GVPT474 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
David Karol GVPT474 Anonymous 12/27/2023	Here's what I will say about Prof. Karol, an incredibly knowledgeable guy about political parties, but he can't teach you about it. He is one of those men who should stick to writing books about this information and not try to teach it because he is categorically unable to. He assigns an immense amount of reading (about 80 pages per class) that is very dense and boring, making it difficult to retain information. Then he'll give you about 10 pop quizzes throughout the semester on these readings. There is also a midterm and a final which contain information he has never really talked about. Unless you are some genius who keeps up with every political move from the last century, it is nearly impossible to understand what is going on. He also assigned a 15-page paper the week after our midterm. Next, he grades on participation, which to me is something you do in middle school. I think it is completely unfair to grade people on participation when they may just be shy and speaking up in class is hard. Overall, definitely never going to take a class with him again, while I admire him for trying to teach university students about this stuff, he shouldn't be surprised why these once popular classes that used to have 60 seats now have about 4 students in each of them.
David Karol GVPT474 Anonymous 05/01/2023	Don't listen to the review posted on 4/21/23. That's a review for GVPT475, not 474. Also, probably Karol's burner.
David Karol GVPT474 Anonymous 12/24/2022	Finished the class with an 89.98… He did not round up. That should tell you everything you need to know. If you’re still not convinced that Karol has no heart, he assigned a midterm with a 15 page paper due shortly after. He shuts you down every time you raise your hand and then complains when no one wants to participate. He assigned 8 pop quizzes over the course of the semester, so if you don’t want the added stress of being randomly quizzed, I advise you don’t take his class(es). Karol consistently assigned 60-80 pages of reading from academic journals per night and the quizzes were solely based on the readings. I would spend hours upon hours just trying to get through his readings… So many hours it would be to the point where I lost sleep over this class. After losing all that sleep, I would wake up in fear that there would be a quiz that day. Almost all of his quiz questions contained double and triple negatives in the wording (on top of the questions already being true/false), so I and my peers would spend a majority of the allotted quiz time simply making sense of the questions. Despite him insisting that the quiz questions were not intended to be trick questions, they certainly were! He would always project the correct quiz answers on the board after the quiz was over to go over it with the class, and we could see the percentages of students who got the correct answer. On two separate occasions 15% or less of the class got the correct answer (on a true/false) and he refused to omit the question! The question was very obviously written in a way that made no sense to students, and he would not take the blame. He also never posts slides because it “serves as an incentive for students to come to class.” While I agree with this sentiment, Karol spends the first 40 minutes of class on the first slide, leaving almost no time to cover the actual content of the course. I had another class 15 minutes after his class which was in a different building, and Karol would consistently hold us for 5 to 10 minutes after class was over. He left me almost no time to get to my other class. It was during these 5 to 10 minutes that he held us that he would go through the final 5-7 slides (which were the genuinely important slides), forcing everyone to frantically jot down the notes as quickly as possible. After multiple complaints, he still refused to post the slides! Even our TA (who was the designated note-taker !!) told him to post the slides. He still refused! While I personally have no experience emailing him, peers have told me that he never responds to emails either. Due to his tendency to make students feel as worthless as possible, he is overall a very unapproachable professor. Absolutely miserable class. Would not recommend.

David Karol
GVPT474

Anonymous
12/27/2023

Here's what I will say about Prof. Karol, an incredibly knowledgeable guy about political parties, but he can't teach you about it. He is one of those men who should stick to writing books about this information and not try to teach it because he is categorically unable to. He assigns an immense amount of reading (about 80 pages per class) that is very dense and boring, making it difficult to retain information. Then he'll give you about 10 pop quizzes throughout the semester on these readings. There is also a midterm and a final which contain information he has never really talked about. Unless you are some genius who keeps up with every political move from the last century, it is nearly impossible to understand what is going on. He also assigned a 15-page paper the week after our midterm. Next, he grades on participation, which to me is something you do in middle school. I think it is completely unfair to grade people on participation when they may just be shy and speaking up in class is hard. Overall, definitely never going to take a class with him again, while I admire him for trying to teach university students about this stuff, he shouldn't be surprised why these once popular classes that used to have 60 seats now have about 4 students in each of them.

David Karol
GVPT474

Anonymous
05/01/2023

Don't listen to the review posted on 4/21/23. That's a review for GVPT475, not 474. Also, probably Karol's burner.

David Karol
GVPT474

Anonymous
12/24/2022

Finished the class with an 89.98… He did not round up. That should tell you everything you need to know. If you’re still not convinced that Karol has no heart, he assigned a midterm with a 15 page paper due shortly after. He shuts you down every time you raise your hand and then complains when no one wants to participate. He assigned 8 pop quizzes over the course of the semester, so if you don’t want the added stress of being randomly quizzed, I advise you don’t take his class(es). Karol consistently assigned 60-80 pages of reading from academic journals per night and the quizzes were solely based on the readings. I would spend hours upon hours just trying to get through his readings… So many hours it would be to the point where I lost sleep over this class. After losing all that sleep, I would wake up in fear that there would be a quiz that day. Almost all of his quiz questions contained double and triple negatives in the wording (on top of the questions already being true/false), so I and my peers would spend a majority of the allotted quiz time simply making sense of the questions. Despite him insisting that the quiz questions were not intended to be trick questions, they certainly were! He would always project the correct quiz answers on the board after the quiz was over to go over it with the class, and we could see the percentages of students who got the correct answer. On two separate occasions 15% or less of the class got the correct answer (on a true/false) and he refused to omit the question! The question was very obviously written in a way that made no sense to students, and he would not take the blame. He also never posts slides because it “serves as an incentive for students to come to class.” While I agree with this sentiment, Karol spends the first 40 minutes of class on the first slide, leaving almost no time to cover the actual content of the course. I had another class 15 minutes after his class which was in a different building, and Karol would consistently hold us for 5 to 10 minutes after class was over. He left me almost no time to get to my other class. It was during these 5 to 10 minutes that he held us that he would go through the final 5-7 slides (which were the genuinely important slides), forcing everyone to frantically jot down the notes as quickly as possible. After multiple complaints, he still refused to post the slides! Even our TA (who was the designated note-taker !!) told him to post the slides. He still refused! While I personally have no experience emailing him, peers have told me that he never responds to emails either. Due to his tendency to make students feel as worthless as possible, he is overall a very unapproachable professor. Absolutely miserable class. Would not recommend.

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