that eccentric-awkward-genius thing going on, but once you get used to him, things come through crystal clear. Oh, and here's a thought, if you don't understand something...TALK TO HIM ABOUT IT. Whether you raise your hand in class, shoot him an email, or go to his office hours, he will surely be helpful. He responds to emails usually within an hour, and the responses are always thorough and helpful. Going into his office hours with a specific questions is also very helpful, and getting a little face time with him will definitely help your grade. He has a very flexible grading system which usually will work out to your advantage. Usually he will have something like a few quizzes, a few homework assignments, a midterm, and a final. If you do good on the quizzes, then your final will be worth a smaller portion of your grade. If you do bad, you can make up for it on your final. In one class I had with him, if you did bad on the midterm, you could make up for it on the final. He doesn't grade on a conventional scale, and instead utilizes a unique curve that will produce the result he wants (he wants you guys to get good grades!). Also, he didn't require either of my classes to purchase a textbook (what a relief). I took two classes with him, put in the work, learned a lot, and got two A's. He is a cool guy, and once you get to know him, I'm sure you'll think the same. A+

This guy reminds me of Milton from Office Space but skinnier haha. He’s a great teacher for this course, though. The pace of the class is perfect and the problems you do in class/practice problems he posts before tests are very similar to the actual test. Plus he gives a generous curve. The one complaint people probably had is he makes you do programming assignments in Mathematica, which I thought were pretty easy, but I’ve had a lot of programming experience already. Definitely take him if you can.

Shafran I forgot that I never wanted to take class with you again. I've had 221 and 435 now with Shafran. Ask him questions and he will look at you like you are some sort of dumbass. I am sorry I don't have my PHD in Econ! Overall, he is okay, but his lectures are boring.