McGee is the worst lecturer at UVA. He has no idea where he is supposed to going and it feels like the lectures have no point. He reads straight off of extremely wordy slides taken from the textbook and gives out handouts each class. The handouts are helpful practice for tests, but when he explains them in class it rarely makes any sense. Would not suggest taking this class with him unless you have no other option.

This class is not very difficult and you can tell that Mcgee wants his students to succeed. My only knock on the class is that the lectures were hard to follow since Mcgee goes on tangents often. Study the handouts and random graphics in the slide decks are you'll do very well. It feels like your studying for the exam and not really for the course. #tCFfall22

This class is okay. McGee definitely is knowledgeable about economics, but I found his lecturing style to be boring and confusing. He pretty much tells you exactly what will be on exams at the bottom of his PowerPoints and from his in-class handouts, so it is not too difficult if you understand your material though. Additionally, there was a partial dutch knockout where you could replace two of the four exams with the final if the grade was higher. #tCFfall22

Prof with good intentions, but this class is very disorganized. The powerpoints for one chapter are sometimes 100+ slides and mcgee doesn’t do a good job of highlighting the stuff thats important. On the exams, he also asked super specific questions about something that was mentioned in a specific slide, which made answering the questions very hard if you hadn’t reviewed the slides that much. I found that studying the handouts he gave in class was pretty helpful. He gives way too much historical context, and then asks about it on the tests. Final was straightforward, but there’s a lot of material so it’s hard to study for it. Lectures were pretty boring too. I feel like Mcgee means well, but his teaching style isn’t engaging enough and I literally feel like I learned nothing this semester…

This course, while structured in a way that is meant to introduce students to fundamental and important macroeconomic concepts, from my perspective failed to truly provide students with a better understanding of the material. Personally, I think I learned a lot, but this was principally because I read the textbook and completed many practice problems independently. The resources provided by Mcgee, although sometimes helpful for specific exams, were often challenging to understand and disorganized in the way the material was presented. Mcgee undoubtedly attempts to help his students, and hosts office hours before exams, for example. But overall, the lectures and the format of the course was rather disorganized.

Unlike previous reviews have suggested, however, I think that if you work hard—and put in independent effort outside of the class—it is entirely possible (and not improbable) to receive a good grade. While the lectures and resources may be disorganized, it is entirely within the student's capability to succeed in this course—although you may have to put in a lot of studying outside of class. A previous review has also suggested that the exams for one period were far more challenging than the exams for the other, although I would like to briefly debunk this assertion. First, in reviewing the answer keys, this alleged disparity in difficulty was not evident at all to me. Second, Mcgee did look at the averages of the different test versions and adjusted the curve for each class period accordingly; it was often the case that the curve for one section was different than for that of the other.

Thus, though this course is often disorganized and Mcgee can be an ineffective professor, he is a fair grader and it is entirely within the capability of the students to succeed.

TO preface this, I did not take this course. My girlfriend is currently undergoing extreme mental duress, an episode of sorts, while studying for McGee's final because she is realizing that her section's tests were objectively and consistently harder than McGee's other section. Considering there is a test every three weeks, it adds up. Additionally, she has expressed severe dissatisfaction with McGee's teaching style (or lack thereof). As I type this, she wishes to note that there were multiple questions on a midterm that asked for students to answer a question from a specific PowerPoint but somehow failed to include the actual details for the questions. Honestly, I am not entirely sure how that happens.

Her official review in short: nice guy that means well but mid/unorganized teacher, terrible tests. go with Westerfield for this class (I had her and she was great)