A solid class overall. Not too hard, but you still feel like you learned something. Surprisingly entertaining and pleasant lectures considering the topic. Much easier than Bioengineering 100.

Awesome teacher and quality person as well. He is very direct, simple, and to the point. He tries to make everything as simple as possible without making the problems facile, which is a massive accomplishment in itself considering the complexity of some of these problems. He is also very open, willing to help, and easy to understand.

Homework is the most important part of this class for actually learning the material. Tests are a bit harder than homework problems but are based on very similar material. Lectures are useful to attend because he gives out good info and you don't really have to read the book.

9/10 For sure.

I thought Tang's lectures were pretty good. Although 80% of time was spent doing examples, he focused on examples that were similar, albeit more simple than those we would see on the exams. His exams are fair-- quite difficult but what difference does it make when you're competing only with other students? I liked that each exam is worth 30% of the grade although this does mean you have to be very consistent. I think his grading policy is absolutely absurd. On the syllabus it said that 2 standard deviations above the median was the border between A- and A and the median was on the border of a B- and a B. I scored in the top 10 percent on two of the midterms and around average on the third and ended up with a B.

There is a strong correlation between doing the homework and doing well in the class. Most people just copy the solutions manual which but if you at least try the problems then copy the solutions manual to correct your mistakes you are bound to learn a lot. Whether this will translate into the grade you want is another story.

ChemE 100 with Prof. Tang was a very disappointing course. All 3 TAs didn't seem to care very much whatsoever. Tang did not even show up like 4 or 5 times (thats about 25% of the time) and had the TAs lecture which was horrible. ChemE department should really get it together...

No effort at all was made to make chemE 100 an interesting class. It was very dry and Tang did nothing and instead just went through slides. He did not show us problem-solving methods at all.

Additionally, the problems on his exams were way more difficult than the HW. They were very tedious and involved tons of reactors and material balancing. The problems took forever and there are way too many places to mess up. Tang had completely unreasonable expectations for us given the way he teachers. I certainly hope the future courses aren't like this otherwise I'm switching out.

Ignore the previous reviews, Tang is a terrible professor and very unenthusiastic. You are basically expected to learn the material on your own. I'm sure he is deliberately trying to weed ChemEs out.

Professor Tang's Chem Eng 100 midterms and finals are open book open notes WITHOUT being hard enough to require delving through the textbook looking for arcane shit that other professors with open book/note tests usually throw at you; reason enough to take his class over the next guy.

Professor Tang is pretty awesome and his TAs (Wei and Yanran) are also top notch. Fall 2011 was his first time teaching Chem Eng 100 and I think so far (finals next week) he has done an great job.

Lectures: Definitely go to these. While 90% of the time he just goes through examples and problems from the book, sometimes he does examples that aren't from the book (like old exam questions etc) or he'll say things like "I really like this problem" which is a big hint that he'll put some form of the example in a midterm question. I would also suggest reading the material before class as some of the later chapters (4, 6, and 9) get confusing, and then ask questions in class (don't be afraid to speak up!).

TA Discussions: They usually just ask if anyone has any questions on the homework and then set up the problem for you if anyone asks for a specific problem to be done. While some people try to get free answers out of the TAs to homework problems they haven't done yet, the better approach is to attempt the homework before discussion and then ask the questions you are unsure about (set up or how to even start). Also, the TAs are pretty hot, so they're easy to pay attention to and worth waking up on Friday morning to go see.

Professor and TA Office Hours: Definitely go to these when you're confused or have questions about lecture material or the homework, everyone is very nice in OH and it is to your benefit that Professor Tang and the TAs know you by name and face. Alternatively, they have this e-mail address set up for the class that you can mail questions to and get replies pretty quickly. This is a very nice perk that I haven't seen in any other class and would suggest you use it whenever you're between their office hours or the weekend.

Homework: Very fair problems, rarely do you see a problem that you're like "... wtf?" on. Also, the homework policy is that you can work in groups of 4 and turn in 1 set of homework between the 4 of you, which is an excellent policy because then all of the slackers and dgaf-ers leech on to their friends' homework and never do the problems by themselves and then get fubar'd on the exams and lower the curve for you! It seems like everyone and their mothers has the solution manual to the textbook, so as someone who doesn't have the solution manual (and does the homework), this works out tremendously in your favor as people just copy the solution manual and proceed to get fubar'd by the exams.

Midterms: These are very fair and partial credit grading on them is very generous. If you have truthfully done the homework and understand it, you should at the very least be able to get the average as the majority of the exam questions are similar to homework problems (although they might not look like it initially). I can't say anything about the Final since it's next week, but hopefully it'll be just as reasonable as the Midterms were.

Grading: I believe getting average in the class gets you in the B/B- range, so it is definitely possible to walk away with an A in the class if you study hard.

In the end, I recommend you take Professor Tang's class over anyone else who might teach it in the future. If you put in the work it'll give you (or so I believe) a great foundation for future classes.