As other reviews have said, this is a badly taught class. The professor spent a big chunk of class time running around spaying people with a water gun and generally behaving like a child, which I thought was strange behavior from a Stanford professor. Even though the mid-term and final were very difficult, and the class was badly taught with limited preparation, a lot of people got high grades on them. Most of the class was made up of athletes. I feel fairly confident assuming that the exams---which would not surprise if they have been used for many decades---have somehow leaked to the sports team and the fraternities. If you're not part of these groups, you will get screwed over due to the crap teaching and the tests which everyone else is apparently cheating on.

Badly taught class, don’t take. Also, it’s not at all an easy A. Not because the material is difficult, but because of the horrible teaching style. For a 3 unit class, it assigns a riddiclous number of projects and weekly assignments. Luckily these are graded easy. What really makes the class difficult are the two tests. Both the mid-term and final are very difficult, the latter more so. Both ask very specific, highly technical questions about sleep and rely on ambiguous wording and subtle wording tricks to trip you up. The final is worst in this regard. I found the review session for the final to be utterly useless. The review section focused almost entirely on parasomnias, but these ended up being only a very small portion of the final. Both the in-class lectures and the text book were not helpful in preparing for the final. The textbook reads like a polemic. It primarily expresses Dement’s deeply held belief that society as a whole—including the medical establishment, the government, and the general public—are deeply misinformed about sleep and are too resistant to his strongly held belief that the vast majority of people are dangerously sleep deprived. It is easy to read and fairly interesting, but the problem is that what it discusses what appears on the exams do not match up. The textbook must do a better job of properly presenting and reinforcing the technical scientific details that are so crucial for the exams, and steer away from the interesting but nevertheless endless and useless anecdotes about Dement’s long career in sleep advocacy. These do not help students pass the tests. As for the in-class lectures, they are like the textbook— useless. Dement was absent this quarter and Pelayo is not a gifted lecturer. His lectures were poorly organized. Guest speakers were a bore, except for the dude who brought his narcoleptic dog to class. Despite being boring and poorly organized, it’s essential that you listen very closely during these lectures as minor aspects of them will appear on the exams. Overall, don’t take the class as the exams make it so that getting an A is difficult, and a B very likely. The class is overall very overrated and seems to have had its heyday circa 1970. What it teaches about sleep is useful, but can be learned in a day or two of self-study rather than over a ridiculous 10 weeks.

Don’t take this with Vivian Brates. Vivian Brates demands too much work from her students; this class is way more work than the other versions of the course. Not only that, but she is far from understanding about any late assignments, even in the case of extenuating circumstances / medical issues. I was behind on a few assignments, and missed a few classes due to this, and she wouldn’t even give me Credit for a C/NC grade...absolutely ridiculous. Beware! The class also gets quite dry as she continues to repeat material, and the weekly visits to IIBA get old after maybe the fourth or fifth visit, so prepared to be exhausted for several hours each week for the latter half of the quarter. I’d recommend you to take the non-SL series for SPANLANG 13, but definitely take SPANLANG12SL as the other professor is a sweetheart!

CS103 isn't the same as before, as it now is plagued with a lot of bureaucracy. If you forget to tag questions on Gradescope at some point, your problem set won't be counted. If you don't select an answer for every question in lecture, you're counted as absent. There are also no sections, which they try to atone for by offering CS103A, but not everyone can attend, of course, and it's really just another lecture given there are so many students enrolled. Also, you now can only work with one partner rather than in a group. In short, these new policies are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the plethora of bureaucratic policies he has implemented and probably plans to implement in future quarters. Just read someone's comment below..."the culture of this class turned me off from continuing at Stanford at all." Keith is a good lecturer to some students, but sometimes too energetic and just flies through slides. I've also heard from others that he's not as nice of a person unless you're talking to him about the beauty of math. In other words, you will probably vibe with him more if math is your native language rather than English.

Would taking CS 107, CS 109, and EE 103 in one quarter be too much work?

Yes, it's the first large offering. Last quarter there was a small class pilot offering.

Is this a new course?

I took Econ 1 in fall 2017 with John Taylor. Some students were disappointed by the mostly theoretical treatment of economics that Econ 1 gives, but I think it provides a solid foundation for more applied topics (and anyway, it is required for Econ and Public Policy cores). Taylor is a capable lecturer but somewhat sleep-inducing, especially at 9:30 AM, and he lectured until 11:10 without a break (the upside is that we were let out 10 minutes earlier than planned). He explains the concepts clearly, however. Many people in my quarter found his 2014 online course on Stanford Lagunita and watched those instead, BUT bear in mind that lectures will cover topics not on the online course. Others read the book instead, which works since Taylor wrote the textbook and lectures basically come from the book, but also keep in mind that the book has far more detail than lectures and only what's in lecture will be tested. The best combination for me was attending lecture and supplementing with book reading if I was confused/wanted to know more. Other tips: Start problem sets ahead of time and go to office hours! They are doable if you understand the concepts very well, but getting help will make the difference between an A– and an A+. Related: if sections are on Thursday or Friday, get a Friday section time if possible; new psets were posted on Fridays, which put Thursday students at a disadvantage.

