Originally Posted by brady23

I'm taking Economics is that an easy elective? I didn't want to put math or physics for sem 1 because of the two bios.

It is classified as a "bird" course that a lot of people take, but of course, easiness is subjective. So if you have an interest in econ, it's definitely on the easier side than a lot of your other first year courses!

The general consensus amongst many students is that the first year econ courses (1b03/1bb3) are relatively easy and light in workload. However, it is important that you study and review your notes thoroughly before any midterms/quizzes/exams, as some of the material may be tricky to grasp if you are not particularly good at reading graphs or deriving equations from graphs (the math for the most part is very straight-forward and mostly calculation based). I recently took this course in the winter of 2012 with Hannah Holmes, who was very knowledgeable in regards to economics. Make sure you do practice midterms from previous years, as it will help you with some of the more challenging application questions. Personally, I did very well on both midterms along with the in-class quizzes (which only count towards 5% of your mark), but I found the final exam to be very challenging because we were only given 2 hours to write it, and more than 75% of the questions dealt with calculations and some form of application of the knowledge. I still managed to snag a 12 in the course, but I know some friends who weren't as fortunate as me, and their marks dropped significantly after writing the final exam. Overall, if you put in an honest effort and treat the course as a non-bird (by taking the course seriously), you will do very well!