This course was a rollercoaster. He is very, very generous with his extra credit, as in you can get 2% of a final grade just for saying to draw a FBD or even 1% for showing up to lecture, but some complaints arose about grading and him giving pop quizzes, so he took extra credit away. Vinay doesn't curve his classes, but stresses that you learn and understand the material. His midterm was not really graded for numerical accuracy, but for the proper steps and problem solving approach. I would recommend taking this course with Vinay, but come in with thick skin and possibly be prepared for a rollercoaster of a quarter.

Professor Goyal really wanted everyone in the class to get a good grade. He offered a ton of extra credit points, he offered online lectures, he offered a midterm retake, he really wanted everyone to not have to worry about their grade, and that was appreciated. With that said, he also held what he was doing against you. When he saw a mediocre average on the midterm he freaked out and individually handed back all the midterms saying outloud who did good with a "very nice work" and who did bad with saying nothing and giving a glare. In class his lectures were often unclear but his youtube lectures were helpful. Unfortunately due to "complaints" he stopped doing those. His version of "complaints" were just anything that brought a concern about his teaching. For example saying "Can you do more examples in class" could be seen as a complaint and therefore he thinks you don't appreciate everything he is doing for you and decides to take away youtube videos with all the examples and extra credit, since he doesn't have to do those things and theyre too much extra work that goes unappreciated. Overall if you want a good grade, he will try to help you get there. If you want a chill/level-headed professor he is not the guy. His temper and mood swings made this class way more stressful. When most of his style was trying to make this class have as little stress as possible

Really tough to rate this guy. On the one hand, he started off the quarter just throwing extra credit points at students for answering questions in lectures. Then he got upset when apparently someone complained and he (kind of) stopped doing that (it still happened, but it was pretty rare). He was pretty random but he does constantly pride himself on being unpredictable so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Overall the topics of the class aren't that hard. If you understand that the net force on an object at equilibrium is zero then you should be fine with most of the setup. Nearly everything else is algebra to solve for some unknown. Also a lot of the topics are pretty intuitive if you're into mechanics at all (which you probably are if you're in an MAE course).

There was one homework assignment each week of 5-8 problems covering the previous week's material and a quiz on the topics from the homework in each discussion section. Also I'm pretty sure he gave extra credit points for attendance (he would sometimes pass a sign-in sheet around).

The midterm wasn't hard conceptually but there was a lot of computation of not-so-friendly numbers and we weren't allowed calculators. I know the TAs didn't like it either and were willing to fight for us to have calculators on the final (until coronavirus struck). The final was basically a homework assignment: we had a week to do six problems and turn it in online.

Overall I'd say the main negative was the unpredictable nature of the class. I never knew what I got on any single quiz and the overall grading system for the was unclear (when we'd taken 6 quizzes most of the class' quiz scores were something like 60/40, and lots of people ended up with about 200% in the quiz category with the other extra credits). Now I'm not complaining, but you couple that with a good midterm score and the final is essentially irrelevant, which seems weird but again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in his words "I'm the professor I do what I want" and "I don't want you to think you know what's coming." Again I'm not complaining since he was very generous with grading and extra credits.

My biggest tip is to GO TO EVERY SINGLE CLASS because you never know what he has in store.

This class was a roller coaster. Vinay Goyal is unlike any other professor I have ever had. For one thing, he's from industry, so he approaches things from a "common sense" or intuition perspective instead of an academic approach. Additionally, he throws extra credit at students. Seriously, I ended up with so much extra credit by the end of the quarter that my quiz category was worth over 150%. Halfway through the final, I decided to leave the hardest questions unfinished because I was confident that I would get an A. Finally, Goyal is truly invested in seeing his students succeed. For the first half of the class (statics), he created Youtube videos to go over numerous example problems so that, in his own words, we would have no excuse to not do well on the exam.

There are a few downsides to this class, however. Goyal is a bit unpredictable. Meaning that he stopped doing Youtube videos halfway through the class because he got offended by an alleged complaint, and he gave us a very computational midterm without a calculator because he was afraid we would cheat. On the plus side, Goyal was not hesitant to change up his teaching style if what he did wasn't working, and as mentioned before, he gave out easy extra credit quizzes if he liked the level of participation.

Overall, this class was good for learning statics pretty well and gaining an introduction to mechanics of materials. Goyal likes to stress the easiness of his class, which is true if you have a good intuition for mechanics and do plenty of practice. However, I thought he went a little too fast through topics like stress/strain and deflection, and therefore I did not develop as much intuition as with statics.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of people did not take this class seriously and missed easy points. Don't be like those people: go to class, do the HW thoroughly, and do the example problems he assigns, and you will not have to worry about your grade at all.