<p>Which professors should I definitely stay away from?</p>
<p>No one takes more than two introductory engineering courses as a freshman (2 is the required minimum, and I don’t think anyone takes any extra), so it’s impossible for any one person to give you advice on all the teachers.</p>
<p>However, by now through SIO you can see the professors who will teach each course in the fall semester and you can look them up on ratemyprofessor.com and the CMU FCEs site.</p>
<p>Yeah I used ratemyprofessor.com to plan my schedule on SIO. I didn’t find any of the instructors for 76-101 though.</p>
<p>There’s a pretty good reason for that!
76-101 is taught by grad students.</p>
<p>Ah that explains it.</p>
<p>oh alrighty! is karol okay for intro to chem?</p>
<p>Karol is okay. Pretty boring, in my opinion, but no one hates the guy. I had a friend in his class fall semester. He told me to avoid him, but then one day he spoke to him in person about a mistake he made on an exam that he thought he was penalized too harshly for. Karol gave him a lot of points back and my friend retracted his warning. Because of this I had no qualms about registering for his class in the spring.</p>
<p>His tests are always very similar to tests he has had in previous semesters and he puts up all of his previous exams on blackboard, so the best way to study is to practice those exams. That’s a pretty neat thing he does. Without those I probably would have done MUCH worse. I can’t imagine what it was like for his first ever class… With nothing to go on, his tests are very difficult. Lots of material, and each exam is just four questions.</p>
<p>His lectures often cover stuff that isn’t very important for the exams, which makes them boring and not incredibly helpful. My recitation TA (you’ll have recitation twice a week and lecture three days a week) was definitely more helpful for me when it came to exams and quizzes…</p>
<p>His grading scheme is very straightforward, which I really appreciated:</p>
<p>Quizzes - 100 points.
Homeworks - 100 points.
5 Exams - Each worth 100 points and the lowest one is dropped.</p>
<p>Take your total points and divide by 600 and you have your final grade (although he curves this so you need a grade lower than 60 for D, 70 for C, 80 for B, 90 for A).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that you should avoid Karol, but I’ve also never had a different chem teacher at CMU so I’m not sure how he stacks up against other options. His class won’t be the end of your world, just remember to utilize the previous exams on blackboard!!!</p>
<p>In SIO
Click on the professors name and you can still see their CMU teaching evals…even if a grad student, if they’ve taught before, you will get their ratings on that system.</p>
<p>THe sample size at rate.my.prof is too small for most of the ones my D has tried to check and/or the last time they taught was 3 years ago in another class…</p>