Jonathan Kao is my favorite professor at UCLA. Highly recommend this organized, fair, and passionate lecturer.

Like everyone said, Kao is probably one of the nicest professors I've ever met. While some professors care only about research, it's clear that Kao genuinely cares about teaching. He wants us to learn in an intellectually honest way and grasp the material conceptually. He encourages everyone to come to office hours, he encourages people to ask questions, and he is so super approachable. He has a forgiving late day policy and will give class wide extensions if the class expresses a need. He wants everyone in the class to succeed. The material is challenging but he makes it super accessible and it's super interesting.
The class is 40% homework which sounds nice but I found the homeworks to be harder than the tests because they were long and they had us work on content we literally just learned. You MUST start early. I would say to start immediately, as homeworks are usually assigned Thursdays, do as much as you can over the weekend, and then go to the TA's or his office hours during the week to answer questions. It is very possible that you won't be able to do a lot of the homework alone/when you first look at it, but he and the TAs are VERY helpful and will guide you to the right answer. I like to think I'm not an idiot, and I absolutely could not have done these homeworks without going to office hours.
The rest of the class is 25% midterm and 35% final. After the midterm, he said that if we performed better on the final, he would replace our midterm score with our final score (he's super supportive and on the student's side!). As more Fall 2023 reviews come in, I expect people to say the midterm was easy and the final was hard. I don't know that I will completely agree. The midterm was extremely straightforward, as the TAs held a review session before the midterm that had problems that were almost identical to the real midterm. Thus, many people left after 40 minutes, and the median on the midterm was a 92. I think Kao reacted appropriately and adjusted the difficulty of the final to make it more challenging. I also think a lot of people were expecting the final to be just as easy and it was not. The content on the final is just in general more challenging, but we also weren't spoon fed the entire final like we were the midterm. Thus, many people freaked out after the final and said it was super hard, and I don't think this is super accurate. The final did have a much lower average than the midterm (in the 70s I believe) but I just feel like a 92 median is high in general. There was not a single question on the final that was completely out of left field -- I genuinely believe every question was fair game. Thus, main point is: go to office hours, go to TA review sessions, do EVERY SINGLE practice midterm/final/discussion/homework. And make sure you KNOW the material from a CONCEPTUAL STANDPOINT. To study for the final, I went through every single discussion worksheet, homework, and the past 4 years of finals (he provides them god BLESS) and made sure I understood everything. Also, on your cheat sheet, do NOT just put formulas. The tests test HOW YOU APPLY THE CONCEPTS. He will NOT just be like "State the convolution theorem :D (10pts)." So look at the midterm and final answer keys copy solutions of different types of problems, it will really help you out. Good luck, and really take advantage of what an amazing teacher he is!

The other reviews pretty much sum him up well. This class is really, really hard, but I don’t think anyone else in the department can teach it better than him. So, I’d highly reccommend

A fantastic class with an outstanding professor. Kao is literally the goat of EE department at the moment. The class is genuinely one of the toughest one I will take at UCLA but Kao tries the best to make it easy to understand using intuition. Using intuition is the most important part of his class and you must learn his way to better grasp the concepts.

Attending his lectures are so worth it. I never missed a single lecture because I knew its impossible to learn the same way online in his recordings. Make good notes and cheat sheet for the exam. You should attend Rakshith's discussions and office hours if you are ever struggling. Trust me in the coming years he's gonna have a big name in EE TAs. Hes the most kind and respectful and works beyond his hours to teach you more about the content.

The exams are tough. Make sure you practice from the previous years papers to be better prepared. If you mess in the midterms, Kao allows replacing it with final upon a better performance. Take this class and you will actually fall in love with the title "Systems and signals". Good Luck :D

This class is difficult, but you learn a lot from the class. This is one of the "make or break" classes for the major, with a touch of shared suffering, but ultimately is very rewarding. The professors and TAs are very helpful, and is the key reason why a lot of us was successful in the class. The professors and TAs care for our success, are readily available in their office hours and discussions, but you still need to put effort in to get a good grade in the class. Kao posts clear lecture notes for the class, and all past exams (with solutions) from previous years onto the class page. The TAs host 3+ hour long review sessions before the midterm and final and goes in depth on what would be on the exams. The homework assignments would consist of 4 to 5 problems (in the first half of the course, the fifth problem is a Python problem). This class provided me an excellent foundation, and showed me a different toolkit to solve problems as you understand from a high level about signals and learn about the frequency domain.

Kao is an amazing professor with a kind and open heart. Him and his TAs will lead you through the tough patches. But don't be fooled, this class is difficult. If you fall behind make sure you catch up ASAP because each lecture builds on the next and if you don't pace yourself you will end up breaking yourself.

Out of all the classes I've taken, Professor Kao is 100% the best lecturer in the department. While the class is pretty difficult, he is able to break down the intuition required to understand the material. He also gives plenty of extra material to practice, releasing exams from previous years, original and annotated lecture notes, etc. This class does require a lot of time to do well in as you are assigned 7 HW assignments, each of which take multiple hours to complete. Professor Kao is really approachable and really cares about teaching. The exams are difficult, but because he teaches the material well, have pretty high medians/averages. The TAs for the class were also amazing.

I was not going to take this class, but I sat in on his first lecture and was captivated by him. He is genuinely a great lecturer, and it shows in his ratings. He and the TAs work really hard to make this class easy to understand and give you a solid foundation that other professors might not provide. There is no one better to take this class with.

If you can, would absolutely recommend taking the class with Kao - he is hands down the best lecturer I've had at UCLA until now! His lectures are clear and interesting, and have a good balance between presenting new content and doing examples, leading to you actually understanding complex stuff like convolution. If you're still confused, he has office hours multiple times a week and is responsive on email.

As other reviews said, the class material itself isn't easy. Homeworks take hours, which he warns you about. The difficulty helps you learn and prepares you for the exams, and all other aspects of the class support you. The exams themselves are fine and had high averages - spend some time reviewing the review sessions the TAs host, which almost mirror the actual exams.

Overall, would VERY highly recommend! Thanks Professor Kao and Rakshith!

Professor Kao is great. His lectures are very clear and he works through problems carefully on the board, which makes it easy to follow. He is nice and approachable. He answers questions directly and clearly in class.

The material of the class is tough. The homework will take a long time, but the lectures, discussions, and office hours will help guide you through them. Everything is well organized online and all the resources (including previous tests) were given to us. The final exam was fair and overrode the midterm grade, which was tougher our quarter.

The only complaint I have is of the TAs. They were pretty good, but they each had their faults. Siyou was kind but unclear with her work. Sometimes I couldn't understand how she arrived to her answer because she would not write down much. Still, her grading was much more organized and gave lots of partial credit. Tonmoy was very clear and wrote down great notes from his discussions, which were informative and easy to follow. The issue I had with Tonmoy was that he was harsh. He did not have enough patience with students and would snap at them if they did not understand the material. His grading was often all or nothing. For such a math-heavy class, this seemed excessively harsh.

All the instructors were well-intentioned and the class was a good experience overall. I learned a lot and I would definitely recommend this professor.