Professor Goyal really wanted everyone in the class to get a good grade. He offered a ton of extra credit points, he offered online lectures, he offered a midterm retake, he really wanted everyone to not have to worry about their grade, and that was appreciated. With that said, he also held what he was doing against you. When he saw a mediocre average on the midterm he freaked out and individually handed back all the midterms saying outloud who did good with a "very nice work" and who did bad with saying nothing and giving a glare. In class his lectures were often unclear but his youtube lectures were helpful. Unfortunately due to "complaints" he stopped doing those. His version of "complaints" were just anything that brought a concern about his teaching. For example saying "Can you do more examples in class" could be seen as a complaint and therefore he thinks you don't appreciate everything he is doing for you and decides to take away youtube videos with all the examples and extra credit, since he doesn't have to do those things and theyre too much extra work that goes unappreciated. Overall if you want a good grade, he will try to help you get there. If you want a chill/level-headed professor he is not the guy. His temper and mood swings made this class way more stressful. When most of his style was trying to make this class have as little stress as possible

This course was a rollercoaster. He is very, very generous with his extra credit, as in you can get 2% of a final grade just for saying to draw a FBD or even 1% for showing up to lecture, but some complaints arose about grading and him giving pop quizzes, so he took extra credit away. Vinay doesn't curve his classes, but stresses that you learn and understand the material. His midterm was not really graded for numerical accuracy, but for the proper steps and problem solving approach. I would recommend taking this course with Vinay, but come in with thick skin and possibly be prepared for a rollercoaster of a quarter.

Amazing professor who cares for his students. Some students didnt do well in the midterm exam and he went out of his way to help everyone by providing a redo. I learned so much because of all the opportunities he gave not only for improvement but also in the class. No professor does that and some students frankly were appreciative of this, dont get why. Highly recommend Prof Goyal as you will be learning so many life lessons

Definitely a character. Personally, I thought he was okay and thought the class was manageable. The extra credit definitely helps and there were lots of opportunities to bring up your grade. He made the material seem easy and gave lots of examples for you to study and follow. The lectures were sometimes useless because he often just skipped through the slides, but it was important to go for the extra credit opportunities. If you are a quiet student and just keep your head down and do your work, you shouldn't run into any problems. However, if you're the kind of student who likes to complain about tests or ask the professor for more time then I wouldn't recommend this class for you. I know a lot of people who absolutely hated this professor because he was not good at compromising and would not take anything from anyone. So if you can't keep your cool and just accept that things won't be fair, I wouldn't take this class. Other than that, I thought the tests and homework were fair. The quizzes were difficult and a little ridiculous at times but I don't think they were a large part of the grade (1-2 question weekly discussion quizzes). Overall would recommend taking this class as it was pretty low stress (outside of the occasional in-class drama) and a pretty medium/low workload.

Very good professor and caring. He brought critical thinking too the course and connects it well to industry.

Definitely the best mechE class I’ve taken at UCLA so far. Professor Goyal is extremely knowledgeable on the topic and I think the fact that he is still working in the industry means that he has interesting and applicable examples for all the concepts that he teaches. I think the class is structured in a way that you are constantly being refreshed on past concepts. Additionally, the projects are long and tedious but they really make you understand the concepts behind your FEM algorithms. He also records all his lectures and they’re posted on YouTube, which is nice because you can reference them in the future as well. He is very understanding of student circumstances, and the quarter I took it he gave us extra credit for watching inspirational videos and writing down what we learned from them. He is overall a great and caring professor.

Boy oh boy, if you take this class with him be ready for a WILD ride.

I'll start with the pros:
•Really hard to get anything less than an A if you show up to class and try a little. The amount of extra credit he gave out was ABSURD, some students would get a 5% grade boost for answering a single question
•Material is not too difficult if you understand physics 1A well
•a VERY entertaining class given all the drama

Cons:
He was by far the least professional professor I've ever had. He'd yell at students for the smallest things. One time a student just trying to be helpful explained to him the situation of the midterm, which was a no-calculator midterm with sin/cos of 20,70,etc and the TAs requested exact answer for full credit. Many people ended up doing long division. This student was basically harassed and told he could not redo his midterm like the rest of the class because he was "complaining" (more like explaining). The professor wasn't even present during the midterm to answer questions. His overall demeanor was like a child, throwing tantrums at the slightest things. Ironically, he told us that we were the ones who needed thicker skins. (Maybe that's true, but he should speak for himself)

He also canceled the extra credit on two separate occasions, then reintroduced it both times, kind of giving whiplash to a lot of people. My grade didn't depend on it, but I know a lot of peoples did and it gave them a lot of stress. Also, thats not to mention that actually seeing what our grades were was extremely difficult, as grades were not posted online anywhere except for twice in the format of an excel sheet. It was impossible to tell how we were actually doing and know with any certainty how the class was graded.

He also basically told everyone not to talk to the dean about any concerns because he knew what he was doing was not good and didn't want to get reported again. I'm pretty sure his giving extra credit to people who played basketball with him was against tons of UCLA rules.

His lectures were average, neither bad nor good. He showed up late pretty frequently, occasionally so late that the TA had to teach for 30 minutes.

Overall, take this class with Goyal if you want drama and an easy A. Skip if you want to learn the material peacefully.

Having done BS and MS at UCLA in mechanical engineering, I can say that MAE 261a is all of the following at the same time: 1) the best and most important class in the department for ME's who want to do structural work, 2) the hardest class in the whole department, and 3) the most exciting class in the whole department.

1) This class has a lot of content for structural ME's that I feel should have been introduced in undergrad but isn't. e.g. structural theories and how they are approximations of the "true" 3d field theory, how approximation theories behind FEA work, how to do structural optimization, and buckling theory.

2) Prof Goyal doesn't play around and has high expectations. In the end, basically everyone gets an A, but the caveat is that ~25-50% of students get weeded out (drop out because of workload and difficulty). The homeworks and tests are extremely long and difficult.

3) I felt like this class opened a whole new world of techniques for structural analysis. The optimization techniques are very exciting for someone who wants to design parts with high structural efficiency.

Prof Goyal cares deeply about his students learning and understanding the materials. The lectures are very good and he is very accommodating in helping you outside of scheduled lectures and office hours.

If you want to be a structural component designer/analyst in aerospace or some other performance application, this class is a must-take.

Concepts were interesting, but the work was wayyyy too much. Using the remote desktop was a pain and sometimes it would fail to let you in and troubleshooting that was annoying. The professor was also not a vibe and not super understanding. Regardless of this, with some work, you can still get an A. I literally never went to class then binge watched the lectures in two days to answer the final questions and it was fine.

Excellent course. Vinay Goyal has extensive background in finite element methods in the aerospace industry and is probably the best person imaginable to teach the course. He is able to teach the material in a very practical way through many Abaqus tutorials while still getting you knowledge of all the theory. He is an engaging lecturer. For anyone desiring to work as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry, or as a stress analyst, this class is a must take. The workload can be a bit more than average, but there is a ton of extra credit offered and it isn't difficult to get an A.