<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Well I got accepted to UC Berkeley as a transfer student to EECS and am really excited. I went online to look at the professors teaching Fall 2013 and was unable to find a lot of professors on RateMyProfessor.com. I was wondering if Berkeley has its own rating for professors? Is there any other website that is specifically designed for UC Berkeley? I know a lot of universities have their own ratings, reviews, and some even post up the professor evaluations in a database.</p>
<p>Any references would greatly be appreciated!</p>
<p>Also, as a side note - How bad is Hilfinger for CS 61B? He sounds really scary..</p>
<p>[Ninja</a> Courses](<a href=“http://www.ninjacourses.com%5DNinja”>http://www.ninjacourses.com) and <a href=“http://www.courserank.com/berkeley[/url]”>www.courserank.com/berkeley</a></p>
<p>HKN has course surveys for all the EECS courses: <a href=“https://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/[/url]”>https://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/</a>
(It’s not quite as helpful as some of the other sites but it has lots of data.)</p>
<p>Hilfinger I haven’t had personally, but a lot of people say to avoid him. I can’t remember the link right now, but if you look at the statistics his average grades are usually lower than the other 61B professors. Supposedly he also gives really hard/long projects. Other people insist that he’s not that bad and to just go for it.</p>
<p>I’ve taken hilfinger. Yes his projects take a long time (can be up to 30+ hours) but you will learn a ton. You’ll get really good practice in writing a program from scratch. You get auto grader feedback for the projects so there’s really no reason you shouldn’t get 100% on them. Also, his grading is more project oriented. That is, your grade will depends more on project grades than tests. If you get 100% on projects and 50% on the midterms and final it works out to an A-. That being said, there were moment where I felt like I wanted to just give up and fail while working on a project but I always powered through. By the time the last project rolled around, I felt like I could complete it easily cause of all the good practice I got. Don’t be afraid of hilfinger. People get A’s in his class still.</p>
<p>On the flipside, I’ve heard from people who took classes with Hilfinger despite the warnings who totally failed. The deciding factor seems to be whether or not you’re willing to put in the 30-50 hours his projects can take, whether it’s worth it to you to work many times harder for him than any other professor for the sake of genuinely learning more, and whether you honestly feel you can compete for an A with people who have been programming half their lives (if you haven’t). Think of it almost like signing up for an honors class - it’s very rewarding if you’ve got the skills and put in the effort, but MAKE SURE you’re willing to make that commitment and can handle the challenge. If you’re not top of the class/really into CS and you just need to take the course with whoever, you’d probably be better off taking Math 53 instead. Like I said, treat it like an honors course…imagine if Math 53 were full but Honors Math 53 still had space and you were considering it just for that reason, lol.</p>
<p>Hilfinger’s projects are long and hard - but I think what actually makes them impossible for some people is the fact that he constantly changes it almost every year. In other words; solutions to the projects are not floating online, no getting help from your friendly upperclassmen; the TAs haven’t done the projects before, so they can’t be very helpful on Piazza, unlike Shewchuk’s class where he kept the same projects throughout his 15 years of teaching.</p>
<p>No, I’m not saying people cheat. I’m saying that desperate people, who already know they won’t be able to code the projects, can’t get help from any outside source and just have to give up. So we get a wide range of F’s, but at the same time, a lot of people work hard to get thru his class and get A’s. The grading is the same as most CS classes, the difficulty is not.</p>
<p>I want to comment on the statement, “whether you honestly feel you can compete for an A with people who have been programming half their lives (if you haven’t).” It true that some people have been programming for a long time, but that will hold for any CS class. You will be competing against these people no matter what teacher you take. Even people fluent in java took 30+ hours on the projects for Hilfingers class. It’s not necessarily super super difficult; some things just take time and that’s the bottom line. For example, almost all of his projects required you to parse an input file. Parsing isn’t difficult, it just takes time. The same holds for many other aspects of the projects. I think one of the most confusing parts are the specs being not 100% clear. </p>
<p>I guess I’m sort of a Hilfinger advocate because I felt like I learned a ton in that class. Also, I’ve only been programming for almost a year now (only had summer 2012 61A experience before fall 2012 Hilfinger) so I feel like if I could do it then people coming in with any previous experience prior to 61A should do fine as well. I know you are worried about what grade you will get so I don’t want you to think I’m one of those students who’s like, “Even though I got a C I learned a ton and don’t regret it!” I’ll just tell you that I ended up with an A- (Missed the extra credit survey because I was sick, which would have gotten me to an A though. So close…) I hope that didn’t come off the wrong way, but I think knowing what grade I got will help you interpret my opinion better, be it better or worse.</p>