<p>If you read the review on bruinwalk about smith, you believe just about all of the reviews about him. Smith is one of the hardest instructors in the ME department, but this because he doesn't really teach you anything. Your forced to learn it all by yourself from the book ( which is also pretty bad). The one thing about 103 with smith is that the class average drops to like 33% on the midterm, so just about everyone is clueless on the material. If you can somehow know a little bit more then you'll get an A. Just go to office hours, he's actually pretty friendly and helpful there. Also he does have a nice grading policy which is you won't be given a grade lower than what you get on the final regardless of HW and midterm.</p>
<p>If you decide to drop 103 this fall and wait till winter, then there is no guarantee that you get an instructor that is good. Fall 06 it was smith, winter 07 was Kavapour (which my friends who dropped smith fall 06 thought was even worse than smith). ALso last year smith taught it spring and fall. I don't recommend that you drop it if smith is teaching because it is a prereq for several other courses, and there you might end up with an instructor just as bad the following quarter. MAE 103 is just one of those courses that you have to get over with whether you enjoy the material or not. </p>
<p>ALSO another thing is the TA!!! The one you need to look out for is freaking Kelvin Lu. He is a very cool and nice guy but can't teach for ****. His discussions were a complete waste of my time and eventually i just stopped attending. He is the TA for 103 for just about every quarter.</p>
<p>Yea watch out for Kelvin, but they usually have 2 TA's for this course, so you can always ask the other one for help. Since you're an incoming transfer, I guess your other courses could be MAE 101,102 182 or 105a? ALso was Alex your orientation counselor?</p>
<p>Everyone has a different opinion on a good textbook. I'll just say that it had a lot of mistakes, but the course uses a new edition of the text now, so the mistakes may have been corrected. Also the sample problems are really easy, but the end of chapters problems can be pretty challenging. There were 2-3 sections in the text that I thought were just straight up confusing and luckily smith only tested us on one of them. There is a solutions manual to the text floating around, and that's also garbage. It has tons of mistakes and they do a lot of weird stuff. Smith writes his own solutions to the HW problems (which is slightly better) instead of just posting the pdf file from the text solution manual.</p>
<p>I study Control and Automation Engeneering in Brazil, and I was aproved to study (for 1 year) in UC. Now I have to tell the UC 3 campis I would like to study... (in the list, I cannot choose UCB). Would you give me any suggestion of which colleges I should apply? Here I work with robotics, I went these year to RoboGames, and I met a few UCLA students and they told me that UCLA is good in my area... what do you think?</p>
<p>ESUC is not a good general engineering organization. If only you knew how it really worked from the inside, it is full of drama, personal issues, etc. People are power hungry and there is a lot of cheating (passing on of tests and homeworks). Some people are using it as a way to get into grad school because of their less than stellar grades (not going to happen) and some people are there for friends (because they have driven away all their other friends). Even if you do get elected an officer position, or to the executive board, there are still many cliques and power struggles. </p>
<p>People try to make it such a huge deal, but seriously guys.</p>
<p>Would undergraduate research be considered as important as an internship experience while applying for a job?</p>
<p>If so, where are good places to look for on campus? As in a program?</p>
<p>Also, what are good starting general engineering organizations on campus beside ESUC?
I think internship experience is more important because it gives you all those "soft skills" and practical knowledge that will be used in the workplace. Research pays off only if the job you're applying for happens to be highly related to your field of research. A good place to look for research is in your favorite professor's office, of course. Unfortunately, there are no general engineering organizations besides ESUC/EGSA. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>hey flopsy i just checked the cs 31 class sizes again and it seems like they raised one of smallbergs sections to 30 each class and did the same with rohr, is it likely they will keep raising it or raise the last section smallberg has to 30?</p>
<p>also, how is it having a class until 6 every mwf?</p>
<ol>
<li>what's the acceptance rate for the engineering school? (couldn't find it on the website)</li>
<li>I'm a female. Would I have a better chance of getting accepted into UCLA's college of letters and sciences or UCLA's engineering school? (I looked on the stats, only 19% female in SEAS. yikes!)</li>
<li>Do any of UCLA's engineering students go on to law school?</li>
</ol>
<p>btw UCLA is my dream school. i hope you're enjoying it, flopsy!</p>
<p>also, how is it having a class until 6 every mwf?
No, don't count on it. Engineering discussion sections rarely accomodate above 30 students. Also, the last Smallberg section has actually been closed now, and they rarely re-open. There's nothing wrong with having 4-6 PM courses on an MWF schedule. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>i can avoid it if i trade smallberg for rohr</p>
<p>so is it necessary for me to change it?</p>
<p>currently it is wgyoung to bunche and geology to public affairs, both in 10 mins
No, it's not necessary for you to change it... Time to face the inevitable trade-off: would you rather be late for a great professor or on time for an average professor? :rolleyes:</p>