Professor
Saloni Mathur
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - I wish to write this review to help future generation studets who consider this class as an GE, based on the grading, exams, essays, professor, lectures, TAs, and other aspects, etc.. - Grading Distribution: 25% 5 response papers (5% each) + 27% Midterm Essay + 28% Final Essay + 20% Discussion Participation. Each reponse paper is about 400 words, 1-2 pages long. Midterm essay is an assignment consists of three prompts, 600-700 words (3-4 pages) for each prompt, altogether 1800-2100 words in total. Final Exam is an essay of 1000 words, 6-7 pages in length. All the essays and papers are based on the reading materials assigned in class, and some part of the lecture materials. As long as you do the readings, you'll be fine with those essays. - About Grading: The grading on the five response papers, midterm essays and final exam essay are completely up to your TAs. So it might be terrible to have to bad and harsh-grading TA, who can screw your grades as well as your gpa. On the other hand, it will be very very easy for you to get through the quarter if you luckily meet an angel TA. The final grade is based on absolute scale (93=A), so you cannot lose too many points on each of the paper in order to get an A. My suggestion on all the papers is that if you are not sure about that, you can schedule with your TAs to talk about what you wrote or going to write in your essays to make sure that those contents are what your TAs want to see. If this aint work either, it is really necessary to switch section (swith TA) or consider to PNP/drop the class, as TAs have full decision on your grades and your fate in this class. - About lectures and professor Mathur: The lectures are recorded and can be accessed on bruinlearn, so it is not necessary to go to the in-person lectures. I never met with professor Mathur so I cannot comment, but I think her lectures are not that interesting, which you might fell asleep in fact. The lectures and the materials are not that intriguing to be honest. - About TAs: This Art History 25 course has a quite large TA team. We have 6 TAs this quarter I remember, so it is all about your luck that which TA you enrolled with. Different TAs have very different grading standards, thus possibly might have very different A rate (this is not up to Professor Mathur, who just in charge of delivering lectures and design exams), which means it is possible that almost all of the students of one TA's section get A while students from another TA's section can very hardly get A. From my point of view, I would like to recommend my TA Amy Crum. She is a PhD candidate in this field, and she is very nice, professional, caring, and give good grades overall. I got 1 point lost in altogether the five response papers, 24/27 in midterm paper (the hardest part of the quarter), and full mark 28/28 in the final paper, which I think is a very nice grader who is willing to give her students good grades. She also accomodated for students who are not able to go to the class in person through the online zoom conduct. I would say take Amy's sections if they are available, and you will go through the quarter easily under her help and her easy&fine grading standards. Btw to mention that I heard one TA named Natalie Zhang graded assignments very harshly according to my friend, so try to avoid her section if that's possible unless you want challenges. - Workload: The response paper is assigned roughly biweekly, so the workload I think is okay and managable. Readings are assigned every week, about 50-80 pages everytime, but it is fine to just scan through. It is not wise to leave all the readings until the midterm week and final week, because you'll have to read tons of reading in a very short period of time in that case and will have VERY GREAT PRESSURE. Midterm week and Final week can be a little bit more exhausting, as you will have to synthesize and integrate all the materials you went through in the previous weeks, but still it is managable. - Conclusion: Overall, this class is a GE with medium workload and medium difficulty. It may not be that hard like those history GEs, but still it requires you to spend some time every week to study for it in order to get a decent grade. All that matters in this class is your TA, who can fully decide your grade and fate in this class. If you meet a TA that grades very harshly, then it will be wise to switch TA or PNP or drop the class. If you meet a great TA, then it will be a quite easy GE. It might be hard to determine which TA is good before attending the class and getting assignments graded, so I suggest that go over all the reviews to see which TA's sections are great and which TA's section should be avoided. Good luck!
Winter 2022 - I wish to write this review to help future generation studets who consider this class as an GE, based on the grading, exams, essays, professor, lectures, TAs, and other aspects, etc.. - Grading Distribution: 25% 5 response papers (5% each) + 27% Midterm Essay + 28% Final Essay + 20% Discussion Participation. Each reponse paper is about 400 words, 1-2 pages long. Midterm essay is an assignment consists of three prompts, 600-700 words (3-4 pages) for each prompt, altogether 1800-2100 words in total. Final Exam is an essay of 1000 words, 6-7 pages in length. All the essays and papers are based on the reading materials assigned in class, and some part of the lecture materials. As long as you do the readings, you'll be fine with those essays. - About Grading: The grading on the five response papers, midterm essays and final exam essay are completely up to your TAs. So it might be terrible to have to bad and harsh-grading TA, who can screw your grades as well as your gpa. On the other hand, it will be very very easy for you to get through the quarter if you luckily meet an angel TA. The final grade is based on absolute scale (93=A), so you cannot lose too many points on each of the paper in order to get an A. My suggestion on all the papers is that if you are not sure about that, you can schedule with your TAs to talk about what you wrote or going to write in your essays to make sure that those contents are what your TAs want to see. If this aint work either, it is really necessary to switch section (swith TA) or consider to PNP/drop the class, as TAs have full decision on your grades and your fate in this class. - About lectures and professor Mathur: The lectures are recorded and can be accessed on bruinlearn, so it is not necessary to go to the in-person lectures. I never met with professor Mathur so I cannot comment, but I think her lectures are not that interesting, which you might fell asleep in fact. The lectures and the materials are not that intriguing to be honest. - About TAs: This Art History 25 course has a quite large TA team. We have 6 TAs this quarter I remember, so it is all about your luck that which TA you enrolled with. Different TAs have very different grading standards, thus possibly might have very different A rate (this is not up to Professor Mathur, who