Professor

Samanvaya Srivastava

AD
3.4
Overall Ratings
Based on 5 Users
Easiness 2.4 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 2.8 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 4.0 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 4.0 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (5)

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CH ENGR 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 10, 2021
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A

Do you enjoy:
1) Spending eight hours on an exam every four weeks?
2) Carrying out complex differential equations everyday?
3) Having six hours of lecture each week for a class with only four hours of listed lectures?
If so, then ask your doctor for a prescription for CH ENGR 101C! ...
Please don't. But this is mandatory. We are all nonconsenting patients to this roller coaster ride.
---
CH ENGR 101C is what you get if you combine momentum transport from 101A with separation processes from 103 and a slight dab of heat transfer similarities from 101C. Then distilled it into a distillate of 90% 101A before dumping a metric ton of differential equations and integrals and whatever calculus this stuff is from, I sure as hell don't remember.
Some people say that CH ENGR 101C is a mass transfer class. I disagree. I literally did not understand like 90% of the concepts taught in class, and this professor sure as hell didn't really try to make us understand. Instead, all we got were equations one after another, correlations, and a bunch of mathematical relationships and models that probably don't reflect real world applications. By the end of the class, I knew how to manipulate every variable involved in mass transfer and utilize their relationships, but I couldn't tell you when to use these equations in the real world or if they are even good estimates. You better remember everything from your multivariable calculus classes, your differential equation classes, and whatever the hell class teaches change of variables, or you'll have a terrible time.
---
The grading scheme is pretty simple and consists of: three exams (20% each), homework (30%), and quizzes (10%). Note that the following paragraphs apply to an online quarter.
---
Homework are due Friday of each week, and not only focus on material from the previous week, but also includes material LITERALLY TAUGHT THE SAME WEEK. Lectures, and by lectures I mean recordings of last year's lectures, were posted on Sunday of each week, with a "concept class" on Thursday reviewing those lectures. The homework usually includes some advanced applications of the content covered in those recorded lectures, and generally you will need outside help to solve them. Considering that the lecture is posted Sunday night and due the same Friday afternoon, and that students have other things to do with their lives (like other classes), you're going to want to start on it ASAP so you can ask the TA for help if you need it. Otherwise, you'll be screwed pretty heavily, especially since homework grading is harsh and worth a large portion of your grade.
---
Quizzes are multiple choice questions related to the Sunday lectures, and are due before the concept class on Thursday. It's very simple, and requires a bit of conceptual thinking, but is easy. Use this to pad out your grades.
---
The exams for this class consist of two midterms and one final, located at about Weeks 4, 8, and 11. For the online quarters, these exams were all take home with a twenty four hour window allotted for completion. The exams themselves focused on recent material and were "cumulative" in the sense that the material of each week builds upon the content learned previously, so there are no isolated material that can be solved without prior knowledge.
Nevertheless, each individual problem tended to be doable given enough time, and while they are usually difficult and tedious, it works out well. That's because Srivastava is so nice, he especially designed these exams to take only two hours-
SIKE.
WHAT.
DID YOU ACTUALLY THINK THE EXAMS ONLY TOOK TWO HOURS?
The exam doesn't take two hours to complete, the problems do. And there are three problems per exam, minimum. So you better reserve like six to eight hours of your life for each exam otherwise you'll have a terrible time.
In a top secret interview with the professor on why he thought this was a good idea, his answer was roughly: "well I could finish the exam in two hours, so the students should be able to as well," while neglecting the part where he already knew all the answers and that the proof of some of these problems are three pages long and take half an hour to simply write out.
---
In summary, this class is probably one of the hardest, in both difficulty and workload. Hold strong and persist through it though; I believe in you all! We don't want even more people dropping out of chemical engineering.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 11, 2021
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: P

The class was certainly hard; it was much, much harder than the grade distribution would imply. Note that standards were relaxed during the COVID quarters (Spring 2020 and 2021), and tons of people Pass/No Passed this class. That said, I have no complaints about Srivastava himself; most complaints would be about course logistics more than anything. Lectures were good and he clearly cared about student learning.
---
We had a flipped classroom model due to COVID, where we watched recordings of the lectures and then came in during lecture to ask questions and go over the material. The recordings were excellent, and they came with excellent lecture notes. I found they were good enough that there was no need to read the textbook at all. Lectures, weekly review sessions, and discussions were all optional and recorded, so international students weren't penalized at all. Only issues I have on the discussion end would be real-life applications. The class felt far too theoretical.
---
The class was definitely harder than the previous classes in the series, especially compared to Dr. Eisler's classes. Part of this was due to the fundamental nature of the class; it builds upon 101A, which was definitely not easy. A bigger factor would be logistics. Homework was worth a whopping 30% of the grade, and it was NOT easy. Many people got below 70% on them. Quizzes, worth 10% of the grade were also tricky despite being multiple-choice, with similar averages compared to the homework. Homework was somewhat on the level of exams. Unfortunately, this meant that the exams, instead of taking the intended 2-3 hours to do, actually took far longer. Had we not been given 24 hour exam windows, most students would've been crushed on the exams. Compounding difficulties with logistics was the fact that it was hard to determine where we lost points on exams (all the TAs did was assign point values for problems). To give Srivastava credit though, he was very helpful when I emailed him with questions on the homework and when I emailed him about my grade.
---
Finally, like the previous reviewer said, reviewing velocity profiles would be very helpful for the course.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
May 29, 2024
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: B

