Professor
Jeffrey Eldredge
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - I'll be honest here, Eldredge might be my favorite engineering professor I've had here. His lectures have a great flow to them with his own personality that makes them very engaging. He doesn't use any slides and writes everything out live so for me personally that really helped me focus and stay awake. Homework is fairly reasonable but I do recommend going to discussion regularly to have a much easier time on them. He gives extra credit problems sometimes too and if you do them all, you can get up to something like an extra 4% to your grade. The tests were reasonable though there are three midterms in addition to a final, which may seem weird at first. Each midterm was only one question that probably took no more than like 40 minutes though and he drops your lowest midterm score so that helps a lot. They aren't terribly difficult - many people got a 100% on multiple midterms. We started out the quarter with in person tests but he switched over to online halfway through so hopefully he keeps that next time he teaches. But yeah, clear, engaging, patient and pretty much everything a good professor should be. This sure isn't an easy class but if you take him, you're in good hands.
Fall 2021 - I'll be honest here, Eldredge might be my favorite engineering professor I've had here. His lectures have a great flow to them with his own personality that makes them very engaging. He doesn't use any slides and writes everything out live so for me personally that really helped me focus and stay awake. Homework is fairly reasonable but I do recommend going to discussion regularly to have a much easier time on them. He gives extra credit problems sometimes too and if you do them all, you can get up to something like an extra 4% to your grade. The tests were reasonable though there are three midterms in addition to a final, which may seem weird at first. Each midterm was only one question that probably took no more than like 40 minutes though and he drops your lowest midterm score so that helps a lot. They aren't terribly difficult - many people got a 100% on multiple midterms. We started out the quarter with in person tests but he switched over to online halfway through so hopefully he keeps that next time he teaches. But yeah, clear, engaging, patient and pretty much everything a good professor should be. This sure isn't an easy class but if you take him, you're in good hands.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - I took both MAE 103 and MAE 150A with Eldredge. My opinion of him remains unchanged - he is hands down one of the best professors in the MAE department. His class is structured the same way as it was in 103, with homework assignments containing optional extra credit problems (25%), three midterms with the lowest dropped (40%), infinite-attempt quizzes (10%), and a final exam (25%). The content was definitely a lot more difficult than it was in 103, though it was far more interesting. Expect to see a lot more derivations in both the lectures and the homework rather than straight plugging in numbers into formulas. Also, 150A is much more conceptual than 103, and midterm problems with explanations rather than calculations did stump me sometimes. But that's my own fault for not making use of office hours and frankly for thinking this class would be easy since it would just be 103 part two (lol). Our discussion sections were great too. The TA was very knowledgeable and he always tried to provide example problems hinting towards what the exams would cover. My only complaint about this class, though many would disagree, was the lack of homework assignments. There were only five problem sets - some weeks there would be no homework at all. This made me feel that I was not getting enough practice applying the content we learned during lecture. But overall, this class was very fair, the grading was very lenient, and I definitely am walking away from 150A knowing that fluid mechanics is something I want to specialize in in graduate school.
Fall 2022 - I took both MAE 103 and MAE 150A with Eldredge. My opinion of him remains unchanged - he is hands down one of the best professors in the MAE department. His class is structured the same way as it was in 103, with homework assignments containing optional extra credit problems (25%), three midterms with the lowest dropped (40%), infinite-attempt quizzes (10%), and a final exam (25%). The content was definitely a lot more difficult than it was in 103, though it was far more interesting. Expect to see a lot more derivations in both the lectures and the homework rather than straight plugging in numbers into formulas. Also, 150A is much more conceptual than 103, and midterm problems with explanations rather than calculations did stump me sometimes. But that's my own fault for not making use of office hours and frankly for thinking this class would be easy since it would just be 103 part two (lol). Our discussion sections were great too. The TA was very knowledgeable and he always tried to provide example problems hinting towards what the exams would cover. My only complaint about this class, though many would disagree, was the lack of homework assignments. There were only five problem sets - some weeks there would be no homework at all. This made me feel that I was not getting enough practice applying the content we learned during lecture. But overall, this class was very fair, the grading was very lenient, and I definitely am walking away from 150A knowing that fluid mechanics is something I want to specialize in in graduate school.