Quality 5/5Difficulty 1/5
Favorite guy, easy class recommendRate My Professors ↗
Historical instructor
Maxim VAVILOV
What students say
Original student reviews · all captured dates
Quality 3/5Difficulty 2/5
Vavilov is pretty decent and his class is well structured; if you put in the work you do well. Exams were fair. My only gripe with the homework was that it was typically VERY algebra heavy. His lectures were pretty average; mostly a bunch of equations, sometimes it was hard to follow exactly WHY he was doing what he was doing. Overall 3.5/5.Rate My Professors ↗
Quality 4/5Difficulty 2/5
Vavilov's tests are based on the homework so none of the problems are a surprise. We didn't have a final exam for 311- instead we had a project that was very easy if one showed up to class. The homeworks were bi-weekly, so one had plenty of time to do them. Overall, not a hard class to get a decent grade in if one practices a few of the problems.Rate My Professors ↗
Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
Prof. Vavilov is a very respected physicist but his lecture style can be difficult to parse. He tells the story of QM with almost only math on the whiteboard and very little context. My recommendation would be to heavily supplement or even replace lecture by reading the Griffiths textbook (it's a famous textbook).Rate My Professors ↗
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
Awful professor. Notation not at all consistent with the textbook or often even internally consistent. Large portion of homework based around poorly explained computing assignments. Generous grader and the class is curved, but your passing grade will only seem ridiculous when you consider you never understood anything he was doing. Textbook saves.Rate My Professors ↗
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
In my study group of 6, none of us could understand him or ever knew what was going on. If you read the book you were able to understand some but teaching yourself quantum mechanics is hard and he used different notation than the book. Notation on his midterms was different than the homework or lecture, making very difficult. Worst prof I've had,Rate My Professors ↗
Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.
Classes with Maxim VAVILOV
No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.
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Recorded teaching history
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| Term | Course | Title |
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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.
Instructor identity & provenance
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