People love to hate on Sharmila but she is a great professor in my opinion. She is difficult to understand but she knows this and makes her tests so much easier in comparison to Garfinkel, Jukka and other professors who teach this class. I have friends who took the class with these professors and struggled. Sharmila only tests on the most basic topics. I never read the textbook once: just pay attention in class and do the homework and you will easily get an A. She is super funny and understanding also. The only bad thing about this class is the labs. The coding is so poorly taught (my TA literally didn't speak English so there's that). Luckily our test on the coding didn't get counted but otherwise I am not sure I would've gotten an A. This class would rock if it didn't have coding. It was miserable for everyone to do the labs each week and I am dreading them in 30B. TAKE SHARMILA! Seriously ignore the reviews on here. I had a conversation with someone in Garfinkel and showed them our tests and they were dumbfounded at how easy they were compared to the other professors. Our final was the content that Garfinkel's class had on their MIDTERM. We didn't even start any material until week 2. She spent the whole first week talking about herself and we didn't have homework until week 3.. It was honestly an easy class but you do have to put in some work since she is a little tough to understand sometimes. She knows this though and makes her tests easy because of it!

Venugopal is not nearly as bad as people would like to mention on bruin walk. Her class is easy and straightforward, and sometimes she does start to over complicate simple topics, but that in no way makes her a bad professor. She genuinely cares for her students and is a nice person.
Tips for doing well: Work in groups for the labs, as they are probably harder than the actual course material (but not actually that hard, TA's and LA's help, so it is more than manageable). Homework is graded for correctness, so make sure you actually go through it and think while you do the questions. I found that reading the textbook was actually pretty helpful as it is simple to understand. Her lectures are pretty much out of the book, so showing up to class and reading the book will make it quite hard to do poorly in the class.

Everyone on BruinWalk complains about Sharmila as a horrible professor, but in reality, she is not bad at all. She is always in a good mood during lecture and is easily accessible. She provides a study guide and several practice exams for both the midterm and finals. The coding is difficult, but doable. She has an engineer's brain so sometimes the lecture is confusing, but if you read the textbook sections prior, it will be easy. She assigns the least amount of homework and really cares about her students. Overall, the class material is not that difficult if you study the book and ask questions. I am glad I took this course with Venugopal and signed up with her for next quarter as well.

Venugopal is a nice woman, but not a good professor. Her class is not engaging and she explains things very poorly. In addition, she scheduled her one-hour review session during a lab, so no one in that lab could attend. Even if they had attended, it took her the entire hour to complete just one practice problem (incorrectly). The class is interesting, but if possible, don't take it with Venugopal/go to Conley's review sessions.

Venogupal is a horrible teacher. She can't explain materials clearly and sometime I had a hard time understanding her English. The entire lecture was unorganized and messy. Thank god we had excellent TAs they were very helpful both in discussions and in office hours. I mostly went to Conley or Garfinkel's lectures they were much better than Venogupal. If you take LS30A do not take it with her take Conley or Garfinkel.

Soroush the TA taught more than she ever did. She explained the concepts very convultedly because she thinks like an engineer and talks like one - the math she explained well enough when talking about stability and equilibrium but talking about population concepts and simple things were so much harder.

Don't go to her office hours. Most useless thing ever.

Professor Venugopal cannot explain concepts to save her life. You would almost be better off not going to class because all of her lectures are so convoluted and will often leave you confused over the simplest concepts. This class ruined my passion for science because of how painful the lectures were. I also ended up with a terrible TA, if you get Ning Wang as your TA, you can count on never knowing what is going on in lab. She is by far the worst TA I have ever had. Overall, this class was horrible and I don't understand how UCLA lets this professor keep teaching here.

Take the LS30 series by all means, but TAKE THE CLASS WITH A DIFFERENT PROFESSOR. Conley is amazing, Garfinkel is amazing, and Jane (if she ever teaches LS30A) I'm sure would be fine for LS30A too since I heard great things about her LS30B class. Venugopal is horrible. I did not enjoy her class at all and regretted having to wake up for her 8am just to complete the clicker questions. I learned all the material by reading the book while taking detailed notes and watching a few of Conley's Bruincasts when he reviewed LS30A in the beginning of his LS30B class. I learned more about LS30A by watching 30 minutes of Conley's Bruincast than I had in weeks of attending Venugopal's lectures. Venugopal does not lecture the material well at all and she will not lecture a good portion of concepts central to the course. For some reason her LS30A classes are always at 8am and she will spend half of the lecture trying to review/reteach what she tried to lecture on the previous class meeting. She will not cover all of the material that you are expected to know for exams (she will put things you never discussed on exams, trust me) and will make basic concepts much much much more difficult than they need to be. This math series should not be all too complex as a whole....Venugopal somehow makes it so much harder than it needs to be. Homework is graded for correctness and it is graded pretty harshly in my personal opinion, Should you get lucky, she won't assign a final project at the end of the quarter, but with my luck she assigned it and it ended up being extra work that I had to stress about during finals week. She tends to change her grading scale. When I had her she did midterm 30%, final 30%, homework 15%, labs 15%, project 5%, class attendance 5%. The class really sucks but if you're willing to put in extra work on your own time to learn all of the material by READING THE TEXTBOOK without cramming the day before an exam (I also learned so much by studying tons of old midterms and finals), making sure that your homework is perfect or near perfect upon submission, and making sure that your labs are perfect or near perfect upon submission then getting an A shouldn't be all too bad. (She might give extra credit you never know with that one...some quarters she did and some quarters she didn't).

She lectures straight out of the book, so if you fall asleep during lectures, it is fine. However, you still need to attend lectures because of clickers for participation. Her labs are also mandatory, and the TA will take attendance. She's often not clear on concepts and can't really explain. Her lectures always get cut off because she explains things very slowly.
The LS 30 series is easy. You won't spend money on textbooks because they provide you their own written textbook for free. The labs are weird, but hopefully you have a good TA or a coding genius friend.
Her exams are pretty similar to her past exams she provides you. So do that, and you should be fine. Her office hours are useless though. Don't bother.

Dr.Venogupal cannot explain clearly and is very disorganized. I learned more in Conley's review session for the Final Exam compared to the whole quarter. The concepts are not difficult though. The class is okay, but do not take it with her.