Yes, like others have said, McGee’s lectures are pretty dry and can be boring, but he’s actually a really good professor and a kind person. He cares about his students, is easy to talk to, and makes the class very manageable.

You honestly don’t need to attend lectures if you go over the slides on your own and you’ll understand most of the material that way. That said, he does go over practice questions in class that are very similar to what shows up on the exams, so it might be worth going just for that. The TAs are super helpful during office hours, and if you spend time with the practice exams and really understand the concepts and problem-solving methods, this class is extremely easy. What I appreciated most is that McGee doesn’t try to trick you, his practice exams are 90% similar to the real thing, often just small adjustments. Unlike other econ classes where the exam feels like a completely different (and harder) course, this one is fair to get an A.

Again, yes, lectures are a bit boring, but the class isn’t hard, and McGee is a genuinely good professor.

McGee is such a boring lecturer but you should still take this class with him because it is so much easier than Westerfield. All you need to do is do the problem sets, go to class (but you don't have to pay much attention), do the practice sheets, and you're guaranteed to do well on the exams. You basically need to memorize his weird examples and regurgitate them back on the exams. There isn't much testing on your true understanding of macro economics concepts which can be a good or bad things depending on your personal preferences. Office hours aren't super helpful so I'd recommend just looking things up yourself if you don't understand the content. Bottom line: if you just memorize all of his examples and you should do pretty well. #tCFS25

This course was really, really annoying but it might be the right fit for you. Pretty much the only grades in this class were the 3 midterms and 1 final. The dutch knockout is really generous and saved me. McGee is an absolutely horrible lecturer. He is disorganized, confusing, boring, and constantly goes on tangents. Going to lecture only makes me even more confused and generally lost. The only way to be successful in this class is spend upwards of 12-14 hours the weekend before an exam sitting down and memorizing every question on the practice exams, practice questions and the end of slides, and handouts. He doesn't even ask us to apply that information. The exams will be word-for-word from those resources. While this sounds easy and for many it was, this really isn't how I learn and I found myself struggling a lot more then I should've in this course. I ended up doing worse than intermediate Micro simply because I could not get myself to memorize all that content in time. If you have the time, motivation, and tenacity to do that kind of brunt memorization, then McGee might be best for you. However, I personally wish I opted for Westerfield.

#tCFF23

I would definitely say that Professor Mcgee is a good person overall as I could feel it through his speaking and his relative generous grading for some of the exams. However, he is not an organized lecturer and this class overall is not organized at all. Firstly, Professor Mcgee simply throw all the related files, slides, news, handouts, videos on each module on Canvas. There is no classification and the naming of the files is always complex and confusing. So when you want to go over the module or try to study it on your own, it is just hard to have a step-to-step learning process. Instead, you'll probably end up with not knowing what's going on; Secondly, Professor Mcgee's lectures are confusing and always going outside the box. He has slides while he also designs the so-called "handouts", on which there will be several questions that are worded in a very Mcgee-styled way. He rarely sticks to slides but rather spend most of the time simply talking about a concept or a theory and then immediately shifts to the handout and draws several graphs on the board. After that he will stick to the graphs and explore a lot of things that are not on the slides nor on the e-book. The handouts are important, after all, and that's why you need to always go to his lectures and copy down all the graphs while understand his logic. His graphs and logic are different from the ones from the e-book for many times. It's impossible for someone to get a good grade in the exam simply by reading all the slides and book on canvas because you'll not get what he wants.

However, for really smart students, this could be a good course because it has no homework or attendance taken or any bullsh*t group projects. There are only exams and exams only. So if you get to go to the lectures regularly, like once per week, while making sure you understand all the handouts by talking to Mcgee and know what he wants in the exam, I would say you'll get an A with the least annoying tasks comparing to other courses. I managed to get an A at the end of the semester but it is mostly because professor Mcgee was going chill on the final exam and he was grading generously.

In short, professor is a good person but the course itself is a pain in the ass.

My opinion on this course fluctuated the entire time from the first lecture until the final exam. McGee is a super chill guy and makes the classroom environment pretty relaxed. He makes an effort to add humor in his presentations with quirky made up scenarios about past fed chairs and silly raps about macro policy. That being said, his lectures are not very engaging. It is very easy to become disengaged with what he's saying as he tends to drone on about concepts without really trying to get you to understand them. As the semeseter went on, people decided not to show up to lecture altogether. However, I think it's important to still go to lecture to at least expose yourself for the material that week. For most lectures he will have a handout on the topic for that day which he will solve in class. These handouts are extremely important as they are 90% likely to show up on the midterms and final. Study the handouts, the review questions at the end of slides, and his unique narratives he conveys during the lecture and you will be fine. Don't let the 40% final scare you. All the material comes from the midterms from that semester plus the little amount of content you cover between them and the final. Study these well and you will be prepared. There are no surprises. Overall, McGee is a decent professor to take for intermediate macro. He's not the most engaging lecturer but he tries to make the course as manageable as possible for what it is.

