Professor
Nicholas Rombes
1 of 1
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Review I wrote on Reddit. Initial feelings before midterm: Rombes is not bad so far! He writes a few problems for the HW sets and the others are out of Young and Freedman’s University Physics 15th Edition. He is good at explaining things and he doesn’t assume his students know everything that he is teaching. One thing to note, he often assigns two or three dot problems out of the textbook which are extremely hard, harder than the questions he writes usually for his HW. Feelings after final: We just had our final on Friday which was not that bad! Both midterm and Final were 24 hours and they were fairly reasonable. Rombes does not curve the class, its based on a straight scale so that is something to keep in mind, but given that the average for midterm was 85% which was a B, i feel like the scale worked pretty well. Keep in mind that this was for the Summer Session so im not sure if it will be the same for the Fall since it was much more hurried (6-week course), but his class seemed pretty reasonable! How to prepare for the class: I think you should review the Electricity and Circuits part of 1B, as that is the focus for the first ~25% of the class (Electricity will be replaced with Magnetism in 1C, and instead of DC circuits you learn about AC circuits in 1C). For the rest of the class, you should read ahead in the textbook (Young and Freedmen 15th edition, chapters 27 - 39 is basically the full span of the class). Overall feelings: He was a great professor and for his first time teaching, compared to the previous physics professors I had at UCLA, I really liked him and his teaching style. His exams were not too difficult and had a decent average unlike other professors, which was probably due to the lack of a curve, but its honestly a confidence booster when you don't get a 20/100.
Summer 2020 - Review I wrote on Reddit. Initial feelings before midterm: Rombes is not bad so far! He writes a few problems for the HW sets and the others are out of Young and Freedman’s University Physics 15th Edition. He is good at explaining things and he doesn’t assume his students know everything that he is teaching. One thing to note, he often assigns two or three dot problems out of the textbook which are extremely hard, harder than the questions he writes usually for his HW. Feelings after final: We just had our final on Friday which was not that bad! Both midterm and Final were 24 hours and they were fairly reasonable. Rombes does not curve the class, its based on a straight scale so that is something to keep in mind, but given that the average for midterm was 85% which was a B, i feel like the scale worked pretty well. Keep in mind that this was for the Summer Session so im not sure if it will be the same for the Fall since it was much more hurried (6-week course), but his class seemed pretty reasonable! How to prepare for the class: I think you should review the Electricity and Circuits part of 1B, as that is the focus for the first ~25% of the class (Electricity will be replaced with Magnetism in 1C, and instead of DC circuits you learn about AC circuits in 1C). For the rest of the class, you should read ahead in the textbook (Young and Freedmen 15th edition, chapters 27 - 39 is basically the full span of the class). Overall feelings: He was a great professor and for his first time teaching, compared to the previous physics professors I had at UCLA, I really liked him and his teaching style. His exams were not too difficult and had a decent average unlike other professors, which was probably due to the lack of a curve, but its honestly a confidence booster when you don't get a 20/100.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - Rombes is okay. He's an okay lecturer but I found myself fighting for my life to stay awake in lecture. Professor usually just reads off his slides but I learn better in person so I made sure to go. 5A content was so uninteresting to me so I found it hard to study/pay attention in this class. Exams were fair but I found the final to be harder. One thing I will say is that he is really responsive to his students. He had a really hard problem on our first midterm and after everyone told him how difficult it was he made the TAs grade it really fairly. Since I didn't find the first midterm too difficult I didn't study as hard as for the second one and my grade reflected it. It does suck that even missing partial points on problems can significantly drop your grade. He also doesn't round so if you're at a 89.9 you're fucked.
Winter 2022 - Rombes is okay. He's an okay lecturer but I found myself fighting for my life to stay awake in lecture. Professor usually just reads off his slides but I learn better in person so I made sure to go. 5A content was so uninteresting to me so I found it hard to study/pay attention in this class. Exams were fair but I found the final to be harder. One thing I will say is that he is really responsive to his students. He had a really hard problem on our first midterm and after everyone told him how difficult it was he made the TAs grade it really fairly. Since I didn't find the first midterm too difficult I didn't study as hard as for the second one and my grade reflected it. It does suck that even missing partial points on problems can significantly drop your grade. He also doesn't round so if you're at a 89.9 you're fucked.
1 of 1
