Koutroulakis isn't a bad professor for physics. You could certainly get worse. He got frustrated with our class several times because nobody wanted to raise their hands to answer his questions and was obviously annoyed by how eager people were to leave at the end of lecture.

The material in the class isn't hard and even if you don't have any physics knowledge you can still do well. If you have studied physics in the past this class will be a breeze. Koutroulakis gives 2 midterms and they can be tricky at times. He puts multiple choice questions on his midterms and final which I found really annoying but I can see why he did it. I thought the final was a little easier than the midterms but I did dedicated a lot of time to studying for it.

I didn't have physics background so this class was much harder for me than it was for most of the people in the class. You look at his grading distribution and think "Oh wow that's not bad, this class will be a breeze" I mean 30% of the class my quarter ended with a solid A, but no. The plentitude of A's is only because SO MANY people in class have already learned all the material from their prior educational institutions. Anyways here's what to expect from his class.

Homework (5%):
Homework is due weekly. You have textbook problems (which aren't graded) that you upload online on CCLE. You also have this online program called "Masteringphysics"' which was total bullshit. It was so expensive and some of the assignments were actually really difficult sometimes but if you kept answering incorrectly your assignment grade would drop before you realize it so my friends and I ended up just looking for the solutions online so we won't lose points. In my opinion it didn't really help in preparing you for the exams.

Lab (15%):
The labs are mixed with all the 6A lectures. My TA was super chill, told us exactly what to do at the beginning of lab and always ended up giving everyone 100%. It's really boring and tedious though and doesn't help with understanding the material at all. Thanks to my TA though, lab was a real grade booster for me.

Midterms (40%):
You have 2 in-class midterms each worth 20% of your grade. All exams consist of conceptual multiple choice questions and problem solving free response questions. The MC questions were the worst. You really have to read the question carefully so you don't accidentally misinterpret the situation. It was especially bad because some of the wording was just confusing. All the tests were hard for me but I'm sure if you have physics background or can understand the material you should be fine. BUT, you do NOT have the leisure of taking your time solving the problems and double checking your work. The professor told us that he didn't want to make a grading curve by making the test really difficult so instead, he made a time crunch on purpose so that the curve will be made by students who have mastered the material and can therefore read the problem and know how to solve it right away versus students like me who didn't always know how to set up the problem immediately.
Midterm 1 average: 75%
Midterm 2 average: Never told us the exact grading distribution for this one but he mentioned it was a little under 70%.

Final (40%):
God this final was so hard. Because we had three hours to work it out, I could tell he definitely upped the difficulty. Same format as the midterms though, just longer and harder. It reminded me of Lavelle's Chem 14A/B finals where you had random situations that you haven't seen before but worse since I hadn't fully mastered the physics material as opposed to chem.
Final average: 71%

Extra credit (MAXIMUM of 1%):
You can get a maximum of 0.5% of EC just by going to class and doing the clicker questions so definitely don't skip lecture.
You can also get 0.5% EC by doing these pre and post tests surveys on CCLE.

Discussions didn't really help for me since my TA didn't really know how to advice us for the tests. He was an experienced TA but he himself also didn't know how the exams would work so his review sessions and practice problems were just meh. They're also doing this new discussion experiment where some sections were the traditional classroom setting where the TA just goes over how to solve problems while some sections, students were to work in groups to solve the problems before the TA went over the answers. You can switch into whichever one you prefer.

His grading scale is pretty lenient though.
95-100% A+
90-95% A
85-90% A-
80-85% B+
This totally saved me along with the extra credit and chill lab TA.

During lecture you can tell he has an accent but that was all it was for me. Just an accent. I never had trouble understanding him even though it was my first time listening to a Greek accent. The most negative thing I have to say about lecture was I always felt uncomfortable answering and asking questions. Often times (maybe it was just the natural tone of his voice) he would reply curtly if someone asked a "stupid" question or a question that was unrelated to the current topic. Sometimes if a student answered one of his questions incorrectly you could hear in his voice that he was exasperated or super baffled as to how they got that answer. Not really supportive if you ask me. In any case, lectures were as boring as any other science class but he had a lot of demonstrations which always caught everyone's attention and were fun and interesting to watch. In my opinion, if you have the option. try to take 6A with Schriver. All my friends in Schriver including those that didn't have physics background were chilling the whole quarter and most of them still got solid As or higher while I worked my ass off and still couldn't get the A. In fact, I think I barely clutched my A- to be honest. If you're comfortable with physics though then I don't see any harm in taking it with Koutroulakis but if you're completely new (like me) really try to take 6A with Schriver if you want to keep your GPA as high as possible.

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