EE2 is a knowledge heavy class but it wasn't really difficult (more breadth rather than depth). It may seem overwhelming at first since you're being thrown Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Physics and basically 5 other topics at once, but as this is an introductory course, surface level knowledge would be sufficient to get you by. The point was to introduce the world of semiconductors and hopefully give students a feel for whether this is an EE field they'd specialize on or not. As long as you attended lectures and did the homework, you'd get the overall idea behind every topic and the math equations will start to make sense. At that point, the exams will be difficult to fail. Also, you will be using the book A LOT.

Mr. Sokolich taught this class really well. His lectures were well organized and podcasted. His homeworks and exams were reasonable (he gives an accurate list of topics that would be covered in the exams). Most importantly, he's very passionate about the field and so he's really helpful both in and outside the class, and he's great at giving you the big picture behind all the complex maths equations.

I agree wholeheartedly with the other review from the quarter I took it. Sokolich made the class much more confusing than it had to be. The lecture almost always went overtime and I hardly ever walked away feeling like it was a productive 2 hours. He would skip through his 50 slide power points quickly, but stop at various points to mumble to himself about the subject.

He had good intentions and tried to answer campuswire questions, but his explanations online as well as in person left a lot to be desired. His answers were never direct and did not help to clarify anything. This is an introductory class, but when he would introduce a topic he would gloss over it and fail to convey the new information in a way that could be easily understood. It felt like he was talking to himself and not trying to teach to the students.

The homework was nearly impossible to figure out from the lecture. The questions were often short, which was bad because they did not include any of the background information you needed to solve it. It would take a significant group effort of looking through his lectures, the book, and online to piece together the formulas and "given" values to finish the problem. This process was tedious and uninformative.

The tests had much more simple problems, but could often not actually be directly solvable. There were multiple choice where you had to estimate and use process of elimination. Many of these problems were gimmicky, using some sort of proportion or "intuition." The only real way to solve them was to have seen them before. If you take this class, I urge you to search for his previous tests. There were also free response which felt similar in their unprecise nature. He expected us to understand, but he didn't show us half the material on the test before the test.

The review and the discussion were led by the TA. The TA was ok at explaining the subject and sometimes cleared things up in discussion. The discussion was an elaboration on the lecture, and I wish that it went more into example problems and homework help. The review was a disgrace. It was supposed to be 2 hours, but only went for 45 minutes. The TA had posted the review questions and spent the review sessions just writing the answers on the chalk board. It took my group of friends in the class hours the next day trying to piece together our notes and solve the problems ourselves to put in our cheat sheets.

The final exam ended up looking different anyway and the average score was a D. He ended up curving it, but it felt bad that we were all so unprepared. The class could have been much easier if it was taught better.

His lectures were not at all engaging, the homework didn't even remotely resemble the tests. I really did not enjoy this class at all. The material was a bit dry but Sokolich manages to make it seem like the most boring subject in the world. He has prepared slides that are quite detailed, so he rushes through them at the speed of light. He puts up about 10,000 different symbols and never pauses to define what they are, leaving everyone confused. In fact, halfway through the quarter, he put up a 30 minute video exclusively dedicated to defining every symbol he had used in equations, just because everyone was so confused. Props to him for at least doing that.
Not sure if I hate this class or this professor, it might be a bit of both.
At least the curve was quite nice.

Before taking this class, I thought I would definitely not get an A, but I somehow managed to. This class made me kind of want to steer away from semiconductors because Sokolich is just not that good. The class overall is just kind of poop. Homework is poop. Polls are poop. Exams are poop. Everything is poop. I will say, Sokolich is very very generous in grading exams and gives a ton of partial credit. He gave us a practice MT that you absolutely NEED to do and put on your cheatsheet. Also, if you practice other MT’s from the glorious test bank you will do just fine on the MT. The final, however, is fair game. He gave us one practice final to practice off of and our final was surprisingly similar to it with a few minor differences. But our three problems were: solar cell efficiency/graphing/designing a solar cell schematic, analyzing a p+n junction with step-doping and finding stuff like E field/graphing E field and capacitance, and last question was on a non-ideal (real) diode similar to his slides and practice exam. Homework is not helpful and I did not care for or try to understand a lot of the questions and just copied down solution manual. This class is the equation hunters dream and basically a chemistry class. Want my advice? Put tons of past MT questions on your cheat sheet for the MT and put the practice final questions on your Final cheat sheet. I crammed tf out of this class. Like I literally didn’t know anything a night before the exam and studied the night of for the MT and Final and did well. I stopped showing up to lecture after ~week 4 because I found that it wasn’t that helpful. Eliam is the best TA that has ever been born and he is amazing. Go to his OH and discussions if you have him!

Overall, the class was not an enjoyable experience. Sokolich is not a great lecturer as he often rushes through the material and does not care if his students actually understand what he is talking about. He says that the class's material is very dense, therefore, he only covers important concepts in class and expects us to learn about the unimportant stuff from the textbook. Speaking of the textbook, the textbook used for this class is easily the worst textbook I have read in my life. The textbook tries to get in-depth into every single concept and derive every formula in blocks of text, which makes the material a lot more confusing. Sokolich's HW is taken straight from the textbook but slightly modified. There is a solution manual you may find online, but because the textbook is terribly written, most of the solutions lack explanation and even use formulas you will never find in the textbook. Anyways, the HW is not very helpful for succeeding in this class, so you might as well just copy down the solutions and chatGPT everything you don't understand. The TA for this class, Eilam, is the only good thing about the class. He is very knowledgeable about the material and goes out of his way to answer our questions. Going to his OH really helped me a lot. Also, participation grade is a lot in the class. Make sure to do the in-class polls even if you skip class and participate on piazza as much as possible.
In order to get a good grade in this class, you basically just need to get above average on both the midterm and final. Sokolich's exams are pretty much copy and paste from his previous exams. There are some past midterms from a test bank that you can find online, I highly suggest you go over all of them in addition to the ones he provides you on Canvas. Since there are no past finals in the test bank, I suggest you just do the practice final he provides you on Canvas and put down every question on your cheatsheet. For our final, the free response questions are very similar to the ones on the practice final.

Great professor and very helpful. He always answers questions after class and on Piazza. Going to lecture and attempting the homework will give you a good understanding as to what he expects from you on exams. Overall great class.

Professor Sokolich really cares about his students. As long as you attend his lecture, do homework and the practice tests he assigned before the midterm and final, it's inevitable you succeed in his class. It seems that the homework and the practice tests are not related to the exam but if you really do them and understand them they really prepare you for the exam.