Professor profile for Maruthi Akella
Student reviews of Maruthi Akella
Review from a student who took ASE 330M
Akella is unbelievably tough in this course and the TA was very unhelpful. Difficult to understand material and Akella is very tough grading, at least on the homework and 1st test. The 2nd test was graded more fairly but the final was horrible. When studying for a test work from the last material covered back because he does not usually cover but about the last 6 or 8 previous classes on the test. The final was predominatly material we had only covered in the last few classes and had done no homework on. In a phrase this instructor in this class SUCKED.
Akella is unbelievably tough in this course and the TA was very unhelpful. Difficult to understand material and Akella is very tough grading, at least on the homework and 1st test. The 2nd test was graded more fairly but the final was horrible. When studying for a test work from the last material covered back because he does not usually cover but about the last 6 or 8 previous classes on the test. The final was predominatly material we had only covered in the last few classes and had done no homework on. In a phrase this instructor in this class SUCKED.
Review from a student who took ASE 330M
I have never felt so thouroughly defeated by a class for which I actually understood the material. The book is useless, but about half of the homework comes out of it, so you do need it. I found a much better book on the subject, and it's the main reason I had any idea what was going on in the course. The lectures are all basic theory, the homeworks are all application math problems, and the tests are just plain painful. The tests rarely cover anything older than a few weeks (a large part of the final was over stuff covered in the last 2 classes). Despite what we were promised on Day 1, this is a math class. Or, since the Diff Eq classes are notoriously bad, it's two math classes, since Akella expects you to know diff eq forwards and backwards. Hope you memorized those LaPlace Transform pairs that your diff eq prof promised you'd never see again, because it took a lot of convincing to get him to allow us use of a table, and even then he was reluctant. His expectations are unrealistic, as he expects total perfection. There is no partial credit. And he has been known to do some weird things such as: ask for a proof on homework, and then post the solution after the homework is due, then ask for the same proof on the first test, but not give any credit for the short version of the proof which he posted as the answer for the same question in the homework. At no point in the course does he pretend that most of this material is useful, and at times even openly admits to its irrelevance to any ASE aplications. In short, bad book, bad course, bad prof. Stay Away.
I have never felt so thouroughly defeated by a class for which I actually understood the material. The book is useless, but about half of the homework comes out of it, so you do need it. I found a much better book on the subject, and it's the main reason I had any idea what was going on in the course. The lectures are all basic theory, the homeworks are all application math problems, and the tests are just plain painful. The tests rarely cover anything older than a few weeks (a large part of the final was over stuff covered in the last 2 classes). Despite what we were promised on Day 1, this is a math class. Or, since the Diff Eq classes are notoriously bad, it's two math classes, since Akella expects you to know diff eq forwards and backwards. Hope you memorized those LaPlace Transform pairs that your diff eq prof promised you'd never see again, because it took a lot of convincing to get him to allow us use of a table, and even then he was reluctant. His expectations are unrealistic, as he expects total perfection. There is no partial credit. And he has been known to do some weird things such as: ask for a proof on homework, and then post the solution after the homework is due, then ask for the same proof on the first test, but not give any credit for the short version of the proof which he posted as the answer for the same question in the homework. At no point in the course does he pretend that most of this material is useful, and at times even openly admits to its irrelevance to any ASE aplications. In short, bad book, bad course, bad prof. Stay Away.
Review from a student who took ASE 370L
Terrible terrible professor. Akella lectures mostly by running through his handwritten slides and talking. Akella fails to do a good job at covering the material and often times what he says will prove to be irrelevant or unhelpful to figuring out the homework. He lectures at a high screech and by making various noises in nervous excitement. The tests are extremely difficult and are compounded by the fact that Akella was extremely reluctant to even supply a Laplace table or any kind of equation sheet. Towards the end of the semester he assigned a brutally difficult final project. He constantly changed requirements of the project and students learned how to do the project through the grapevine and anecdotal stories of going to the TA's during their office hours (who are also awful and generally unhelpful). In the end my code ended up being 200+ lines long after working a week and pulling an all nighter on it. In addition to this a final report needed to be written which made a total of 28 pages of documentation for this final project. Many of my fellow classmates have similar stories. Stay away from this course and from Akella.
Terrible terrible professor. Akella lectures mostly by running through his handwritten slides and talking. Akella fails to do a good job at covering the material and often times what he says will prove to be irrelevant or unhelpful to figuring out the homework. He lectures at a high screech and by making various noises in nervous excitement. The tests are extremely difficult and are compounded by the fact that Akella was extremely reluctant to even supply a Laplace table or any kind of equation sheet. Towards the end of the semester he assigned a brutally difficult final project. He constantly changed requirements of the project and students learned how to do the project through the grapevine and anecdotal stories of going to the TA's during their office hours (who are also awful and generally unhelpful). In the end my code ended up being 200+ lines long after working a week and pulling an all nighter on it. In addition to this a final report needed to be written which made a total of 28 pages of documentation for this final project. Many of my fellow classmates have similar stories. Stay away from this course and from Akella.
Review from a student who took lwDEAqUjXUjKdloU
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