Professor

Joshua Samani

AD
4.1
Overall Ratings
Based on 138 Users
Easiness 2.5 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.0 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 4.4 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 4.3 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (138)

7 of 11
7 of 11
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PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 21, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Professor Samani is extremely kind and understanding, especially during this chaotic time. As for the lectures, he goes through the materials thoroughly since he genuinely cares about his students' understanding. The only flaw of this class is that the problem sets were pretty long, but considering that homework covers at least 50% of our grade, the workload is probably reasonable. Overall, I would highly recommend taking his class.

Helpful?

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PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 28, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Prof. Samani gives really clear, understandable, and engaging lectures. I learned a lot in physics. The Weekly assignments made up 50% of the final grade and they are challenging, so they always took me a whole weekend to complete to get a perfect score. The tests are slightly easier, but still full of traps. Physics is hard to learn, but Prof. Samani really gives me the courage to learn more.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 1, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Honestly the BEST professor I've ever had at UCLA. A very understanding guy. Spring 2020 was a terrible time to be studying but Samani made the quarter way better. If you're looking for a wholesome class, look no further. Just take this class. WARNING though, the homework he gives is quite heavy and requires a lot of time to complete (with some exceptions here and there). If you're taking 5 or more classes, i strongly advise against taking this class. The questions he gives are not too difficult, they are mostly doable, you just have to put a lot of thought into it. All said, I don't think there's many profs like Samani and again, if you're looking for a WHOLESOME class, THIS IS IT

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 1, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Honestly the BEST professor I've ever had at UCLA. A very understanding guy. Spring 2020 was a terrible time to be studying but Samani made the quarter way better. If you're looking for a wholesome class, look no further. Just take this class. WARNING though, the homework he gives is quite heavy and requires a lot of time to complete (with some exceptions here and there). If you're taking 5 or more classes, i strongly advise against taking this class. The questions he gives are not too difficult, they are mostly doable, you just have to put a lot of thought into it. All said, I don't think there's many profs like Samani and again, if you're looking for a WHOLESOME class, THIS IS IT

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 8, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A-

Professor Samani is a godsend that I wish we could have again and again. The course overall WILL eat up a considerable amount of your time since it is very intensive in workload; you have been warned. His lectures are very concrete and, more or less, tangible to real-world examples, so they were very easy to follow through. His assigned weekly problem sets are tough and worth 50% of the final grade, but they also force you to interact with it, especially in collaboration with peers. His midterms are fair game if you're caught up with the material. It was also nice of him to recommend Openstax textbooks which we didn't have to pay a single penny for. His tastes in music outside of lecture are gold. Granted, I took this course during a pandemic and a time of racial unrest, but he adapts well to address the needs of students, from checking chat often to making sure the final is as fair as possible. His very down-to-earth personality creates a welcoming environment whenever I have to ask him about something.

All in all, I wish every other professor was like Prof. Samani.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 27, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Overall Samani is a great man. It's hard to like a physics class and looking back at it this was probably one of my favorite classes at UCLA, content wise. But, a few thoughts. The jump between in class problems and the questions on problem sets is huge. Homework was worth 50% of the grade, which may justify this. If this format continues definitely find a group to work with and the time to dedicate to it - it's doable, but you don't want to waste the easy points. The midterms and final were comparable in difficulty to those problem sets, but felt doable because we received problem set solutions, so could study from them. Nonetheless, I felt like I knew nothing while taking them, and only realized I was ok when I got the grades back. Samani is overall passionate about physics which is visible in every lecture, and he genuinely cares about students, but may seem intimidating.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
June 27, 2020
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: N/A

Selling University physics for Life Sciences (update edition) Knight + Jones + field (like new) and the workbook (never used, brand new)
text me at **********

Helpful?

0 3 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Aug. 28, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Professor Samani is one of the coolest professors I've ever had, in terms of his humor/relatability as well as his ability to teach physics in such an understandable and structured way. He introduces each of his lectures with goals and builds up to the big concepts, allowing for a much better holistic understanding. In terms of class structure, there are PSets due almost every week, which take a lot of time, but I enjoyed some parts of them to be honest. The midterms were 24 hrs for us in Spring 2020, and were very doable! I highly recommend taking this class – it was not only great for my GPA lol but also in terms of my understanding towards 1B material/physics intuition in general!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Oct. 30, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

Really nice guy, really engaging. Really hard work (in a fun way, like solving a puzzle). Forgot about tests, but it seems like everyone did pretty good. Also has some good elevator music intro / breaks.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 5, 2021
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: N/A

Professor Samani is probably one of the best professors at UCLA. I took 1B with him during Spring Quarter, the first quarter to start online, and it didn't feel like I missed a lot by not being in a classroom. He made sure to go over every topic thoroughly and used a blackboard to draw/write everything during the lectures. He made sure to allocate time for questions multiple times during the lecture, made the class engaging and explained things extremely well. At least for me, the material of 1B was not the easiest to understand and grasp completely, but Professor Samani really helped in making sure we understood what was going on. The homework problemsets were difficult, and if you can form study groups I highly recommend doing so. They take a while to figure out (I'd recommend doing them in the span of 2-3 days if you have the time since they take a few hours at least) but give you more insight on the topic that is covered during lecture that week, and helped prepare for the midterms and the final. The midterms were very difficult: They took hours ranging into the double digits and very heavily relied on how well you understood each and every aspect of the topics covered. Even then, the answers posted afterwards were very thorough and left almost no room for doubts and extra questions. The final ended up being optional for us, and was much more manageable since we were given a 3 hour time frame. He is very passionate about Physics and very understanding of his students, and if you can take him for 1B I highly recommend you do so. He's one of those professors that really wants you to succeed and makes it worth the difficulty of the material.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
June 21, 2020

