TAKE THIS CLASS WITH MEHTA!

Easily one of the most accommodating professors I had during Physics 5B. Grading scheme is as follows:

Quizzes: 85% of grade, 5 quizzes + lowest quiz dropped
Lab: 15% of grade

Quizzes are easy as long as you listen to the lectures, which were recorded, and take good notes on them. I did, however, take this course during COVID so if he teaches again during the school year I don't know how different it would be.

Worst class ever! Professor simply read from the Pearson slides, didn't even know when there was an exam, constantly changed class policies. Would strongly recommend against taking this class.

Do not take this class oh my god I'm begging you. Unless you love the excitement of gambling with your learning and gpa with inconsistent communication, poor lecture-test-homework connection, and constantly changing grade policies, do not take this class. This is my lowest grade at UCLA, but what's crazy is that the content is definitely not the hardest content I've had to learn. I felt like I actually understood things as I put a lot of time and work into this class (and thanks to the singular TA Andrew), but once it came time to complete 10 hard problems in the midterms in 50 minutes, I ended up getting well below 70% on them. This class and Mehta unnecessarily drove students away from having excitement about learning physics, and it unnecessarily had such extreme disorganization.

There is nothing else I can say that all of these other reviews before me have not covered yet. Mehta has to be one of the most careless professors I have ever learned under, and how he is still able to teach at the #1 Public University is seriously beyond my comprehension. I stopped going to lecture after the FIRST one and opted to just watch the videos he would upload (especially because that is what he forced us to do amidst the wildfires during week 2 instead of doing zoom meetings). Best of all, we had a midterm the week upon our return from evacuation! Average was a 70, so not terrible, but come on man.

He is also never clear in his lectures. He simply reads the slides, does not explain why the example problems use specific formulas or reasoning, and verbatim always says "If you don't know why xyz is happening, I encourage you to look at the past slides or watch the past videos" you can LITERALLY just tell us, why make things so time-consuming and more difficult than they have to be? Also, the average on the 2nd midterm was a 66. He had first told us our lowest midterm would be dropped, simply changed that course policy halfway through the quarter, and then ended up dropping our lowest after basically being forced to by the department because his averages were so terrible and because of the wildfires.

If it wasn't for our TA Andrew, I would have dropped the class after the first midterm. He explained everything clearly during discussion, extended his office hours for us, constantly told us not to worry, and literally was the actual professor as he would be the only one there during midterm and final days (Mehta did not show up to a single in-person exam, nor did he make them, nor did he grade them. It's been 2 weeks since Finals Week and our grade JUST got uploaded because I assume that poor Andrew has to grade all of it on his own). Not to mention, Mehta assured everyone the grade would be curved and it seems like he didn’t curve anything? We also didn’t get our final grades back.

TLDR; terrible, terrible professor. content is doable, but if your TA isnt goated then genuinely good luck. do not take him unless you have to declare your major, it's better to wait another quarter and try to shoot for a better enrollment time.

If you do not want to kill yourself by the first midterm, run!! I do not recommend taking this class with this professor. We had our first midterm in week 3 after the chaos of remote learning caused by the LA fires. We had 50 minutes to complete a couple of MCQs and SAQs. The second midterm was sooo much harder than the first, with four MCQ's and six very hard SAQs. I honestly do not think all students could finish all SAQs with the insufficient time we had and the difficulty of the questions.

After the second midterm, after seeing how poorly his students did, we were told that our best midterm score would be used for both midterms; all else would stay the same. This shows how poorly the exam went. I do not know what will happen (I am writing this before the final). Students have not heard anything regarding how the grading is going to work. His rating has decreased since starting the winter quarter from 2.4 to 1.6, and it probably will continue to decrease.

Mind you, there is only one TA for this class, and he's a champ. There was a lot of miscommunication throughout this quarter. I didn't know where the final would be located because his announcements did not mention them. You wouldn't know where the location would be unless you asked the TA. (I was about to pull up to a different location until my friend told me).

Please save yourself and not take this class, even if it's the only one available.

Mehta is not a good professor in a setting where the exams are what determine your final grade. His strength is conceptually talking about things like a Tedtalk (which is funny because he links his Tedtalk everywhere). I tried to give him a chance even after reading all the reviews, but the reality of this class is that Mehta sets you up to fail the tests by not spending time working through the math in lectures. I think he thought that covering a topic made it okay to test us on it, but that didn't work out because we weren't tested on what he spent most of his time talking about. The average for both midterms was a failing grade (like 60-something and 50-something respectively), and only 1 or 2 kids in each midterm would finish early out of the entire class.

Sidenote: Much appreciation to the discussion section TA Andrew for basically running the whole class. Also, shoutout to the lab TA Vince for being the most unengaged, uninterested, and condescending TA I've had at UCLA. What a quarter.

Other sidenote on the phone thing: Mehta will completely disrupt whatever he's teaching whenever he sees a kid on their phone, which stems from some control thing he has going on. Not saying kids should be on their phones, but they are only hurting themselves by not paying attention (sorta) and Mehta chooses to punish the whole class because of one or two students.

**This is the only time I've written a review on here so sorry if it's too long, but there's just so much to say about this class.