CS 4102

This has been one of my favorite classes at UVA. I was worried about taking it with Shelat since I heard he was a difficult professor, but he's also such an amazing lecturer that it makes it worth it. You will definitely need a study group to get by in the course since the weekly homeworks are 60% of your grade and really challenging, but they make you understand the material really well. Since this course is so important for interviews and such, I definitely recommend taking it with a more thorough professor like Shelat.

I really, really loved this class. It represents everything a college course should be. Genius, over-qualified professor (really though, take this class before Shelat realizes that UVA is below him) who cares about the students learning and knows the material inside and out. Challenging but fair homework assignments that will require you to form a study group with very smart people if you want to finish them in under 10 hours. And at the end you received a grade indicative of the work you put in. This class has no wasted work (give a few in class participation assignments that make up 10% of your grade).

The workload is a weekly homework set that will take forever, a take home midterm, an extra credit assignment, and an optional final. This class is no doubt the most time consuming class I have taken, so try to plan it in an easier semester.

Shelat is the man.

Do yourself a favor, and get a good smart group of friends and take this class.

Really hard class, but it's rewarding because if you go through the homework, it really takes you through the process of solving problems. Going to office hours were really helpful, especially if you need clarification on things you didn't understand.

If you define a smart person as someone that goes through material really fast and leaves out many small details in explaining complex subjects than this guys is really smart, what else can you say about someone that has degrees from Harvard and MIT, you can't take that away from him. I would only recommend taking his classes for students that have strong fundamentals in whatever subject matter he is teaching. On the none academic side of things he did make a point to let people know he spells his name in all lower case letters also he explicitly stated that it would be considered cheating if a student opened an email containing answers, perhaps this implies that faculty and staff have access to students' email accounts so I would watch out and not assume any privacy what so ever when it comes to electronic communication at the University of Virginia, since whoever may be snooping through your school or private email could always use the excuse "the air is free" in their own defense.

Hard professor, but very good class as he really makes you learn the material. Take home midterm and final, and homeworks took a very long time but very rewarding. But, I think he left for a different University for the time being so I'm not sure when he'll be back :(

This class legit made me feel like committing suicide. I had no clue what the hell he was talking about. I mean sure he danced to Pharrell's Happy and walked on ppls desk but man. Algo is a hard but a pretty useful class for job interviews but honestly I came out of that class more confused than before. It gets better though. The TAs are your best friend. You can work together on all the homework which you have a week to complete. Midterm was like the homework except you got no TA / classmates. Final was optional - if you did it, it could either raise or hurt your grade so I feel like most people didn't do it. There's no coding involved, just be able to explain your solution theory + time complexity.

WRITING THE REVIEW FOR ABHI BUT TOOK IT WITH BRUNELLE. course material takes a lot of time to understand. i spend roughly 6 days per day for the homework, once it's assigned. However, this class is one of my favorite class as in i don't feel like i'm just learning theoretical ideas that i cannot apply -- things learned can def be applied for even interviews and even real life just logical thinking. a lot of work but professor very flexible, material interesting, examples given in class easy to remember and fun, feels worthwile