Professor Samani is extremely kind and understanding, especially during this chaotic time. As for the lectures, he goes through the materials thoroughly since he genuinely cares about his students' understanding. The only flaw of this class is that the problem sets were pretty long, but considering that homework covers at least 50% of our grade, the workload is probably reasonable. Overall, I would highly recommend taking his class.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
June 28, 2020

Prof. Samani gives really clear, understandable, and engaging lectures. I learned a lot in physics. The Weekly assignments made up 50% of the final grade and they are challenging, so they always took me a whole weekend to complete to get a perfect score. The tests are slightly easier, but still full of traps. Physics is hard to learn, but Prof. Samani really gives me the courage to learn more.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
July 1, 2020

Honestly the BEST professor I've ever had at UCLA. A very understanding guy. Spring 2020 was a terrible time to be studying but Samani made the quarter way better. If you're looking for a wholesome class, look no further. Just take this class. WARNING though, the homework he gives is quite heavy and requires a lot of time to complete (with some exceptions here and there). If you're taking 5 or more classes, i strongly advise against taking this class. The questions he gives are not too difficult, they are mostly doable, you just have to put a lot of thought into it. All said, I don't think there's many profs like Samani and again, if you're looking for a WHOLESOME class, THIS IS IT

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
July 1, 2020

Honestly the BEST professor I've ever had at UCLA. A very understanding guy. Spring 2020 was a terrible time to be studying but Samani made the quarter way better. If you're looking for a wholesome class, look no further. Just take this class. WARNING though, the homework he gives is quite heavy and requires a lot of time to complete (with some exceptions here and there). If you're taking 5 or more classes, i strongly advise against taking this class. The questions he gives are not too difficult, they are mostly doable, you just have to put a lot of thought into it. All said, I don't think there's many profs like Samani and again, if you're looking for a WHOLESOME class, THIS IS IT

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A-
July 8, 2020

Professor Samani is a godsend that I wish we could have again and again. The course overall WILL eat up a considerable amount of your time since it is very intensive in workload; you have been warned. His lectures are very concrete and, more or less, tangible to real-world examples, so they were very easy to follow through. His assigned weekly problem sets are tough and worth 50% of the final grade, but they also force you to interact with it, especially in collaboration with peers. His midterms are fair game if you're caught up with the material. It was also nice of him to recommend Openstax textbooks which we didn't have to pay a single penny for. His tastes in music outside of lecture are gold. Granted, I took this course during a pandemic and a time of racial unrest, but he adapts well to address the needs of students, from checking chat often to making sure the final is as fair as possible. His very down-to-earth personality creates a welcoming environment whenever I have to ask him about something.

All in all, I wish every other professor was like Prof. Samani.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
July 27, 2020

Overall Samani is a great man. It's hard to like a physics class and looking back at it this was probably one of my favorite classes at UCLA, content wise. But, a few thoughts. The jump between in class problems and the questions on problem sets is huge. Homework was worth 50% of the grade, which may justify this. If this format continues definitely find a group to work with and the time to dedicate to it - it's doable, but you don't want to waste the easy points. The midterms and final were comparable in difficulty to those problem sets, but felt doable because we received problem set solutions, so could study from them. Nonetheless, I felt like I knew nothing while taking them, and only realized I was ok when I got the grades back. Samani is overall passionate about physics which is visible in every lecture, and he genuinely cares about students, but may seem intimidating.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Winter 2018
Grade: N/A
June 27, 2020

Selling University physics for Life Sciences (update edition) Knight + Jones + field (like new) and the workbook (never used, brand new)
text me at **********

Helpful?

0 3 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
Aug. 28, 2020

Professor Samani is one of the coolest professors I've ever had, in terms of his humor/relatability as well as his ability to teach physics in such an understandable and structured way. He introduces each of his lectures with goals and builds up to the big concepts, allowing for a much better holistic understanding. In terms of class structure, there are PSets due almost every week, which take a lot of time, but I enjoyed some parts of them to be honest. The midterms were 24 hrs for us in Spring 2020, and were very doable! I highly recommend taking this class – it was not only great for my GPA lol but also in terms of my understanding towards 1B material/physics intuition in general!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
Oct. 30, 2020

Really nice guy, really engaging. Really hard work (in a fun way, like solving a puzzle). Forgot about tests, but it seems like everyone did pretty good. Also has some good elevator music intro / breaks.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
PHYSICS 1B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: N/A
Jan. 5, 2021

Professor Samani is probably one of the best professors at UCLA. I took 1B with him during Spring Quarter, the first quarter to start online, and it didn't feel like I missed a lot by not being in a classroom. He made sure to go over every topic thoroughly and used a blackboard to draw/write everything during the lectures. He made sure to allocate time for questions multiple times during the lecture, made the class engaging and explained things extremely well. At least for me, the material of 1B was not the easiest to understand and grasp completely, but Professor Samani really helped in making sure we understood what was going on. The homework problemsets were difficult, and if you can form study groups I highly recommend doing so. They take a while to figure out (I'd recommend doing them in the span of 2-3 days if you have the time since they take a few hours at least) but give you more insight on the topic that is covered during lecture that week, and helped prepare for the midterms and the final. The midterms were very difficult: They took hours ranging into the double digits and very heavily relied on how well you understood each and every aspect of the topics covered. Even then, the answers posted afterwards were very thorough and left almost no room for doubts and extra questions. The final ended up being optional for us, and was much more manageable since we were given a 3 hour time frame. He is very passionate about Physics and very understanding of his students, and if you can take him for 1B I highly recommend you do so. He's one of those professors that really wants you to succeed and makes it worth the difficulty of the material.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
7 of 11
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