There's a reason Professor Franco is as adored as she is. She is by far the best professors in the department. She took one of the most difficult classes in the department and made it a joy. The grading curve she applies is helpful, but offering extra credit for showing up makes it so much easier to get motivated about this class. She is super responsive in her Office Hours and over email, and would adjust deadlines when she knew students were struggling. She's so passionate about this subject, even though it's the basic basic math behind the extremely difficult research she conducts. This class covers a lot of topics and a lot of math - it's easy to get mixed up between the different parameters in the system. I wish there was slightly more clarity there, but she did a great job of providing tables and consolidating information as much as possible. I think it's crucial that the class is taken right after 107 so the concepts are fresh - having her in both classes carried me through the midterm. She gave us candy for answering questions during the final review, and it's just one example of her shining character. Her slides can be a bit dense, and having an iPad is basically required to follow along. There's a lot of graphs, and they all have their own quirks that make them difficult to understand. She skips over derivations sometimes - it's nice for when the math would be more distracting than helpful, but it also sometimes makes it hard for me to stay engaged. I wish there were more quizzes so it would be easier for us to check our comprehension. The last assignment is also really difficult - we got launched into the control system software at the end and had to figure out how to use it ourselves. Like any class, there's room for improvement, but this is among the best professors in the department and certainly the best option to take 171A.

Having taken 107 a year prior, I was initially apprehensive about what to expect for this class, in particular the mathematical rigour. However, let me assuage your fears if you’re also in my shoes entering the course - most of the difficult math is past. Definitely have a rudimentary knowledge of complex numbers and complex analysis, but the intense calculus requirement for 107 is notably absent. This is not to say 171A is by any means easy. I would argue in some ways it is more difficult than 107 because it is more conceptual.
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The grading scheme was 15% HW, 40% midterm, and 45% final, and up to 5% extra credit. The extra credit was awarded through in-class quizzes (which definitely incentivised me to get out of bed at 8 AM). Essentially, you would get full credit for answering correctly, half credit for answering incorrectly, and no credit if no attempt was made. I highly recommend going to lecture for this reason, as a 5% boost at the end of the quarter will do wonders to your final grade. The quiz questions for the most part were not particularly difficult, either.
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The first bit of the class was a review of the modelling aspects of 107 as well as Laplace transforms and transfer functions. Then we moved onto frequency domain representations of systems. Get really proficient at sketching Bode, Nyquist, and root locus plots as they’ll be used extensively in the middle part of the class. And don’t rely on computer software like MATLAB or WolframAlpha either because those are forbidden on exams. At the end, we learned about some canonical controllers like PID and lead/lag compensators.
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We had 8 homeworks in total, and they were all fairly time consuming, although informative, and not unnecessarily difficult. I felt that seriously treating the homework assignments and diligently attending office hours was sufficient in doing well on the exams. The exams were of similar difficulty to the homework, and Franco provided her old practice exams so you could get a feel for what to expect. The midterm had around a 78 average, but the final was only a 52. Personally, I felt confident walking out of the final exam, but after checking the feedback it turns out they graded much more harshly. But again, if you attended a majority of the lectures and completed those extra credit quizzes it was more than enough to offset a poor performance.
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Overall, the class is definitely one of the harder MAE upper divs, but it’s more than manageable, especially compared to 107. From what I’ve heard, you can’t really go wrong with any of the other 171A professors too, but if Franco is teaching again in the future, I will definitely recommend her class!