OT: Hardest class at U-M?
I saw the "Easiest class at U-M?" post and thought that some might find the opposite question interesting.
My hardest class? "Dynamics of Mechanical Systems" I think it was M.E. 340. That (and M.E. 240, come to think of it) just didn't "click" for me. Interestingly, most of my classmates did not share my opinion. They typically chose Fluids or Heat Transfer.
My easiest? A 100-level (Social) Psychology course. It was interesting and almost laughably easy. I took it during my senior year.
ME340 wasn't a fun class either - that's up there for me as well.
Ugh, ME 395 was awful. Almost universally the least favorite ME class.
Work load, the grading, and Tech Writing! What's not to love!?
fuck your 395 shit. aint nobody but nobody can compete with the EECS 400's. 427, 470, 473, 467 would make any ME beg and wish for 395 again.
Yes, ME395 was the worst. Too little time, not enough direction, and we had no idea what we were doing most of the time. Even worse than law school (though Transnat comes close).
Interesting comment re transnational law in law school. I felt the whole crux of it was, essentially, that international "law" is sort of a misnomer; he with the biggest army makes the rules, and if you can't defend your borders, you're not a sovereign... along with the concept that treaties and international law are followed by nations, but not when it's really inconvenient to do so. I actually did decently well in that class, for what it's worth (nothing).
Agreed, and that concept can be distilled into 2, maybe 3 classes, not a semester. Or maybe I just had a really bad professor. They've gotten rid of Transnat as a requirement now, it's just an international law class requirement.
Lab course difficultly correlated directly with the stupidity of your cohorts. If you had one/two competent people, life was fine. If you had three morons trying to figure out how a water rocket worked, it was a rough go.
Given that people have tossed out Calculus 3 and Intermediate Microeconomics, the ME X95 courses are far more than a fair entry for this topic.
For my experience at UM through the mechanical engineering program, ME395 was WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY worse than any other class.
Toughest? Any 8AM class I ever took.
Biotransport (BME 400-something, I think). Truly terrifying.
BME 479. Took it last year and had no idea what I was doing half the time. Calc 3 (Math 215) was also horrifying. Had no idea what was going on.
Was that the BME 400 level fluids class? We'd get these take home exams that required these obscure trig identities to solve these diff eqs. The exam took like 40 hours of work to do and you often ended up with absolutely nothing because you just kept hitting walls. The year after us in 2009 decided to "collaborate", and apparently all got some minor punishments for cheating.
Yes! BME 479! I dropped out after bombing the first exam.
BME476 Biofluid Mechanics with Grotberg was also dark times for me.
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Econ 401 -- had nightmares about retaking the final. Nothing quite like calculus based microeconomics.
Screw edgeworth boxes.
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Yes she did.... class of '93-Econ here. She was there when I was there. I remember International Economics (upper level class) being a bit**.
Stephan Lauermann. We must have been classmates together. I share your pain.
I missed an A- in that class by 9 points out of 1000 (LITERALLY LESS THAN 1% ERROR) and he and my GSI were like "lol tough shit buddy better luck next time".
Honestly though Econ 402 was pretty awful too, if only because it was another German professor with a thicker accent who couldn't be bothered to address class questions. Those two made for a relentless sophomore year.
The extra shitty thing was if you ended up with a borderline grade, they'd bump it up had you completed all the HW assignments. But that's all they counted for, so you were probably like me at the time thinking "fuck it, slim chance that happens."
I can't remember his name, but I had to drop a 400-level Econ class because I couldn't understand him... and this was after taking five years of High School and UM German classes. I may have been better off if he spoke German in class!
I never had him but I know exactly who you're talking about - German guy and his last name started with K I believe but can't recall.
I also had the back to back 401/402 with the German guys (must have been fall/winter 08/09 respectively). The good thing about getting through those classes there are a lot of good upper level econ classes that are interesting and have a very generous curve.
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Fire Borgers! wait, what??