Summary: Good guy, easy class, content meh.

This class gets crazy hate for no reason. McGee does everything in his power to make his students succeed---he's generous with office hours, giving out practice/old exams, and giving practice problems. Yes, lectures are boring, but it's macroeconomics what are you supposed to do. I went to office hours several times and found McGee helpful in answering my questions. The nerdy side of me wishes I would have enjoyed the models more than I did, but again that's not really macro's strong point. The exams were pretty easy and just like the practice exams. One midterm, I got a 89 raw score and it was somehow curved to a 99. Ended up getting an A or A+ on every exam by studying for about 3-4 hours for each. But I know some people studied less and did just as well.

McGee means well but his class lectures are pretty disorganized. Stay on top of learning the practice material and the in-class worksheets.

It's sad that this class has such low ratings, since it's pretty good all things considered. It's not a 5/5 across the board, but it's not a terribly difficult or bad class. While I agree with other reviews that McGee sometimes goes off on tangents and lectures are sometimes hard to follow, I think the class is still fine. Grading is based entirely on exams and attendance at discussion sections. Exams are very straightforward and McGee tells you everything you'll need to know for them. Often, he just recycles questions from old exams or class handouts which makes it very easy to know how to do everything. From a knowledge standpoint, I've learned more from other classes but didn't feel like this one was a waste of time. Relevant information in all lectures, and the models McGee goes through are super interesting. Macroeconomics inherently has politics elements, and I appreciated that McGee acknowledged his own political opinions and made sure to present different perspectives on how certain macro issues (i.e. Fed policy) should be approached (ie "this interpretation would support the more conservative/liberal policy argument"). Textbook is helpful. Course is structured in a way that it builds nicely on itself. I agree with another reviewer that TAs/discussion sections are pretty helpful. My TA did review sessions before every exam that were extremely helpful and probably got me an A (shoutout to Lucille).

If your goal is to actually learn about macroeconomics, this course is not for you. McGee is terrible lecturer and glosses over important details that would make my time in lecture much more productive. Needless to say, I did not learn anything until the few days before each exam, when I would cram the specific examples and handouts he told us to know (because that's really all you need to do well). Just know the info included at the end of every slideshow, study the handouts, go over the practice exams, and you'll do fine.

I overall enjoyed taking Intermediate Macro with McGee. I don't know much about the other professors, but McGee was not too difficult and very entertaining.

The hardest part about the class, at least in my opinion, was figuring out what numbers to solve versus which numbers were just made up. Intermediate Micro is much more proof-based, as you are always solving equations and proving some identity. In macro, McGee would just make up numbers to prove the general idea but skip the calculus / differentiations. Overall this does make the class easier, as there is a lot less math, but also sometimes you are just going with the flow and aren't sure about anything or what is real.

With that being said, the exams for this class were nearly identical to the practice exams – of which he posts a key on Canvas. So DEFINITELY DO AND LEARN THE PRACTICE EXAMS!!! I stopped reading the textbook about 1/3 of the way through the semester and honestly felt fine. I went to lecture and found it useful, although he does jump around a lot and is hard to follow. As long as you read and take notes on his PPTs for the general ideas, learn his handouts, and know how to do the review problems at the end of each PPT, you will be fine. His exams, at least my year, were probably 95-100% problems from 1) the practice exam he posts, 2) the handouts, and 3) the questions at the end of the PPT. And even more, I'd say 85% of the exams were just the handouts and past exams. So if you study that content, you'll be fine.

I would also recommend going to discussion section (if you find your TA useful). My TA made discussions mandatory (although they were on Tuesday afternoons, so not like a Friday morning session which would be hell). However my TA was actually a much more efficient and clear teacher than McGee, so discussion was always a good use of my time.

Also, the exams in this class were graded pretty generously. I did not put that much effort in at the beginning (and I'm someone who needs to over-study for every exam) and got an 86, 93, and 88 on the three midterms. If you learn the handouts and look over the PPTs, you'll be fine. Also, the class does both Dutch and partial-Dutch knockout, so if you do better on the final exam (40% of your final grade) you can replace any/all exam scores with the final (each exam is 15%, and then you have 15% of participation via your discussion sections).

Really, this class is not bad at all. The content is relatively interesting if you think big picture, and you will come away with a better understanding of markets in general. Have fun with McGee and appreciate his wackiness. He's much less rigid than most econ professors at UVA, which is a breath of fresh air.