<p>I was just wondering which classes had good/bad professors, which classes were really interesting, which classes i should avoid... I just wanted to know what current/past students thought.</p>
<p>Hehe, this is something I'd be pretty good at. But i terms of professors, you'd have to check on the course schedule as some courses rotate through professors and may vary wildly in quality as a result. I think interest is something more personal than anyone can help you with. I personally thought 3.091 was awful even though the lecturer was fantastic because the material was so boring. I also personally hate philosophy courses. But I do like physics.</p>
<p>Do you have any classes in particular you are looking at? I think we'd be of a lot more use there</p>
<p>Definitely take a look at the class evaluations if you are curious. They are posted on the class listing pages of Websis. They can be very helpful :)</p>
<p>^People can't look at the evals until they're MIT students and have Kerberos IDs/certificates.</p>
<p>What sorts of classes would you be interested in hearing about?</p>
<p>Do they not get ID's prior to having to pre-register?</p>
<p>That was my impression... :P</p>
<p>The question implies that the asker does not need this information to make the decision of whether or not to come to MIT, but rather which classes to take and which to avoid before registration.</p>
<p>What are you interested in? That might give us a bit more to work with.</p>
<p>(I found the course evaluations useless. I based class choice on talking to people and reading descriptions)</p>
<p>Course VI has our own system for evals. Definitely provides a lot more information than the general evaluations :D</p>
<p>I was thinking about being a math major. Any good classes for math majors? I sat in on the diff. eq. class with Madox? and that was good. Is he considered a good professor?</p>
<p>Depends. His lectures are funny, but his psets suck (in that they're really poorly written, often hard to understand). Other than that, I really like him.</p>
<p>I don't know a lot about the math classes, but I know my math major friends seem to be pretty happy academically.</p>
<p>Mattuck is pretty cool. I was advised to wait until this term to take 18.03 (i was signed up for it in the fall, but I ended up taking 18.06 instead, which is awesome with Strang).</p>
<p>Mattuck's lectures are usually fun and he explains things better than almost any other lecture I have (he actually goes over how to do problems instead of theory and stuff).</p>
<p>I took 3.091 and hated it. I barely passed (35 on the first test, 53 on the second, 50 is passing). It's very boring, the material is awful, and it's just not worth it. You're on pass no record, so I'd advise taking 5.111 - i'll be a little more work, but I think I would have enjoyed it more in the long run.</p>
<p>Anyways, your first term classes are probably pretty set by GIRs, so I wouldn't worry about who the good professors are yet. You'll figure it out by the spring/sophomore year.</p>
<p>depending on your background, 18.014 and 18.024 are good for math majors. they are the single and multivariable calc classes w/ theory. Considerably harder than 18.01 and 18.02. Everyone I know who has taken it has loved it. I think that's the basic. If you already have credit for calculus you could move right into 18.100(a, b, or c) - analysis. a is easier, b is quite difficult but more popular than c, which is essentially the same as b but more grunt work like presentations and such. People generally like the subject (100b) (I dont actually know anyone who has taken 100a) if they don't fail out, but a significant number fail out and a whole other group really just hate how hard it is. It's not as hard, though, as 18.701/702, they're an abstract algebra sequence and it's genearlly recommended you take 100b before taking either those classes. They're good preparation definitely but more than anything they're kind of just brag classes like your class will be full of math olympiad people and you'll feel hardcore for being there.</p>
<p>18.700 (lin. algebra w/ theory) some people take. It's boring, but not nearly as boring as 18.06 which is the same course minus the theory. In terms of difficulty it's not bad. It's useful to know though.</p>
<p>That should keep you busy for a bit.</p>
<p>Oh and Mattuck is a good lecturer, pretty much the best experience you can have for differential equations, which will bore your eyeballs out of their sockets.</p>
<p>P.S. one more thing, 18.703 comes with extremely mixed reviews. It's an easy introduction to the basic ideas of abstract algebra (group theory and such) but it doesn't go that deep and I would recommend against taking it if you are a math major and actually want to know about that stuff. Take it for exposure, if thats what you're into, but don't take it if you expect to learn much. That said, the time commitment is minimal and the lectures are kind of terrible but tolerable. Make sure you take it with someone else who will go to class, though.</p>