Historical instructor

ZHI CAO

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 1.50/5 from 6 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

MHR 423
Quality 1/5Difficulty 2/5
Do not take with him! This is the worst teacher/class I have ever had. The content is dry, the lectures are boring, and expectations are nonexistent. I have never felt so bad about wasting my time or money on a course. He is also very rude to students and will openly criticize them. He nearly made a group of exchange students cry over their project
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MHR 423
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH ZHI. Not only will he make quizzes and exams impossible, he doesn't know what he's talking about half the time. Our class had to call him out on his grading of exams since he was asking for things that were not clear/stated. Lectures are rough and honestly pointless but attendance is mandatory. Overall, horrible class.
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MHR 423
Quality 1/5Difficulty 1/5
One of the strangest classes I have ever taken. There was never any expectations as far as readings, cases, projects, etc. Basically just came and sat through a lecture on random stuff. Very repetitive, nobody paid attention and just sat on phones/computers. Zhi could be very harsh and talk rudely to students, making them feel unwelcome in class.
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MHR 423
Quality 1/5Difficulty 3/5
Absolutely the worst professor I have had at UW-Madison. He is rude, degrading and unclear on everything to do with the course. The hardest power lecture I have ever had to sit through. He gives little explantation on his assignments and presentations.
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MHR 423
Quality 1/5Difficulty 2/5
Lectures were very dry and hard to follow, and Zhi was very condescending towards our class. Lots of in class activities which pitted the students against each other and created unnecessary tension, and didn't relate to the content at all.
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MHR 300
Quality 4/5Difficulty 5/5
Really great guy, super nice, can be a little hard to follow (more to do with having class at 8 am), cares about success if you care, will help you a lot on the semester project if you look for it, grading semester project, simple weekly discussion posts, and two exams, exams are situational, pure memorization from the book and a little lecture
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with ZHI CAO

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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