Vijay Gupta will take you on a roller coaster of emotions throughout the quarter. He started off weak by drawing 18 "arbitrary potatoes" the first lecture confusing the whole class. But then the next 5 weeks were hella solid imo and he taught the concepts pretty well. Right before the first midterm he'll tangent and tell you how he solved a murder trial using the strength of a bottle of wine which was dope, but then you'll get a 70 on the first midterm because its super hard. Then he'll teach super well again and surprise you with a week 10 midterm making you wanna cry. But then the midterm is super easy and all 3 problems are straight from lecture! You'll get a 90 something because all my homies hate algebra and start studying for the final. THEN the night before the final he'll tell everyone to check CCLE for a Christmas miracle and he gave everyone A's to B+'s and changed the final to be one question and if you get a 50% you get an A. Somehow not turning in a HW and getting a 70 on the first midterm got me an A. This man works in mysterious ways and I love him. If you get this silver fox as your prof, it'll all work out, just your mental health may take a slight toll.

Professor Gupta is a very reasonable and understanding man, first and foremost. He cares more about the education part of his class rather than the actual grades (which is a good thing, as I'll get into later). His lectures can be pretty boring sometimes, but the material is not really all that hard. As the other review for this quarter said, while he can be a bit disorganized or go off on a tangent sometimes, his lectures are actually pretty solid most of the time, and you come out of them feeling like you have actually learned something. His drawings are also pretty entertaining, and we all rejoice when he draws his famous "Arbitrary Potato" diagram to summarize the class topics for each chapter.

For homework, he gives weekly problem sets usually with 5 or 6 questions. These questions come from the book, but he writes them down on the document, so you won't need a textbook to complete them. His tests are relatively straightforward, although one problem may be a bit tricky. But he is very understanding and if you got most of the concept right, he will be generous with partial credit.

Finally, for our Fall 2020 quarter, Professor Gupta, the epic chad that he is, gave us an early Christmas gift and gave most of us A's (because apparently our class was already doing 'exceptionally well' this quarter), and for those who didn't have A's they took a very toned down/easy final to boost their grade. Of course this was probably an exception, but it demonstrates how he wants to see us understand the material, and is understanding of our circumstances as students in this time. Basically, I got 75% and 85% on both midterms, and ended up with an A.

I took Gupta because I heard his class was very easy, which something changed this quarter and all the midterms and finals got way harder than previous ones. That being said, statics is a super easy subject so his tests went from easy to something you might have to study a couple hours for. The homework also got much more difficult and the TA's were no help and even told me wrong information often times.

His lectures are super boring if you can even hear him. He sometimes uses an overhead projector to project diagrams that are so old that even he has trouble figuring out what is on them. I'm not sure whether it is helpful or not to go to lecture unless you want a nice place to sleep. I almost never took any notes until the very end of the class where it started to become a little more difficult.

Professor Gupta is an interesting professor. His lectures can be a bit boring and unhelpful at times but at other times he spouts critical on-the-test information so it helps to attend lectures whenever you can. Gupta is very knowledgeable in his work and this can be seen with his real life stories that he sometimes told in class. Overall the homework isn't too bad if you pay attention in class and same goes for the tests. He is a very easy grader when it comes to these so just make sure you get the basics down and you're all set.

Gupta is the GOAT. As far as grading is concerned, whatever that is on the syllabus is irrelevant. As long as he sees that you are getting a basic understanding of course material (which is a very vague grading standard), he'll give you an A. For both my midterms, I scored below the mean by like 10ish points. I scored 73 on my first and 74 on my second. While on the final, I scored an 84 which is 4 above the mean, and that got me an A.

In class lecture, he has a funny story or two and uses some interesting examples for what concept we are learning. He can ramble a lot at times. He is a really down to earth professor. Lenient about grades. I didn't get back my first exam score, failed the second and I honestly did not know how I did on the final but by some Christmas miracle I got an A-. If you bombed the exam there is still hope haha. If you like physics 1 you will like this class.

