Reviews of professor Benson Au

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I took this class fully online and asynchronous. Prof is decent. He's ok at explaining the material but he does go fast. Be prepared to spend a solid amount of time on the homework. In terms of grading criteria, he's the jackpot. He drops your lowest midterm and depending on the circumstances, lowest quiz and lowest homework.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Coming from a student who isn't too good at math, this class was easy to follow. hw, quizzes, and midterms were do-able and I averaged a A/B the entire quarter, until the final, which was unreasonably hard and not given enough time. We did not know our grades the ENTIRE quarter. Piazza and emails were left unanswered days before finals.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Tolerable at best. Lectures usually only 30 mins long, but he glosses by how he gets solutions so be ready to teach yourself. HW preps you well for exams 1 and 2 but the final was absurd (avg was an F). Drops a quiz, a homework, and can drop an exam but then the final is worth more. My advice: ace the first two exams b/c the final was horrible.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Throughout taking this course, I didn't find it too difficult but then I got to the final.. worth 30% of the grade and totally failed it because it was nothing related to anything we learned. There goes my A in the class!

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
He was pretty good at explaining things, and the book was a good supplement. Tests were very straightforward, and he was really helpful in OH. Dropped the lowest quiz and midterm grades too, so getting an A was not challenging.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Professor Au just uploads lecture records of other professors and posts hw. He is not quite accessible. His midterms are tough and everyone got extremely low grade, although he do curves. He is not the best choice for this course.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Lectures were quick and straightforward - it left me with extra time to study with the textbook and actually understand the material (there is something to be said about the fact that I learned more from the textbook than from him). But the final was ridiculous. The mean for the class was an F. I felt he never really cared about my learning.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
He is the most talented professor I've ever met. He speaks really fast but explains things clearly. His tests are challenging though.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
He is very knowledgeable but he explains very quickly in lectures and is always jumping to new concepts. His tests can be quite different (and more difficult) than the homework. Grade includes weekly quizzes, WebAssign homework, midterms, and final.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
I would give him a 3 after I finish his class last quarter because I thought that his class was unreasonably hard, but now I think he deserves a 5 because I'm taking MATH 181A which requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge from MATH 180A that many instructors just skipped because they are too hard. Those hard knowledge WILL BE USEFUL LATER!