I took this to fill out my 3-course elective sequence. The math 215 prereq is no joke, and I think a lot of people that took it had either never seen a partial differential equation before or they didn't realize there was going to be that much math. I loved the course and it was not difficult for me, but it was definitely a huge step up in the math from 101/102
This 1000 times. I had to retake 401 in the summer of 2002 and got an A- on the midterm and then ended up with a B in the class. Took it the first time and missed the C- by a few points. Crazy hard class. Once you realized that the exams would test you mostly on the exceptions to the rules and not the main concepts you were better off. What a meat grinder that was. But, great feeling to conquer that demon. Hats off to anyone here who passed that class! Cheers & happy Friday!
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i did study (rare for me), but we had so little guidance from the prof, who was a very bizarre person - i think she was about 90% of the issue. she couldn't relate to anybody in the class. i had the 2nd or 3rd highest grade in the class, and it was my worst ever in school, a C+.
i was ticked about it. kind of like a preventable crash, it didn't have to happen.
IOE 425... no I'm just kidding. Of course it isn't an IOE course.
Math 286 Honors Theoretical Diffy Q's. I think that class had the lowest average test scores out of any class I took.
Otherwise I would have to agree with ME 395. Not the most difficult material, but when all aspects of the class get put together, it is awful.
Well played on the IOE front.
I did Math 286 too.
For me, by far my hardest course was PHY 453 Quantum Mechanics. They didn't have quantum broken up into two semesters like they do now (at least, I'm pretty sure they do now). Anyway, the real problem was the professor, Yukio Tomozawa. I couldn't understand his English, he didn't use a textbook, and he stood directly in front of whatever he was writing on the board. Ironically, I also took a ton of Japanese, and I still couldn't understand him, in English or Japanese.
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Wow, that is crazy. I hung out with a bunch of EECS guys and played on the HKN intramural soccer team and heard some stories. But wow, that is a crazy low mean.
Is it bad that I was a member of HKN and didn't even rememer it until you just mentioned it? Needless to say that outside of manning the donut stand for one semester I wasn't an overly active member.
Since I didn't actually end up working in either electrical or computer engineering I just don't think of it very much.
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Most difficult in terms of workload: EECS 427 (VLSI Design I)
I spent 40 hours per week, as did the other 3 members of my team, outside of class working on this class. All semester. Every Week. I did get an A+.
Most difficult in terms of hard tests: EECS 478 (Logic Circuit Synthesis and Optimization)
Means on the exams hovered in the mid 30% range. Book was atrocious. Professor read overhead slides in a monotone for 2 hours at a time... but wouldn't publish the slides online.
Classes most difficult for me: EECS 216 and Math 116
EECS 216...with a professor who isn't interested in seeing your work and gives no partial credit. Either the answer is correct to a couple decimal places or it's zero points. Somehow managed a B+
Math 116... weeder course with absurdly LONG integration problems, taught by a GSI that couldn't do the math and didn't speak English intelligibly (even though he was an American from Ohio). Still don't understand getting a C- in 116 when I never had another grade worse than a B+ in the entire math sequence.
If you pulled off an A+ in EECS 427 but barely passed Math 116, there must have been something seriously wrong with the way your Math 116 class was taught.
That's the one thing I didn't like about my time as an undergrad at Michigan. There was barely any quality control in the way GSIs were assigned to teach those major introductory classes like Math 115, Math 116, Chem 130, etc. even though like 70% of all undergrads end up taking them.
I got a had an average 2.7 my first 2 years of school and an average 3.7 my last 2 years in EECS. some poeple just take some time to turn on... but yeah maths 115-216 are horrendously taught.
April 11th, 2016 at 11:26 AM ^
Yeah... based on my engineering and other math class grades... there is no question my 116 GSI was absolutely horrendous.
I had an A+ in Math 115.
I had a C- in Math 116.
I had an A- in Math 215.
I had a B+ in Math 216.
EECS 270: A
EECS 370: A-
EECS 373: A-
EECS 380: A
EECS 400: A
EECS 427: A+
EECS 470: A-