just in charge of delivering lectures and design exams), which means it is possible that almost all of the students of one TA's section get A while students from another TA's section can very hardly get A. From my point of view, I would like to recommend my TA Amy Crum. She is a PhD candidate in this field, and she is very nice, professional, caring, and give good grades overall. I got 1 point lost in altogether the five response papers, 24/27 in midterm paper (the hardest part of the quarter), and full mark 28/28 in the final paper, which I think is a very nice grader who is willing to give her students good grades. She also accomodated for students who are not able to go to the class in person through the online zoom conduct. I would say take Amy's sections if they are available, and you will go through the quarter easily under her help and her easy&fine grading standards. Btw to mention that I heard one TA named Natalie Zhang graded assignments very harshly according to my friend, so try to avoid her section if that's possible unless you want challenges. - Workload: The response paper is assigned roughly biweekly, so the workload I think is okay and managable. Readings are assigned every week, about 50-80 pages everytime, but it is fine to just scan through. It is not wise to leave all the readings until the midterm week and final week, because you'll have to read tons of reading in a very short period of time in that case and will have VERY GREAT PRESSURE. Midterm week and Final week can be a little bit more exhausting, as you will have to synthesize and integrate all the materials you went through in the previous weeks, but still it is managable. - Conclusion: Overall, this class is a GE with medium workload and medium difficulty. It may not be that hard like those history GEs, but still it requires you to spend some time every week to study for it in order to get a decent grade. All that matters in this class is your TA, who can fully decide your grade and fate in this class. If you meet a TA that grades very harshly, then it will be wise to switch TA or PNP or drop the class. If you meet a great TA, then it will be a quite easy GE. It might be hard to determine which TA is good before attending the class and getting assignments graded, so I suggest that go over all the reviews to see which TA's sections are great and which TA's section should be avoided. Good luck!
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Most Helpful Review
Class topic is extremely interesting and rather abstract. I am not an art history major so this class was more difficult than I had anticipated. If you're not an art history major like me, beware taking the course. The midterm really screwed me over, I've yet to receive final grade though, unsure of what the outcome will be. Mathur is a great professor though, probably one of my favorites. Just bad luck I guess :|
Class topic is extremely interesting and rather abstract. I am not an art history major so this class was more difficult than I had anticipated. If you're not an art history major like me, beware taking the course. The midterm really screwed me over, I've yet to receive final grade though, unsure of what the outcome will be. Mathur is a great professor though, probably one of my favorites. Just bad luck I guess :|
Most Helpful Review
Professor Mathur is great! She goes the extra mile to make sure students understand the topics and promotes open discussion during lecture. She's very understanding and passionate about teaching. She is also a very fair grader. She takes into consideration if there has been improvement from the midterm to the final. Very sweet and down to earth.
Professor Mathur is great! She goes the extra mile to make sure students understand the topics and promotes open discussion during lecture. She's very understanding and passionate about teaching. She is also a very fair grader. She takes into consideration if there has been improvement from the midterm to the final. Very sweet and down to earth.
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Fall 2018 - I love professor Mathur!! Best professor I have taken and she truly cares for the content she teaches as well as her students. I learned so much from her and the content in the class was amazing. I got a solid in her class and we had to do a few response questions for her class, 2 quizzes, in class midterm, and take home final. But this class is quite interesting and the teacher is so lovable and sweet! Loved this class
Fall 2018 - I love professor Mathur!! Best professor I have taken and she truly cares for the content she teaches as well as her students. I learned so much from her and the content in the class was amazing. I got a solid in her class and we had to do a few response questions for her class, 2 quizzes, in class midterm, and take home final. But this class is quite interesting and the teacher is so lovable and sweet! Loved this class
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Professor Mathur is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA in that she is incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and always eager to promote discussion. That being said, had this been the only class I'd taken with her, I probably wouldn't have the same opinion. I think the real limit to this course was the dense, boring textbook ($80) we had to buy and which she used to structure her whole class. I felt like we were going over and over the same museums/themes for ten weeks because she was just trying to give us our money's worth for the text. And though she rarely went over the readings, the midterm itself was structured around your knowledge of all the authors and essays up to the test. She mentioned possible guest speakers and field trips, but our only trip to the Hammer was for a panel on museum careers and not necessarily related to the class. Overall, while Mathur herself is a great lecturer, I would wait around for one of her classes or seminars on Southeast Asian art.
Winter 2016 - Professor Mathur is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA in that she is incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and always eager to promote discussion. That being said, had this been the only class I'd taken with her, I probably wouldn't have the same opinion. I think the real limit to this course was the dense, boring textbook ($80) we had to buy and which she used to structure her whole class. I felt like we were going over and over the same museums/themes for ten weeks because she was just trying to give us our money's worth for the text. And though she rarely went over the readings, the midterm itself was structured around your knowledge of all the authors and essays up to the test. She mentioned possible guest speakers and field trips, but our only trip to the Hammer was for a panel on museum careers and not necessarily related to the class. Overall, while Mathur herself is a great lecturer, I would wait around for one of her classes or seminars on Southeast Asian art.
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