This class is one of those classes you hear about only in myths. A class that not only emotionally scars you, brings you to your knees, and thoroughly dissuades you from ever uttering the word "laser" out loud in fear of incurring Jia Ming Liu's wrath, but also brings together the class with such solidarity that you might think for even a moment that the eleven weeks of 170A were worth it. And then Chee Wei smites you with an exam that is undoable without very specific equations that cannot be derived from first principles.

As for the reviews for this class that came before mine: I have never seen such false claims that ended up being truer than you'd like to think. It really becomes apparent halfway through the class after the midterm that the reviews weren't full of shit--they were just small pieces of the puzzle that is 170A with Chee Wei Wong.

The book is confusing. Written by Jia Ming Liu, the textbook is a mess. It has the formulas, yes, but the sheer quantity of them will overwhelm anyone going through the entire book in one quarter. One quarter is not enough time to go through 11 chapters--but Chee Wei managed to cram it all down our throats. Some concepts will be referenced without further proof or explanation without any intuitive backing, some concepts will be used time and time again without any real explanation (like why the beam waist area is what it is), and some concepts you will find nowhere online. The only way you'll manage to see these topics again is if you read Photonic Devices, also by Jia Ming Liu. I found that doing the homework and studying the material, there were absolutely no resources I could find online. Photonics is just absent from all my searches. I had to rely on only the book, the lectures, and the TA, but I came to find that even that wasn't enough.

The homework for this class was extremely light compared to other classes. It was anywhere between 2-4 problems, most of which you could find examples for in the chapter. The TA will go over the first question with you during the discussion section, so most of the time you'll only have 2-3 problems to do on your own.

The classroom setting is bleak. Sitting in those desks listening to Chee Wei drone on and on about the "simplicity" of coupling, lasers, waveguides, etc. is about as dry as you'd expect it to be when there's little to no substance beneath the poetry being waxed. You will be sitting there for 2 hours, hurriedly writing down Chee Wei's notes (he uses a chalkboard), wondering what the superscript of his exponential may be and never receiving a solid answer. His graphs and diagrams are actually pretty awesome and informative. Pay attention to his diagrams. Go to the book for equations; it's more likely they'll be written correctly there.

A word of consideration: Go to the class for intuition or if you're a masochist. Read the book and tattoo the equations on your body if you hope to pass the class.

Now, the part everyone's been waiting for: the exams.

How are the exams? They are a testament to how well you can memorize and regurgitate equations seen throughout the class, your homework, and the topics not covered in the lecture but definitely covered in the book (with very little detail). Chee Wei spent the majority of the class lecturing about concepts. What he did not go over was problem solving. With homework described as maybe 3 questions a week, one of which being done for you, it's no surprise that everyone tanked the midterm. The name of the game was "Who has written down all of the necessary equations and examples in the book?" The average was a rough ~60/100. The highest score was a natural 80. Between you and me, that guy must've written down the exact example needed to solve the question everyone missed. Chee Wei later scaled the exam down, but it didn't matter how much you studied or thought you knew the concepts. If you didn't have the exact equations you needed, or have seen the EXACT problem in the book, you would've gotten a fat 0 on that question. Luckily, the TA and Chee Wei decided to give us credit for just writing our names down and spitting out "related" formulas, so there's that.

The final exam was online and was not proctored due to the COVID19 issue. It was open-book (partially because the entire class rioted following the midterm and kept grovelling to the TA and Chee Wei to do something about our despair, and partially because Chee Wei isn't the madman we thought him to be by the end of the class). It was nowhere near as difficult as the midterm because of this. You still would've needed to study and pay close attention to his lectures, but at least the factor of not having the equations in reach was filtered out.

I ended up getting a pretty decent grade in the class relative to my classmates, which is probably why I got an A+. He does curve, apparently, no matter what the TA says about not curving.

Every single lecture after the midterm, especially those leading up to the final, was filled with our prayers to Jia Ming Liu and Chee Wei to have mercy on us. Every Friday during my discussion section, the students rioted against the helpless TA who could only watch as we spiralled into insanity, before succumbing to the same effects himself. I don't think I'll ever forget the unity of the class from the midterm onwards. It was an interesting dynamic, made possible only because 170A had driven us to the brink.

Through all the negative things I had to say, I wouldn't say that 170A was all that bad. It was a horror story come to life for a lot of the people concerned with grades and learning, but all things considered, I was able to take away some topics from the class. Not all, but some. I'd say that of the 11 chapters we covered, I have a decent understanding of half of them, a very shaky understanding in a fourth of them, and little to no qualitative understanding of the remaining. The primary concern for the students was that we would not take anything away from this class to help further our knowledge in this field, and many of my classmates have agreed that 170A with Chee Wei will not prepare you well for any other photonics-related class unless you are Jia Ming Liu's soulmate and can somehow perfectly understand his textbook without ten odd years on hand to memorize it.

If nothing else, take away from this class the friendships you make along the way. Get phone numbers. Talk to your seatmates. Get real comfy not knowing what the hell Chee Wei wants from you. Talk to Chee Wei--he's not a bad person and he can be quite nice/entertaining. It's a wild ride.

(Unless Chee Wei actually took into account our screams for deliverance despite "no previous year having this many issues" and the subsequent quarters of 170A will be filled with sunshine and rainbows.)