Professor Sam is good at answering questions during lectures. I liked how he was capable of giving practical applications and examples of the topics being covered. I am so thankful that he recorded lectures and uploaded his notes to bruinlearn in an organized manner. It would have been nice to be able to view them within the same day, but was still considerate overall. He spends time reviewing previous lectures if needed for foundation on new lecture content. Most of the time I would zone out a little, but if you did not attend the previous class it would be helpful in catching up.
This class was co-taught with Professor Wright. Honestly she did not do much to contribute to student learning as her role was more “behind the scenes” I guess with the homeworks. She also went over the first midterm but was unable to provide detailed or clear explanations about the problems. She would say a solution was simple which was not encouraging given that a lot of people got the question wrong.
The tests were pretty difficult, and we were not allowed to bring in a cheat sheet. On the first test, we were explicitly told that all needed equations were provided. However, one question explicitly required an equation many of us in the class could not remember off the top of our heads. This was unfair and stirred a lot of drama and controversy around this exam 1.
Overall, this was a decent class with harder ChemE tests.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
June 22, 2022
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: A-

Sam definitely improved compared to S21. He is a great lecturer, not a lot of humor, often dry, but delivers the content well. Often times I found that I don't need to take notes in his class, it's enough to just listen and review his well-written notes after. His tests are definitely difficult, and I did very poorly on the first midterm. But in the end he did have a choice to drop one exam out of the three (2 MT and a final). My main advice would be to understand each assumption you make, mainly understand what it does to simplify the conservation equation, and from which part of the problem statement that justified you making this assumption. He doesn't reuse exams but he does reuse homework problems (worth 10% of your grade)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 104B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 1, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A

Welcome to our quintessential chemical engineering lab! Come, as we explore our amazing experiments, including:
DYN: Watching water warm up!
RO: Watching water become less salty!
DIST: Watching water become vapor!
ABS: Watching water become slightly acidic!
RXTR: Watching a line go up and down!
The entire laboratory is so underfunded that it might violate OSHA regulations, and we waste so much water we're probably single handedly responsible for California's drought, but hey! It's a "fun" and interactive experience!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
June 10, 2021

Do you enjoy:
1) Spending eight hours on an exam every four weeks?
2) Carrying out complex differential equations everyday?
3) Having six hours of lecture each week for a class with only four hours of listed lectures?
If so, then ask your doctor for a prescription for CH ENGR 101C! ...
Please don't. But this is mandatory. We are all nonconsenting patients to this roller coaster ride.
---
CH ENGR 101C is what you get if you combine momentum transport from 101A with separation processes from 103 and a slight dab of heat transfer similarities from 101C. Then distilled it into a distillate of 90% 101A before dumping a metric ton of differential equations and integrals and whatever calculus this stuff is from, I sure as hell don't remember.
Some people say that CH ENGR 101C is a mass transfer class. I disagree. I literally did not understand like 90% of the concepts taught in class, and this professor sure as hell didn't really try to make us understand. Instead, all we got were equations one after another, correlations, and a bunch of mathematical relationships and models that probably don't reflect real world applications. By the end of the class, I knew how to manipulate every variable involved in mass transfer and utilize their relationships, but I couldn't tell you when to use these equations in the real world or if they are even good estimates. You better remember everything from your multivariable calculus classes, your differential equation classes, and whatever the hell class teaches change of variables, or you'll have a terrible time.
---
The grading scheme is pretty simple and consists of: three exams (20% each), homework (30%), and quizzes (10%). Note that the following paragraphs apply to an online quarter.
---
Homework are due Friday of each week, and not only focus on material from the previous week, but also includes material LITERALLY TAUGHT THE SAME WEEK. Lectures, and by lectures I mean recordings of last year's lectures, were posted on Sunday of each week, with a "concept class" on Thursday reviewing those lectures. The homework usually includes some advanced applications of the content covered in those recorded lectures, and generally you will need outside help to solve them. Considering that the lecture is posted Sunday night and due the same Friday afternoon, and that students have other things to do with their lives (like other classes), you're going to want to start on it ASAP so you can ask the TA for help if you need it. Otherwise, you'll be screwed pretty heavily, especially since homework grading is harsh and worth a large portion of your grade.
---
Quizzes are multiple choice questions related to the Sunday lectures, and are due before the concept class on Thursday. It's very simple, and requires a bit of conceptual thinking, but is easy. Use this to pad out your grades.
---
The exams for this class consist of two midterms and one final, located at about Weeks 4, 8, and 11. For the online quarters, these exams were all take home with a twenty four hour window allotted for completion. The exams themselves focused on recent material and were "cumulative" in the sense that the material of each week builds upon the content learned previously, so there are no isolated material that can be solved without prior knowledge.
Nevertheless, each individual problem tended to be doable given enough time, and while they are usually difficult and tedious, it works out well. That's because Srivastava is so nice, he especially designed these exams to take only two hours-
SIKE.
WHAT.
DID YOU ACTUALLY THINK THE EXAMS ONLY TOOK TWO HOURS?
The exam doesn't take two hours to complete, the problems do. And there are three problems per exam, minimum. So you better reserve like six to eight hours of your life for each exam otherwise you'll have a terrible time.
In a top secret interview with the professor on why he thought this was a good idea, his answer was roughly: "well I could finish the exam in two hours, so the students should be able to as well," while neglecting the part where he already knew all the answers and that the proof of some of these problems are three pages long and take half an hour to simply write out.
---
In summary, this class is probably one of the hardest, in both difficulty and workload. Hold strong and persist through it though; I believe in you all! We don't want even more people dropping out of chemical engineering.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: P
June 11, 2021

