B Balachandran

This professor has taught: ENME361, ENME489I, ENME664, ENME665

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Information	Review
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/26/2026	Super chill person
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/14/2026	Lectures are pretty confusing but he's great in office hours and super generous. You'll definitely need to spend time outside of class to learn the material.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 12/26/2025	Balachandran is a pretty bad lecturer, he goes through slides that are very thourough/overwhelming with long derivations and complicated examples that we don't really need and most people didn't understand. He also has a monotone voice so the 75 minute lecures at 9:30 AM were pretty hard to get through - he is kind of similar to hailu lectures just with slides. I am sure if you read through the textbook before lecture it would be much better. I only went to his office hours once and he is very nice and understanding, he allowed extentions on a few of my homeworks after a quick email and he always responds very fast - like within 10 minutes regardless of what hour it is. The textbook was decent and has the direct problems or similar ones to the homeworks/quiz questions so check if you get stuck (there is also a solution textbook if you look hard enough) but I learned most of the information directly from the homework and quiz problems and from ChatGPT working me through past problems. The homeworks were not too bad if you keep up with the material they always gave me above a 8.5/10 I think it was 6 points just for trying to do it. The quizzes I always got 10/10 even with wrong answers, but they were timed and a bit stressful. The project most people got 95% or above but depends on the group you get (random groups), make sure to start it at least a week before and ask TAs for help/checking it as the professor graded it decently strict and didn't give points back. The midterm was very fair no insane problems I think the average was around a C. The final had mostly fair questions, there was one or two that were pretty difficult but just make sure that you can work through every practice problem on your own, the average was a 74, and there was a 10% full class curve at the end (clutch). Overall the class was pretty hard content wise as its kind of dynamics and differential equations combined but he was a pretty good professor if you don't care about lecture that much (which I do which is why I gave him 3 star instead of 4), half the class didn't go to lecture after the first month.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/26/2025	I agree with the fact that Professor Balachandran cares about his students, however, he is not a great lecturer. Very nice guy in office hours, but his lectures are almost impossible to follow. It's for that reason that almost no one goes to class. I honestly can't believe for a class like this that someone would teach off of slides. The slides don't show step by step, rather jumping steps to save time. Once, he was asked a question about jumping steps, to which his response was: "Why didn't you learn this in high school?" This kind of class requires handwritten steps and he goes through the slides so quickly. The book is not much better, as he wrote it as well. Basically, it shows you questions much easier than the homework; so where do you figure out how to complete the homework? Well office hours aren't much help with the current TAs, so just try your best. Balachandran is an extremely smart person, but is not a good lecturer at all.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/25/2025	This prof cares a lot about his students but is very boring to listen too. The lectures weren’t very helpful, but the textbook (which he wrote) is extremely useful. The TAs were all great. Other than the professors, I would describe this class as dynamics on crack + differential equations, but seems pretty applicable to real life.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/25/2025	very kind man
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/17/2025	Only one midterm and a final. The midterm was pretty chill but the final just about killed me. There were homeworks and quizzes due almost every week. There was also one group project which required us to create a machine learning model… not really something that tested our understanding of course concepts in my opinion. The rubric for this project was also extremely unclear– my group matched the requirements in the outline, but we still lost a lot of points for not including the exact discussion points he wanted. He was also very strict about formatting despite not having much guidance about that during the course or on the rubric. My group complained during office hours and we did get points back, but I found it to be extremely frustrating as he basically admitted to skimming our work. I also strongly disliked the professor's teaching style, the slides were a mess which made it very hard to follow during lectures. I much preferred reading the textbook. While I didn't like his lectures, I will say that Balachandran is genuine, nice, professional, he knows his stuff, and genuinely wants the best for his students.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/17/2025	Super nice and a chill guy.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/10/2025	His lectures are dull and boring But he's very nice and helpful during office hours, walked me through the problem sets each and every time. Slides are always posted - sometimes a bit overly complex and cryptic with lotsa derivations - but everything you need is in there. He has literally like 3 problems for each chapter that he just recycles.
B Balachandran ENME361 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/25/2025	Professor Balachandran cares a lot about his students. He is super willing to help out in office hours in addition to scheduling to meet outside of his normal office hour times. In our lecture of about 175 students, he has learned many of the names of us who have atteneded office hours. The way he lectures can be hard to follow at times, but his textbook is very detailed and helpful. The homework can be hard, but again he is very willing to help students through it and you automatically get a 6/10 just for attempting it. He really cares about the well-being of his students in and out of the classroom.
B Balachandran ENME662 Expecting a B Alladin 12/20/2011	I took ENME662 Linear Vibrations or also called ENAE655 Analytical Dynamics with Prof. Balachandran. The book we used is Fundamentals of Vibrations by L. Meirovitch. Bala is a very tough professor. He is nice in personality but that doesn't help me to understand the course materials. He goes very fast in the lectures and the textbook is very difficult to read. Lots and lots of calculus and linear algebra. If you didn't ace all your undergrad Calculus then don't bother taking this class with Bala.
B Balachandran ENME361 Mike Shaffer 05/17/2011	Balachandran is a fair professor. He wrote the book for the class, and does a decent job and conveying the course material. There are periodic quizes, weekly homeworks, 2 midterms and a final. Fortunately, all of the exams we're reasonable and straight forward compared to what I had heard from other professors. I would recommend him for ENME361 if you can take it with him.