As other reviews already described, this class could go 3 ways : (1) You mastered ECE 2 and are capable to understand everything by readying the book and teaching yourself (since the professor dopant know how to teach). (2) You somewhat know what's going on in the class and try to cheat your way up to end of the class. (3) You're lost as everyone else in class and don't know what going on as this class is one of the hardest core course, and you just hope for a good curve to pass the class. Overall I wont recommend this professor and I advise every ECE student to avoid him cause there are better professors for this course that are able to teach, answer your questions, and care about what they're doing.

Taking this course before 101B was a huge mistake. 101B derives modes and waveguides, and while 170A covers them, they don’t do it from a fundamental level, which makes it extremely hard to grasp when they move on to coupling and reflectors and other stuff. I would also recommend taking 163A beforehand as well since they cover some topics much more clearly, that you end up using in photonics (like periodic structures, couplers, and resonators), and they seem to do it from a more understandable microwave perspective. Without these, I felt like I simply couldn’t understand what was going on. This gives you the best chance of understanding things without getting lost in the sauce for literally 10 weeks and getting clapped by a DBR reflector. If you only have 101A you basically just have to buckle up and just learn which equations to use regardless of their meaning, and get ready because there’s like 200 of them. Also, the textbook gives no helpful explanations of anything, so when something prof. says doesn’t make sense, you better just take it as gospel and accept it.
Professor Chee Wei is a really nice and approachable person though, it’s just that students go into his class ill prepared due to the reputation of the course and the lack of prerequisites.
I actually think this class is worth learning. Lasers are extremely interesting, and the material is a fascinating extension of 101B and 163A but without the preparation of those two classes, the class becomes extremely difficult.
If you skip those two courses, taking this course is equivalent to opening up a textbook and skipping the first 3/4ths of the book and trying to learn from there, and it’s a frustrating experience.

This class was a wild ride from start to finish. Professor Wong is a bright professor in his field, but his teaching is a bit of a whirlwind to keep up with. Homeworks range from 2 to 4 four problems and the workload isn't bad. The textbook we used is extremely convoluted, and there is way too much material shoved into one class. Your success on tests depends on how thorough your cheat sheets are.

By far the most useless class I have ever taken at this school. If you do not plan on going into photons nor E&M, then this class has absolutely zero relevance to what you want to do. People take this class because it's the easiest of all the electives you could pick from.

The professor tries to cover 11 chapters in this class, which is too much material. You don't actually learn anything.

The homework is very, very light and takes only 30 minutes a week. If you took EE 2 with Professor Wong, it is 100% the same format.

The midterm had one question for each chapter. The final had one question for each chapter after the midterm material. You do get cheat sheets in the class. The problem with the exams: if you have the equations/knowledge on your cheat sheet, you'll get the question right. If you do not have the equations/knowledge, you're going to get a zero on that question.

It’s all about cheating! This professor ignores cheating! If you want to learn something don’t take this class. If you want a good grade and have some sort of cheating skills definitely take it.

I started this class and had no clue why the reviews were so bad, but you will quickly learn that they're much more accurate than anyone would hope

Chee Wei Wong is a very nice guy that genuinely isn't trying to make your day miserable, but unfortunately that's what happens with this class. My biggest issue with this class is the textbook, written by Jia Ming Lu, who also teaches at UCLA. Maybe he chose this textbook because they're friends or something, but this is at the detriment of the students because THIS TEXTBOOK IS THE WORST. It assumes you know way too much before entering a class with too few prereqs (they should probably require EE 101B or EE163A). It asks end-of-chapter questions that are extremely loosely related to the example questions in the chapter. I'm not asking for the exact same question, but these questions are crazy hard and borderline unrelated with solutions for only a scattered few questions online. The TA answered 1-2 homework questions in discussion but he really didn't bother to make it palatable or readable for anyone who wasn't well versed in the topic already. The content IS NOT SIMPLE. A lot of this isn't intuitive and there are not many good resources out there for this that aren't papers filled with math. This class really needs to be better if it's going to be the entry course for the photonics series.

As for the class itself, Wong's lectures are unfortunately him reading the textbook word for word, which isn't helpful for such a terrible textbook. I stopped showing up to lectures after a while because it wasn't worth my time to watch him read a book. He needs slides instead of projecting the paper he writes on because maybe that'll get him to talk about some of the theory and not just the math.

The exams are obscenely difficult. There might be a couple questions that can be followed through with a formula, but most of these are very conceptual and significantly harder than anything seen in the homework. I can appreciate a class with limited homework, but the 3 or 4 end-of-chapter questions assigned per every 1-2 weeks are literally useless for preparing for the exams.

The only solace with this class is the super lenient grading for exams and homework as well as what is probably a giant curve because the exams screw everyone. This class could be way better with a different textbook, but someone should probably beg Chee Wei Wong to make that happen. I have never been in such a state of fear over my grade because there is little to no transparency regarding the grading. If you like tons of E&M, optics, and math, then take your chances with this class and try not to stress out too much. If you have any doubts about whether you like this content, DON'T DO IT (at least until Chee Wei changes the structure of the class or someone else teaches it)

In this class you either know it or you don’t. If you do, it’s easy, if you don’t the tests will be impossible. You can’t BS your way through a Chee Wei exam. Homework takes very little time. Lectures are boring as he just reads through the textbook