Reviews for CMSC848K

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Jia-bin Huang CMSC848K Anonymous 12/29/2025	Overall, this course was poorly designed and poorly administered. The paper reviews and midterms felt largely pointless, as many exam questions were drawn from a small subset of the reviewed papers rather than from the actual course content. This might have worked if each week focused on a single paper, but instead we were assigned multiple papers to choose from, making performance on the midterms largely a matter of luck. Students who happened to review the papers that appeared on the exams did well, while others were unfairly penalized. Second, although cheatsheets were allowed, they were of little use because the exams emphasized specific papers, algorithms, and methods rather than the broader concepts taught in class. The course felt scattered and unfocused, which is especially disappointing for a graduate-level offering. I would strongly recommend to anyone considering this course with this Professor to look elsewhere (even to online alternatives) rather than investing time in a course with essentially zero ROI. Lastly, be aware that this course is also likely to hurt your GPA as it did mine. Grade distributions are not posted, annotated exams are never returned, and no official solutions are provided, leaving students with no meaningful feedback. Overall, taking this course was a major disappointment and a decision I deeply regret. Prof. Huang is undoubtedly a highly accomplished and experienced researcher; however, based on my experience in this course, his teaching in this course was uber underwhelming.