CS 4630

Look to take this for a easy elective. Firstly, Yuan is super nice and seems to really care about her students, but she is not the most captivating lecturer. I didn't go to class after she stopped taking attendance, and you probably don't really need to at all. There were 5 homework assignments throughout the semester, which take up 70% of your grade. There first two are especially challenging, but are doable with TA help. They are also assigned really far in advance to your due date though, so you have ample time to work on them. There are three in-class labs that happen throughout the semester, which go to your attendance grade (10%). If you show up to these you'll get full credit. She also takes attendance on one random day of class that goes towards this grade, which I mentioned earlier. The final is take home and worth the remaining 20% of your grade, as was a bit longer than I expected but definitely still doable.

TLDR: Easy elective to take, can learn a lot about info-sec if you really want to lol

This is an interesting class and professor to review. I have very mixed feelings about the class, and what you will take away from it will depend largely on you.

Alright, let me get the negatives out of the way first: Tian is not a good lecturer, period. It is not that she doesn't try, but man, I really hate to say it but sometimes it is just hard to understand her. I hate to bring up a negative point that is really not her fault, but to give a fair review I have to mention it, because it was impossible for me to sit through an entire lecture without daydreaming or losing focus. A typical lecture would go like this: show up, pay attention during announcements, pay attention for the first 10 minutes, get confused because you cannot understand 20% of the words being said, tune out the rest of class and code for another class or just browse the web. What is rather disappointing about this is that the material itself is really interesting, and a positive I can give Prof. Tian that I have seen as negatives for other professors is that much of the material is relevant even today. Of course, not all of it, but far more than past professors.

Another positive (or negative depending on your point of view) is the grading. My goodness, it is easy to grab an A. In my opinion, you would have to really, really not care to not get an A. There are 5 homeworks totalling 70% of your grade (14% each). Homeworks are 70% of the grade, and if you went through intro to cybersecurity, then these homeworks will be a breeze, minus maybe the first one, but even that isn't too ridiculous. There are 4 online, open-note quizzes and one of them is dropped (Those 3 quizzes only count for 10% of your grade). The difficulty of those quizzes depends on the TA who makes it. We've had one really easy one, one intermediate, and one ridiculously hard one so far. There is a final exam worth 15% of your grade, however I cannot speak to its difficulty because ours was cancelled due to COVID. But to give you an idea about how easy this class is, instead of simply scaling up the other portions of the class to calculate our grade, she GAVE EVERYONE THE 15% FOR FREE. I know, right? That does not even account for the ridiculous amounts of extra credit you can collect: you can get up to 15% for participating in class, doing extra work on the homework assignments (which is usually honestly less work than the actual homework itself), and participating in optional labs. So, even if you don't pay attention in lecture and bomb the final, there is no excuse to not get at least a B+.

Finally, to speak a bit more on the professor herself, Prof. Tian really, truly does care about her students -- it's very obvious. She is very kind and approachable, and I had no problems with her other than the lecture thing, which is not even her fault. Additionally, she is clearly very knowledgeable in cybersecurity -- we would be discussing relevant topics in mobile security where out of nowhere she would mention something like "WE informed company X about this flaw." I haven't taken advantage of it yet, but I would imagine she is a great resource for any student interested in cyber-security.

In conclusion, here is what I meant when I said that what you will take away from it will depend largely on you. The material is there in the slides -- if you are a budding cybersecurity expert trying to learn as much as you can, and you have to motivation to try and sit through the lectures (or better yet, I've found doing indepedent research on the material on youtube or google to be more efficient and useful), you will learn a lot of cool stuff. But, if you are looking for a class to take to fill out your last CS elective, and you don't give one iota about cyber security, you will not learn much. Since the grading is so easy (I believe her first semester teaching it the average GPA was 3.94, and that was with all students taking the final!), there is little external motivation to learning the material. You need to have the internal motivation to do so. So, TLDR; here's my recommendation for 3 types of people:

1. People like myself: Ones who like to learn cool, new things, but know you will be too lazy to do the extra work to do so if there is no external motivation: Don't take this class. You will end up doing the bear-minimum to scoop your A and move on, and you will empty inside knowing you didn't learn much.
2. People interested in cyber security or those with high internal motivation to learn any material: Take this class. There is a lot here, and a lot of fascinating attacks that are still relevant. You will learn a lot AND have the added benefit of a free A.
3. People who need an easy elective for whatever reason and won't feel guilty about doing the bear minimum: Take this class. It's a free B+ at minimum assuming you don't bomb the homeworks.