Historical instructor
Original student reviews · all captured dates
5-star reviews are coming from top students who stand from their perspectives. If you only took probability, calc3, and linear algebra, and are still a freshman like me, wait for Prof. Sala's section (GOAT). The ability to break down complex theories extremely clearly to the dumb(me) is the true ability. Teaching is an art, and Sala masters it.Rate My Professors ↗
Prof. Zhu will have a 100+ slide presentation for each lecture. However, he reads off the slides and its tough to follow. He also doesn't really respond well on the course Piazza. He is also not professional in terms of meeting his own deadlines. The projects will change them often after they are due. His exams also don't really test material well.Rate My Professors ↗
The material for the class was interesting, but taught in a very lazy way. Dr. Zhu didn't prepare for lectures at all and gave the impression that he didn't care about his students. The regrades on the homework penalized you even if you just made a small, insignificant mistake. The class was poorly taught.Rate My Professors ↗
I respect Dr. Zhu and his career, but his undergrad class is horrible. Lectures are disorganized. Poor designing. The class average was less than 60% for the first midterm. There are basically no resources. There are thousands of pages worth of badly written slideshows that are given, but no one is told which parts of the slides to actually study.Rate My Professors ↗
Prof Zhu is a solid professor, not the best, not the worst. His lectures, while not the most captivating, are worth attending since his examples generally do a better job helping you understand new concepts than his slides alone. He is a very nice guy, but homework instructions were often disorganized, and midterm exam feedback took WEEKS.Rate My Professors ↗
He has a knack for explaining difficult concepts in an accessible way. Even still, you need a solid math foundation to fully understand the algorithms he covers, but having a basic grasp of the algorithms is often all you need for a good grade.Rate My Professors ↗
Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.
No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.
No courses match this selection. Try the full catalog or another term.
| Term | Course | Title |
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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.
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