Reviews of professor Xinming Ou

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
While he expects a lot out of students, he is pretty easygoing and kind. The beginning portion of the class is simple and straightforward but his pen testing activities and CTFs are admittedly kind of tricky and difficult. However, you will learn a ton in this class and it's super fun and engaging. Super smart guy. TAs were very helpful for CTFs.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
He doesn't give a grading scale, decides it at the end of the semester instead. Projects are super hard and time consuming. Even if you pass the test cases they give, you'll still lose points coz they have their own test cases and you have no idea if your code will pass those. TAs are bad too, very inconsistent in grading.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Class was carried by his TA Armin. Need more time for the CTF challenges. There was a final paper that did not have anything to do with what we learned and that was not at all necessary but there was no final exam which was cool i guess. alright class and group based challenges.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Class is very hard for beginners, but you learn a ton in this class, unlike most of the other cyber classes. The TA's do a lot of the work and if you have good TA's you will have a good class. He has very high expectations of students skills but will quickly respond to emails asking for help, demonstrate things and offer extensions if necessary.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Dr. Simon is an outstanding professor with an abundance of knowledge in the scope of Cybersecurity. Class was mainly carried by Kumar and Simon leading the lessons and in-class exercises which proved to be not difficult. Exams are not weighted heavy, and you will undoubtedly learn THE most in this class more than any other class in the curriculum.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Unclear Grading Criteria, Students do not know grades in the class, Does not teach the class, Expects students to teach themselves, No direction on assignments, Poor communication skills. Does not answer questions.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Unclear in directions, grading material, lectures and goals. Expect to be self taught, and be graded on how well you teach yourself, but with very few guidelines for how teach yourself. Very little in the way of textbooks as well, so don't expect much help their either. Overall I'd avoid him if at all possible.