Hello!
I am an engineering freshman at Texas A&M and I am about to end my first semester and I should have mostly A’s in my classes, however, my math teacher decided that the common exam was too simple for my class and plans on give a negative curve that pretty much ruins our chances for that class (Avoid Belmonte like the plague 
) and forced me to self teach my self the calculus concepts I needed to take things like Physics and Research.
So now I am trying to abuse early registration to start getting good teachers (honors is a blessing) . However, I don’t know which teachers in upper level classes are good. Rate my professor doesn’t have a lot of reviews after freshman (sometimes sophomore) level classes so it is harder to gauge who can or can’t teach.
So can anyone suggest some good engineering professors and what they teach in the engineering department. I would prefer mechanical engineering teachers, but any class would be great since I am sure other people will have this question at some point.
The class name and then the teachers name with some notes would be really great
For example
ENGR 111 - Cable (or Kurwitz) - Fun teacher, but only teaches about 2 / 3rds of the course material and expects you to read the other portion (which honestly isn’t bad at all). He gives the most work out of every other professor, but he also makes you the most prepared for 112 and the Exams. I hear next year his section will be learning Python or C# due to the shortage of robot kits that come with Engineering 25 x 25
MEEN 491 - Arun Srivista - (I butcher this name every time, but he is the Head Mechanical Engineering Coordinator ) So far he is my favorite teacher. I Don’t think research counts as a class that adequately represents the teacher, but he seems really fun and doesn’t mind teaching people who know nothing with funny metaphors (and as a freshman knowing nothing, he taught me a lot of useful information to prepare for upper level)
PHYS 218 - Akimov - Take him. Nothing more to say. He is funny, helpful, will meet outside of office hours, has in-class participation for experiments and demonstrations, and he is the nicest professor I have ever had. (He is also basically may Calculus teacher on the side) 218 will be a lot of work with any teacher, but Akimov makes it not even feel like much work. But he does forget at times that Calculus 2 is not a Co Req (on the 4th week of class we had triple integrals) but he still makes the math easy to understand.
Here are a couple of tools apart from Rate My Professor that will help you evaluate profs and their grade distribution:
http://jippylong12.xyz/tamuFGD/
https://anex.us/grades/
Depending on what Math course you’re taking, my son (engineering junior) would highly recommend Amy Austin. He took her for Calc 1, 2 and 3 and, according to the Math Dept., she is the most requested prof.
As far as freshman courses: My son had Ritchey for ENGR 111 and Cahill for 112. Liked Cahill a lot more, but he graded harder. Had Collins for CHEM 117 (hard, but ok), Webb for PHYS 218 (didn’t care for, but did fine in the class), and took PHYS 208 at community college.
As far as MEEN courses sophomore year, highly suggest McVay for 221 (Statics & Dynamics) and Srivista for 222 (Materials Science).