Good Professor. Sometimes told long stories about some crazy murder case he helped solve or something similar. Aside from that, his slides weren't too helpful, but the textbook was. Most importantly, he let you bring in a cheat sheet with example problems into the exam, which made them pretty straight forward. Do the home works, as they are the main way you learn in the class.

MECH&AE 101 will be one of the first upper-division courses mechanical and aerospace majors will take at UCLA. And if you take this class with Vijay Gupta, oh boy, what a remarkable way to start your journey toward that mechanical engineering degree. On day one, it will be apparent that this class will be one of the most mundane and laborious classes you'll have to sit through. So let me say this: You do not want to take this class with Gupta. If you can take MECH&AE 101 with any other professor, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. If not, then just know that you are in for a snoozefest, and here’s why.

One of the worst aspects of taking this class with Gupta is his lectures. It doesn’t take the world’s greatest fortune teller to foresee that his method of teaching is outright futile, as attending the first lecture alone gave me an idea of what was to come for the rest of the quarter. Case in point, Gupta’s lectures are disastrous. They are so unorganized and in such disarray that it is mind-boggling how he thinks anyone would learn from his notes and explanations. Gupta begins every lecture by briefly mentioning the topic for the day, and then endlessly scrolls through a plethora of examples until the time is up. In theory, going over many examples seems like a decent approach in a class like MECH&AE 101, but the way Gupta teaches the material is simply NOT how you teach students. For one, Gupta gives you no time to solve any problems since he explains to the class how he got the answer in the most drawn-out way possible. Additionally, there is no progression in difficulty from the examples he presents. They are all just randomly chosen statics questions that are impossible to solve. I’m not even asking for much here. Gupta lacks the most fundamental skills in teaching a new subject. I’m confident that a high school tutor with minimal history of teaching others will do a better job than Gupta, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. And the biggest gripe I have with Gupta’s teaching style is his notes. Whenever he does an example in class, instead of writing out each step to demonstrate what he’s doing, Gupta already has all the work on the board and rapidly scrolls through all his work, poorly attempting to recall what he did in each part. And his notes are infuriatingly awful, quite literally chicken scratch. His notes are like if you have a blind chicken a paintbrush and tell it to write the Declaration of Independence after giving it twenty cans of Monster energy drink. In fact, I am doing a disservice to that chicken, as its writing will probably be more comprehensive than whatever Gupta presents in his lectures.

While not as inherently poor as his lectures, the other aspects of his class are substandard. I have never found the discussion sections to be extremely helpful, although I appreciated the effort the TAs put into solving statics problems. The homework was usually complicated. However, you can find a solution sheet very easily online (I’m not encouraging cheating, just wanted to put that info out there so you can "avoid it"). And while the two midterms and final were challenging for me, it seemed like the rest of the class didn’t have a problem with it. So there isn’t much to say in that regard.

Before I close off, there are two pieces of advice I’d like to give everyone who is going to take MAE&AE 101: 1) Self-studying is critical. By practicing a lot of problems outside of the homework and developing a good understanding of the concepts and equations, I guarantee you will pass, whether you are taking Gupta or not. 2) Go on YouTube and watch Jeff Hanson. Do yourself a favor and start watching his videos as soon as possible. Jeff Hanson is quite literally an angel sent from the heavens for mechanical engineers. Not only will explain most of the concepts you’ll tackle throughout the quarter meticulously and clearly, but they’re also pretty entertaining.

So if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and I wish you the best of luck on your mechanical engineering journey. And also, PHYSICS POTATO.

Professor Gupta is a nice guy. He comes from a background in civil engineering and biomechanics, so his lectures come with some examples that keep the course (somewhat) interesting. That being said though, he is not the most entertaining man and his lectures are quite monotone and hard to follow especially since his notes are already all written out.
The content itself though is very easy, one might even say that attendance is unnecessary as long as you read the book and attend some discussions. Homework is easy. Midterms (2) are harder than homework and require extra effort to get an A.

arbitrary potato