The professor was very approachable. We played basketball with him, talked about life challenges, and he gave me a lot of life lessons I can use when I go to industry. The Prof made me feel that my questions mattered and clearly explained the concepts in a way that I understood it in a systematic manner. Kudos to him for putting all the effort he did.

Caring professor, highly recommend. Explains concepts clearly and gives tons of extra credit to encourage participation. He also comes from industry so provides practical perspectives. Cant wait to take another course with him!

One of the best professors I ever had. He gave many examples, prepared youtube videos to help students and explained the concepts from first principles. He also went out of his way to help students.

Tough professor, and you never know what you expect. Very clear and helpful, funny, and gives lots of life lessons. Prof. Goyal is the best professor I had, his industry experience brings this course to another level. Extremely responsive and run the class like an orchestra. TAs were spectacular as well. Thank you Prof Goyal!

As many other reviews have said, take this professor, but be ready for an unpredictable quarter. By no means is he a normal professor. His lectures are engaging and funny and he often heads off on tangents (which were both useful and interesting) about his experiences and lessons learnt in the industry. He gives tons of extra credit so turn up to lectures (you can earn 2% of your grade by answering one simple question in lecture). The tests aren't super easy but if you've done the homework and paid some attention in lecture you'll be fine. And hey, if worst comes to worst, you can make up a bad midterm with extra credit!
Unfortunately, the quarter was ruined a little by some ungrateful grumpy students who complained because the extra credit depended whether you put your hand up in class and wasn't "equally distributed" as they claimed. They're probably the same people who give Prof Goyal bad reviews. They ruined the extra credit which Prof Goyal had to stop about week 7 because they complained to the dean (absolute losers really).
Other than that, this class is a definite take because it will spice up your life from the normal lectures and professors and you'll learn a lot too. You might even get to play basketball with the Prof!

The professor is really inspirational. This is the best course I have ever taken at any university. The course is tough but the professor breaks down the concept systematically and provides a number of learning opportunities. Amazing

This class was kind of a clown show. The material itself is fairly simple and very similar to Physics 1A. I think most people could do well without ever showing up to class. Professor Goyal tried his very hardest to make sure everyone got a good grade, giving out a boatload of extra credit. I think it's safe to say that you could get an F on the midterm and final and still end up with an A. Professor Goyal himself wasn't a great teacher. He really skimmed over the lectures quickly and if you didn't already understand the material, you would have a really hard time. He also acted, to put it simply, like an unpredictable child. He was by far the most unprofessional professor I've ever had.

By far both the greatest class I've taken at UCLA, but also by far the most workload. Many of the concepts can be pretty "mathy" but the projects that he assigns (1 project every other week) are really awesome projects ranging from aircraft wing analysis, fuselage buckling, launch vehicle analysis, composite analysis, all of which are straight from his connections with industry. If you want to learn something useful that will conglomerate all of what you've learned in your undergrad thus far, take this class without a doubt, but be sure you're seriously willing to put in upwards of 10-15 hours of work a week.
PS No final or midterms, just 5 homeworks, 5 projects, and alot of extra credit

This class was a roller coaster. Vinay Goyal is unlike any other professor I have ever had. For one thing, he's from industry, so he approaches things from a "common sense" or intuition perspective instead of an academic approach. Additionally, he throws extra credit at students. Seriously, I ended up with so much extra credit by the end of the quarter that my quiz category was worth over 150%. Halfway through the final, I decided to leave the hardest questions unfinished because I was confident that I would get an A. Finally, Goyal is truly invested in seeing his students succeed. For the first half of the class (statics), he created Youtube videos to go over numerous example problems so that, in his own words, we would have no excuse to not do well on the exam.

There are a few downsides to this class, however. Goyal is a bit unpredictable. Meaning that he stopped doing Youtube videos halfway through the class because he got offended by an alleged complaint, and he gave us a very computational midterm without a calculator because he was afraid we would cheat. On the plus side, Goyal was not hesitant to change up his teaching style if what he did wasn't working, and as mentioned before, he gave out easy extra credit quizzes if he liked the level of participation.

Overall, this class was good for learning statics pretty well and gaining an introduction to mechanics of materials. Goyal likes to stress the easiness of his class, which is true if you have a good intuition for mechanics and do plenty of practice. However, I thought he went a little too fast through topics like stress/strain and deflection, and therefore I did not develop as much intuition as with statics.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of people did not take this class seriously and missed easy points. Don't be like those people: go to class, do the HW thoroughly, and do the example problems he assigns, and you will not have to worry about your grade at all.

Really tough to rate this guy. On the one hand, he started off the quarter just throwing extra credit points at students for answering questions in lectures. Then he got upset when apparently someone complained and he (kind of) stopped doing that (it still happened, but it was pretty rare). He was pretty random but he does constantly pride himself on being unpredictable so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Overall the topics of the class aren't that hard. If you understand that the net force on an object at equilibrium is zero then you should be fine with most of the setup. Nearly everything else is algebra to solve for some unknown. Also a lot of the topics are pretty intuitive if you're into mechanics at all (which you probably are if you're in an MAE course).

There was one homework assignment each week of 5-8 problems covering the previous week's material and a quiz on the topics from the homework in each discussion section. Also I'm pretty sure he gave extra credit points for attendance (he would sometimes pass a sign-in sheet around).

The midterm wasn't hard conceptually but there was a lot of computation of not-so-friendly numbers and we weren't allowed calculators. I know the TAs didn't like it either and were willing to fight for us to have calculators on the final (until coronavirus struck). The final was basically a homework assignment: we had a week to do six problems and turn it in online.

Overall I'd say the main negative was the unpredictable nature of the class. I never knew what I got on any single quiz and the overall grading system for the was unclear (when we'd taken 6 quizzes most of the class' quiz scores were something like 60/40, and lots of people ended up with about 200% in the quiz category with the other extra credits). Now I'm not complaining, but you couple that with a good midterm score and the final is essentially irrelevant, which seems weird but again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in his words "I'm the professor I do what I want" and "I don't want you to think you know what's coming." Again I'm not complaining since he was very generous with grading and extra credits.

My biggest tip is to GO TO EVERY SINGLE CLASS because you never know what he has in store.