STS 1800

Professor Elliott is really fun and engages the class pretty well about introductory business stuff. The class is all case studies you go over in class. However, you get what you put into this class. The grade is mostly participation based, so if you do the readings and answer questions in class, you'll get an A. If you don't do any of the readings and just chill in the back, you'll get like a B+ or a B. There's an exam which is kind of tough, but the final group project isn't bad. I don't recommend this as an easy A, more of an easy A- but you'll definitely learn some interesting stuff! The grading is mostly ranking based, so like the top 25% of the class get A's, the next 25% get A-'s, etc.

Prof. Elliott was by far one of the best teachers I've ever had at UVA. I took this class during the summer of 2020, and even with the compressed time frame in which this class was run, I'd say that the workload is manageable. The course topics include finance, operations management, marketing, leadership, and business ethics, all of which are interesting in their own right and are loosely related to each other. As far as the grade breakdown works, 50% of the course grade is based on class participation, which comes mainly from reading the case studies, 25% on the midterm, and 25% on the final project. Although the midterm is quite long and has low averages, you can do test corrections in case you don't do well. For the project, you'll work in teams (unless there happens to only be a few people in the class), so I wouldn't worry about it. Definitely recommend this class if you want to gain practical skills in a relatively low-stress environment.