I have a lot of things to say about this class. Weeks 1-8 of this class are a joke. Like seriously, some of the easiest topics and concepts are covered in this time frame. Midterm is ridiculously easy, but only worth 15%. He assigns 4 HW’s each worth 10%. The TA’s are for some reason very strict with grading and give almost no partial credit on things that are missed. I know people who got HW scores in the 50-60 range, for HOMEWORK. With that being said, make sure to check answers with some people to avoid this issue. The last 2 weeks of this class are hell, and make up ~90% of the final, which is worth 45%, which is also out of 45 points… So there is little room for error. The final was very difficult, and he only gave us 2 hours and gave out little to no partial credit. There are a group of students who bought the final from students who took Abari last year and shared it around with others which (from what I heard) was pretty similar to the final. I personally think its unfair but it is what it is. I realized that the easiest way to actually succeed in this class (especially the final) is to do the problems in the optional book. I looked after the final and there were a lot of pretty similar questions. No cheatsheet either, which is just so stupid. Memorize all the gates, flip-flops, and know how to implement all the hardware (MUX, Encoder, Decoders, etc) because it WILL be on the final. Abari is okay at best. This class gave me my first B at UCLA and the class itself isn’t even that hard — he just doesn’t prepare you that well. He continuously gives us reassurance that if we did the homework and MT just fine we should get an A on the final but that is not the case. He also lied and said he was going to curve when in reality he just gave everyone +1% which is just a survey bonus. I was at ~81.5 and ended with a B-. He does NOT curve. He sent an announcement to our class weeks after final grades were due complaining about our feedback on Bruinlearn trying to justify himself. Reviews from Covid are really outdated…

His bruinwalk is overrated. He does not care if you understand or not. Asking questions during the exam is prohibited. TAs never reply on piazza until like two days later. I got higher than the average on final and midterm but still got a B+ because of homework. 10 points on the homework is 1% of your total grade. so each homework is worth 10% so be sure to get it all correct.

Professor Abari was very unhelpful, both in class and online. He was very rude, and often treated new concepts as if everyone had already mastered them. Often he would refuse to answer questions, both in lecture and during exams.

The material is not too bad, but requires some learning outside of class. Also, the final was much more difficult than the midterm.

I think the course rating right now (4.1) is a fair rating -- It's not as bad as what others say in my opinion. The biggest point I like about him is that his lectures are engaging and he looks like he genuinely wants to teach (and is good at teaching). This means that learning with him is fun, and I actually enjoyed his class much more than the average UCLA engineering class. In my opinion, the final wasn't bad and he did say an email around 50% got an A/A-. But for the exams, you need to PRACTICE WITH PAST TESTS as with many other classes. The CPO one is free and there's one online for free (a bit of digging is required). The exams and homeworks are very nit-picky as in there's A LOT of copying numbers and manipulating it in your head, so there's a lot of room for minor silly mistakes. Fortunately, any errors carried on forwards are ignored usually. Memorization wise, it's not bad: the material and theory in this class imo is less than the average engineering lower div. Overall, I think the midterm and final were fair and nothing we didn't cover in class (do the practice past tests though).

Lectures are interesting, but grading is extremely harsh. Simple mistake on a hw will lose you 15 percent(remember that homework is 40% of your grade). Prof said the class would be curved, I got an 86 raw and ended with a B+, so basically a non existent curve.

His lectures are engaging if you pay attention. His rubrics for grading is pretty harsh though, there’s no partial credit. He also said he would curve at the end but most people just got the raw grades back because there wasn’t much of a curve, more of a rounding up if you’re close to the next grade

I will preface this review by saying that while Abari is a good lecturer and makes the content of the class enjoyable, his exams are simply brutal.
The content of this class is like a roller coaster. The material up until the midterm is incredibly easy, while the material afterward is exponentially harder. I think Abari does a good job unfolding the content of the course pretty well throughout the quarter. Even though he kind of rushed through the last few weeks, I still think he explained most of the concepts pretty well. In class, he used very straightforward slides and answered any questions that people had. He also interacted with the students a lot, which was a plus. There were four HW assignments in total, but they didn’t prepare us very well for the final, which I will expand on later. Overall, I enjoyed going to his lecture every week,
What I did not enjoy were the exams. The midterm was fine because of the easiness of the material in the first half of the class. Also, we found some past midterms from the linktree test bank, and the questions were almost identical. However, it was only out of 15 points, and I don’t think they were lenient on partial credit. Anyways, the midterm was only 15 percent, so how you did on it practically had no effect on your final grade. On the other hand, the final, which was worth 45 percent of your final grade and out of 45 points, was no joke. Even if you had a perfect grade before the final, you would still need close to 90 percent on the final to get an A without curves. The content covered on the final was way, way harder, and it did not show up in any of the HW assignments. The four HW assignments in this class only covered up until week 8 of the class, whereas the majority of the concepts covered in the final were from the last two weeks. Furthermore, we did not get any practice exams or past exams to prepare for the final (they were not even in the linktree test bank), so the only way for us to study for the final was to go over the lecture slides. And even if you mastered his slides, it would still take a lot of critical thinking to do well on the final as most questions expanded on the concepts covered in the slides. BTW, we did not get any cheatsheets and the final was only two hours, not three. There was a lot of stuff to remember, so you better become a bio major and make yourself some flashcards and go over them like crazy the night before the final.
The last thing I wanna mention is the TAs. The TAs were not very helpful on piazza as they would often just not reply to our questions. Their grading scheme was also pretty terrible so make sure to get the HW exactly right to get a high grade on the HW.
My piece of advice to succeed in this class is to go to the lectures, go through the slides on your own, and memorize everything possible. Most importantly, do not believe in Abari when he says: “if you attend lectures and do the optional questions on the HW, you will do well on the final”. That is far from the truth. Make sure to download the “optional” textbook and practice the problems in the textbook. Last but not least, someone in our class told us that the practice final from last year was VERY SIMILAR to our actual final. We later found out that the CPO test bank had Abari’s final from 2022, and the questions were indeed very similar (although not identical). So if he still decides to gatekeep his past finals from the class, make sure to buy the past final from the CPO test bank because it would really prepare you for the level of difficulty of the actual final.

the worst professor i have ever had at this school. i have never been more frustrated by the quality of a class as seemingly easy as m51a. never have i seen a professor with an ego this large. during a midterm i tried to ask a question and the professor refused to answer it, despite being 25 minutes into the exam. how am i supposed to take an exam where the professor will not even let me clarify a single point about the midterm? the weighting of the class is horrible. homeworks worth so much of the final grade (10% each, 4 homeworks) the lecture slides explain very little. i learned more by looking up concepts on other websites than any of the materials posted in class. the piazza is so inactive it is impossible to ask for help. additionally, every student i have ever heard taking this class has said the final was far too difficult. yet the professor refuses to change this difficulty, or to teach the topics better so that this issue is mitigated. i would much rather get egged than this shitty prof

Abari taught well and was very thorough in his teachings. His exams were very straightforward and some students may even say easy.

Taking m51A with Professor Abari was a great experience! His lectures were very clear, and he made every concept feel simple and intuitive. The midterm was very easy and straightforward, and almost everyone received an A. However the final was a lot harder than the midterm, which threw a lot of people off. Most of the final was straightforward, but the last few questions were pretty in-depth and tricky, so be prepared to study and do practice problems for the final. Overall, the homework was fair and not too time-consuming and the lectures were very helpful. The tests were fair and I found the class to be engaging and enjoyable.