Venugopal is the worst teacher I have ever had. She doesn't explain things well at all and takes an entire lecture to reach the main point, which she doesn't even explain. If there is any way to take this class with a different professor I highly recommend choosing someone like Conley who actually knows what he is doing

Don't take this class with her. Math that is very easy in hindsight seemed much more difficult learning it from her.

I haven't even finished this class yet but I can't stand it anymore. I had Venugopal last quarter and for some reason, it just got so much more unbearable this quarter. I understand professors need to respond to feedback but there was complete overhaul in how the class was designed and different, doesn't necessarily mean better.

Professor V started doing bi-weekly quizzes on top of our usual midterm and final. I wouldn't say they were particularly difficult but the build-up to each exam made the work load incredibly tedious and sincerely unnecessary. We had to do study guides before each exam and because the professor couldn't finish covering material in lecture, she assigned a ridiculous amount of asynchronous videos. It's really up to you if you want to watch them (I never did) but it puts a lot of burden on students to now worry about watching videos when she could've gone through all the material if the lecture time was used more efficiently. This is not to bash on providing additional resources because I think they are helpful for students who need extra help, but when she suggests them because there are holes in her own lesson plans, now students are watching even more lectures because we spent so much time on one tiny thing in class and ran out of time. Not to mention, two of our quizzes were opened on the two Monday holidays this quarter.

Professor V is also really vague when answering questions. I've heard in lecture and saw online how she answers questions and the answer is usually "What do you think?" or "If you read through these pages and answer these questions, the answer will become clear." I understand that professors want us to find answers on our own but when students go to Piazza, Campuswire, etc. it's usually because they couldn't find answers elsewhere. You're better off getting help from classmates/TAs.

People love to hate on Sharmila but she is a great professor in my opinion. She is difficult to understand but she knows this and makes her tests so much easier in comparison to Garfinkel, Jukka and other professors who teach this class. I have friends who took the class with these professors and struggled. Sharmila only tests on the most basic topics. I never read the textbook once: just pay attention in class and do the homework and you will easily get an A. She is super funny and understanding also. The only bad thing about this class is the labs. The coding is so poorly taught (my TA literally didn't speak English so there's that). Luckily our test on the coding didn't get counted but otherwise I am not sure I would've gotten an A. This class would rock if it didn't have coding. It was miserable for everyone to do the labs each week and I am dreading them in 30B. TAKE SHARMILA! Seriously ignore the reviews on here. I had a conversation with someone in Garfinkel and showed them our tests and they were dumbfounded at how easy they were compared to the other professors. Our final was the content that Garfinkel's class had on their MIDTERM. We didn't even start any material until week 2. She spent the whole first week talking about herself and we didn't have homework until week 3.. It was honestly an easy class but you do have to put in some work since she is a little tough to understand sometimes. She knows this though and makes her tests easy because of it!

Soroush the TA taught more than she ever did. She explained the concepts very convultedly because she thinks like an engineer and talks like one - the math she explained well enough when talking about stability and equilibrium but talking about population concepts and simple things were so much harder.

Don't go to her office hours. Most useless thing ever.

You don't need to go to class besides clicker participation. She is nice and tries her best but she just makes the topics more confusing. I skipped class occasionally and learned mostly from reading the textbook and still did well.

Dr. Venugopal is a very kind and caring woman, but she just isn't that great of a teacher. The concepts in LS30A are not that difficult to understand, but her lectures often just made things more confusing. It's probably best to just read the textbook for this class and use that as your primary source of knowledge. Also, the coding labs got extremely difficult towards the end of the quarter and I dreaded doing them every week. The midterm and final for this class were actually pretty easy, and as long as you do the practice tests posted on CCLE and go over the homework problems she assigns, you should be able to do fine. Her lecture slides can also be pretty helpful to look over when studying, so doing well in the class shouldn't really be a problem because the material isn't really too hard to understand.

I do not know why everybody is hating on Dr. Venugopal. She does her absolute best to make sure everyone understands the material and genuinely is concerned over the education of her students. READ THE LECTURE NOTES.

Dr. Venugopal is a great professor, BruinWalk has given her such a terrible reputation. She tries her best to make the lectures are clear and concise as possible. The class has nearly no homework and the tests are extremely fair. Her grading distribution is absolutely amazing, and I would highly suggest you take this course with her.

I believe someone below commented, take the Life Science 30 series, but don't take it with Venugopal. I agree. The math itself seems like it should be easy and straightforward, but somehow it ends up being very convoluted with her. She is a nice lady but she can't really teach. My TA was a far better teacher than her. My TA was Long Nguyen, if he's available again I would recommend him, he was very helpful. The labs are quite confusing and stressful, the TA had to run around and explain everything to everyone the entire lab section. But the TA will help you finish the lab if you go to office hours and you're not tested on the labs, so just make sure you get them done even if you don't understand them.