Reviews of professor Thomas Gilray

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Dr. Gilray does not hold your hand on learning the material and instead expects you to take the initiative to practice the material. The projects can be turned in multiple times early for full credit and he offers so much extra credit, my final average was over a 100%. Show initiative and interest in the material and you will do well.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Extremely challenging class

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
My best description for 401 is that if you are on the ball about assignments, and you pay attention to the lectures, you should have a good time. Just because an assignment is due in 2 weeks does not mean start it the weekend that it's due. My main suggestion would be to take time, and try to think through the problems and not just speed through.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Gilray's AI class was different experience from other at UAB. He breaks down difficult concepts and makes the important points clear. I was expecting it to be hard, but outside of the frequent exams, which I thought w tricky, all the workload and grading were reasonable. it has exams, group work, and solo projects. Work hard and you learn a lot!

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Extremely difficult course, the abstract concepts are too hard to grasp with zoom only. Prof seems to use vernacular on his level of understanding and not the understanding of undergraduates. homework, projects, and tests require complete understanding that is applicable. Skip this course and take something else, seriously.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Tom's 350 and 401 courses are the hardest CS courses I've taken at UAB. His lectures are sometimes hard to understand but his assigned readings really help with that regard. His exams are fair because they reflect the homework problems. His coding projects are very tough, but in my experience the TAs, along with Tom, were very helpful.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
This is by far the hardest class I have taken in CS at UAB. It is extremely challenging to get the A, even if you are a great programmer. The programming projects are extremely hard and require you to be an excellent programmer. Be sure to do good on the first projects. He scaled exams by 10-20% because the mean of the class is usually a D.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Very nice and very passionate about the subjects, but easily the hardest professor I have ever taken. If you don't want long nights of pulling your hair out praying to god that the autograder lets you pass a test, then avoid him at all costs. Both of the hardest classes I've ever taken were with Gilray, and hopefully I never have to take him again

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I took this course as my very first class by Dr. Gilray, after hearing horror stories from other students that have had him. My thoughts? It was actually one of my favorite courses. Anything that didn't make sense could be referenced in the textbook, and the exams were structured where your understanding was worth more than the correct answer.