The class was certainly hard; it was much, much harder than the grade distribution would imply. Note that standards were relaxed during the COVID quarters (Spring 2020 and 2021), and tons of people Pass/No Passed this class. That said, I have no complaints about Srivastava himself; most complaints would be about course logistics more than anything. Lectures were good and he clearly cared about student learning.
---
We had a flipped classroom model due to COVID, where we watched recordings of the lectures and then came in during lecture to ask questions and go over the material. The recordings were excellent, and they came with excellent lecture notes. I found they were good enough that there was no need to read the textbook at all. Lectures, weekly review sessions, and discussions were all optional and recorded, so international students weren't penalized at all. Only issues I have on the discussion end would be real-life applications. The class felt far too theoretical.
---
The class was definitely harder than the previous classes in the series, especially compared to Dr. Eisler's classes. Part of this was due to the fundamental nature of the class; it builds upon 101A, which was definitely not easy. A bigger factor would be logistics. Homework was worth a whopping 30% of the grade, and it was NOT easy. Many people got below 70% on them. Quizzes, worth 10% of the grade were also tricky despite being multiple-choice, with similar averages compared to the homework. Homework was somewhat on the level of exams. Unfortunately, this meant that the exams, instead of taking the intended 2-3 hours to do, actually took far longer. Had we not been given 24 hour exam windows, most students would've been crushed on the exams. Compounding difficulties with logistics was the fact that it was hard to determine where we lost points on exams (all the TAs did was assign point values for problems). To give Srivastava credit though, he was very helpful when I emailed him with questions on the homework and when I emailed him about my grade.
---
Finally, like the previous reviewer said, reviewing velocity profiles would be very helpful for the course.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 101C
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: B
May 29, 2024

Professor Sam is good at answering questions during lectures. I liked how he was capable of giving practical applications and examples of the topics being covered. I am so thankful that he recorded lectures and uploaded his notes to bruinlearn in an organized manner. It would have been nice to be able to view them within the same day, but was still considerate overall. He spends time reviewing previous lectures if needed for foundation on new lecture content. Most of the time I would zone out a little, but if you did not attend the previous class it would be helpful in catching up.
This class was co-taught with Professor Wright. Honestly she did not do much to contribute to student learning as her role was more “behind the scenes” I guess with the homeworks. She also went over the first midterm but was unable to provide detailed or clear explanations about the problems. She would say a solution was simple which was not encouraging given that a lot of people got the question wrong.
The tests were pretty difficult, and we were not allowed to bring in a cheat sheet. On the first test, we were explicitly told that all needed equations were provided. However, one question explicitly required an equation many of us in the class could not remember off the top of our heads. This was unfair and stirred a lot of drama and controversy around this exam 1.
Overall, this was a decent class with harder ChemE tests.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 101C
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: A-
June 22, 2022

Sam definitely improved compared to S21. He is a great lecturer, not a lot of humor, often dry, but delivers the content well. Often times I found that I don't need to take notes in his class, it's enough to just listen and review his well-written notes after. His tests are definitely difficult, and I did very poorly on the first midterm. But in the end he did have a choice to drop one exam out of the three (2 MT and a final). My main advice would be to understand each assumption you make, mainly understand what it does to simplify the conservation equation, and from which part of the problem statement that justified you making this assumption. He doesn't reuse exams but he does reuse homework problems (worth 10% of your grade)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
CH ENGR 104B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A
Dec. 1, 2021

Welcome to our quintessential chemical engineering lab! Come, as we explore our amazing experiments, including:
DYN: Watching water warm up!
RO: Watching water become less salty!
DIST: Watching water become vapor!
ABS: Watching water become slightly acidic!
RXTR: Watching a line go up and down!
The entire laboratory is so underfunded that it might violate OSHA regulations, and we waste so much water we're probably single handedly responsible for California's drought, but hey! It's a "fun" and interactive experience!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
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