Great window into the kind of analysis linguists do! I came into this class with basically no linguistic experience and came away with a lot of tools for analyzing languages. Boris clearly cares a lot about what he teaches and helping you understand the concepts we learn in class: the class uses Piazza and he responds actively to questions we post there, plus his office hours are super helpful. Plus he explains things really well, even to people with no linguistic background. Be aware that homework was sort of unpredictably assigned when I took it (fall 2017): some weeks there was no homework at all and others we had long writeups. Also, the class is discussion-driven, so your experience will be vastly improved if you share a class with engaged and passionate classmates (which I was lucky to have). Overall 8/10 experience, would recommend to those exploring linguistics.

Hansen is hilarious. Very entertaining 1-unit class where he covers the basics of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, etc. and major cases associated with those. Plus there's a lunch with the attorneys at Skadden which was super helpful if you're thinking of going to law school. I'm impressed by the attendance throughout the quarter especially during week 10.

Such a useful class. Each class you try 5 different wines (and they give you a generous amount) so you develop a sense of what types of wines you like and dislike. Helps you understand what to look for when you go wine shopping or order wine at a restaurant.

Absolutely take this. It's only offered every other year and covers the history of swing dance from the 1920s to present. As always, Richard Powers is amazing.

Reingold wasn't a terrific lecturer, but fortunately his slides were very detailed so you could go back and read the slides carefully to understand the things you missed. Psets were much harder than the exams but fortunately office hours were super helpful. Honestly don't understand how some people did the entire class without ever going to office hours.

CS144 as a flipped class makes this class a lot of work since you have to watch several hours of videos in addition to the normal lectures. Guest lectures were mostly a waste of time and attendance was required. Take detailed notes on the videos as the midterm/final require you to remember the nitty-gritty facts. Assignments take much longer than the estimated time - assignment 3 was the hardest.

Great class, my favorite polisci class so far. I'm always impressed by how much Fukuyama knows and the density of information in his book Political Order and Political Decay. Lectures are fairly interesting though can be a bit dry and attendance is required. Minimal workload for a 5 unit class.

THIS IS A GREAT CLASS! I've had so much fun this quarter in our class of about 7. We have snacks every Tuesday night and talk about all kinds of topics related to sex and sexuality. I am looking forward to staffing at SHPRC next quarter but you don't have to want to staff at shprc to take the class. Plenty of my Classmates just want to supplement their sex Ed knowledge or want to work at HIV pact or other organizations.

The BRIDGE class is a great one to take whether or not you are interested in staffing at the Bridge. The lectures provide interesting information and the QPR unit is invaluable. The attendance is very strict for good reasons so just make sure you can absolutely make it to every class. It was a great experience this quarter.

Chung Lao shi is absolutely amazing and a star of the department. I loved this class so much this quarter. She makes the material engaging and easy to follow. My speaking improved immensely unlike other mandarin classes I've taken. I definitely suggest this course to everyone interested in taking a foreign language class.

Amazing course with lecture series, movie nights, and twice a week section meetings. I had Jeremy Sabol for my section leader and it made the whole experience amazing. The engaging material, fantastic community, and opportunities for growth make it a wonderful option for freshmen. An excellent intro to the humanities at Stanford.

The course material is very interesting and Keith is one of the most fantastic lecturers I have ever seen. However, the grading for this course is very inconsistent. Some TAs graded down on stylistic matters which other TAs advocated for. This made the course very frustrating.

Took it with Nick Troccoli who's a great instructor. He's funny and makes CS fun. I was expecting the course to be really easy after looking at the grade distribution but that wasn't the case — this was probably the hardest A I worked for. The midterm is challenging and the assignments were fun but hard. The class was great fun and I learned a lot, but it's also challenging and time-consuming.

Took it with Nick Troccoli who's a great instructor. He's funny and makes CS fun. I was expecting the course to be really easy after looking at the grade distribution but that wasn't the case — this was probably the hardest A I worked for. The midterm is challenging and the assignments were fun but hard. The class was great fun and I learned a lot, but it's also challenging and time-consuming.

Is there a recent syllabus for this class to be found anywhere? The only one I could find is eleven years old and contains no information about the requirements of the final project.

If you are a potential HumBio major you are required to take both sides of the Core. You may now take A & B side separately if you are not planning to be a HumBio major.

Is this worth taking as a social science researcher over other classes? I.E. Do you really need to devote a whole class to survey design?

It was alright. I feel like it was hyped up because Lee Ross was teaching it, but it sort of just felt like storytime with Lee; we covered a lot of the fundamental components of social psych, but I wouldn't say it was particularly engaging.

This class gives you a range of new ideas in systems and OSs. Each week you read and discuss two papers, and there are a few small programming projects. Overall a fairly interesting, not too stressful class

Took this class in Spring 2017 with Emma Brunskill. The assignments were very applied (implementation of Deep QNetwork). Emma did a nice job balancing between applications and theory in lectures. The final project was fun, and I felt like the in-class midterm was well designed.

Makler is the best professor I've had at Stanford. He is caring and makes sure every student has the opportunity to succeed.

Based on the first class for Spring quarter 2017, can someone comment on the expected workload? Also, how does it differ from CS142?