Professor
Milos Ercegovac
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Most Helpful Review
It is tough to rate this professor since M51A is such an awful class, but here goes. Ercegovac is a really nice guy that is very concerned about the students understanding of the material. He will go out of his way to encourage student feedback in class and tries to loosen the tension of Digital Circuit Design with geeky jokes. He is generally available outside of class and is always happy to answer questions, discuss the material or ask test questions to make you confident that you understand the material. With that said, the class is extremely difficult and I did not find Ercegovac to be a great lecturer. He goes over the material and does a lot of examples, but I generally found myself lost in class and stopped attending around 4th week. Clearly a lot of this is because of the material, but it is hard to say if other teachers would hold the students' interest better. Fortunately, the class was largely taught out of the book, so reading the book somewhat clarified things. The book isn't great though, so I would often go to office hours to essentially receive free tutoring from the TA. In retrospect, doing the reading before lecture probably would have made the class useful since the examples in class would have made sense to me and served as a review. I think the place I really learned the material was in trying to do the homework, since I would dig through the examples in the book and ask questions during office hours, until I finally understood how to solve the problems. I was also lucky enough to have a great TA, Pouya Dormiani, who went out of his way to explain things well in discussion section, office hours and reviews. Difficulty-wise, this class is hell. Being a CS major with no engineering background, it was like learning a new language where nothing made sense until around the 3rd or 4th week. Tough it out though, and the class becomes rewarding around the midterm when things start to make sense. By week 7 or 8 things are still hard, but move more toward pluggable modules that are easy to understand and highly applicable. Fortunately I did not give into the many temptations to drop the course, and by investing 10-20 hours a week into this class I managed to get an A. My main advise is to do the reading before lectures, and to take advantage of office hours. Start homework early and do the reading early, so you can attend office hours before you fall behind. Hopefully you get a good sense of what M51A with Ercegovac is like. Overall he is an average teacher, which compared to the other 51A teachers makes him look like a star. Since this class is going to be painful no matter what, I suppose it is at least good to take Ercegovac who goes out of his way to be helpful and nice. Hope for a good TA and plan to learn the material by manipulating Ercegovac and the TA's into 1-on-1 tutoring during office hours. I was amazed at how few people took advantage of this and that I was the only person that said to the TA during office hours "I am lost. Can you explain the difference between p-type and n-type mos, why we need both and how I implement each? Can you give me some examples I can do right now to make sure I understand?" Always remember that everyone else in the class is also completely lost, so even if you feel like you have no idea what's going on 90% of the time, you can still get an A. I thought I failed the final, and ended up getting 30% above the mean since everyone else also failed.
It is tough to rate this professor since M51A is such an awful class, but here goes. Ercegovac is a really nice guy that is very concerned about the students understanding of the material. He will go out of his way to encourage student feedback in class and tries to loosen the tension of Digital Circuit Design with geeky jokes. He is generally available outside of class and is always happy to answer questions, discuss the material or ask test questions to make you confident that you understand the material. With that said, the class is extremely difficult and I did not find Ercegovac to be a great lecturer. He goes over the material and does a lot of examples, but I generally found myself lost in class and stopped attending around 4th week. Clearly a lot of this is because of the material, but it is hard to say if other teachers would hold the students' interest better. Fortunately, the class was largely taught out of the book, so reading the book somewhat clarified things. The book isn't great though, so I would often go to office hours to essentially receive free tutoring from the TA. In retrospect, doing the reading before lecture probably would have made the class useful since the examples in class would have made sense to me and served as a review. I think the place I really learned the material was in trying to do the homework, since I would dig through the examples in the book and ask questions during office hours, until I finally understood how to solve the problems. I was also lucky enough to have a great TA, Pouya Dormiani, who went out of his way to explain things well in discussion section, office hours and reviews. Difficulty-wise, this class is hell. Being a CS major with no engineering background, it was like learning a new language where nothing made sense until around the 3rd or 4th week. Tough it out though, and the class becomes rewarding around the midterm when things start to make sense. By week 7 or 8 things are still hard, but move more toward pluggable modules that are easy to understand and highly applicable. Fortunately I did not give into the many temptations to drop the course, and by investing 10-20 hours a week into this class I managed to get an A. My main advise is to do the reading before lectures, and to take advantage of office hours. Start homework early and do the reading early, so you can attend office hours before you fall behind. Hopefully you get a good sense of what M51A with Ercegovac is like. Overall he is an average teacher, which compared to the other 51A teachers makes him look like a star. Since this class is going to be painful no matter what, I suppose it is at least good to take Ercegovac who goes out of his way to be helpful and nice. Hope for a good TA and plan to learn the material by manipulating Ercegovac and the TA's into 1-on-1 tutoring during office hours. I was amazed at how few people took advantage of this and that I was the only person that said to the TA during office hours "I am lost. Can you explain the difference between p-type and n-type mos, why we need both and how I implement each? Can you give me some examples I can do right now to make sure I understand?" Always remember that everyone else in the class is also completely lost, so even if you feel like you have no idea what's going on 90% of the time, you can still get an A. I thought I failed the final, and ended up getting 30% above the mean since everyone else also failed.
Most Helpful Review
I actually took CS M151A with Ercegovac. The class was really tough, so it's hard to attribute the difficulty to the course material, his teaching, or a combination of both. I don't think any professor could make this class easy. Milos was a super nice professor, and although I never went to office hours he seemed very willing to help students; I think he would have been very encouraging and helpful if I had gone to him for help with the class. It helps a lot to read the book before class. The lectures are basically a lighter version of the textbook (since he wrote it), and if you go in with an idea of what to expect the information he gives out is much more helpful. If you attend lecture without reading the textbook beforehand (like I did for about the last half of the quarter), the lectures are much more difficult to follow. The book isn't very exciting but it's straightforward. I'd recommend him.
I actually took CS M151A with Ercegovac. The class was really tough, so it's hard to attribute the difficulty to the course material, his teaching, or a combination of both. I don't think any professor could make this class easy. Milos was a super nice professor, and although I never went to office hours he seemed very willing to help students; I think he would have been very encouraging and helpful if I had gone to him for help with the class. It helps a lot to read the book before class. The lectures are basically a lighter version of the textbook (since he wrote it), and if you go in with an idea of what to expect the information he gives out is much more helpful. If you attend lecture without reading the textbook beforehand (like I did for about the last half of the quarter), the lectures are much more difficult to follow. The book isn't very exciting but it's straightforward. I'd recommend him.
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