Marine Carpuat

This professor has taught: CMSC421, CMSC422, CMSC470, CMSC723, CMSC828B, CMSC828I, CMSC848D, INST735, LING723

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Marine Carpuat Expecting a C Anonymous 11/27/2025	A raw mean of 70% (±13.5 SD) is not “solid”; it’s cruel, outdated, and belongs to the hyper-competitive, deliberately punishing systems found in some East Asian universities, not an American classroom in 2025. The actual grading is also brutally harsh on top of the distribution: this forced roughly half the class into C/D/F territory despite genuine effort and directly triggered mental-health issues in at least one student because of this course alone. Rigor is fine. Celebrating preventable psychological harm as “high standards” is not. Deliberate punishment is not pedagogy.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 11/21/2025	I genuinely wanted to learn this material, but the way the course was run made that almost impossible. It’s hard to express how much I dislike this course. It’s structured very poorly: it’s extremely fast-paced with almost no room to actually retain the material. The assignments don’t reflect what you need to know to do well on the exams, and the textbooks are pretty unhelpful if you’re new to ML. I’m not even going to say much about the grading (yes, it’s very punitive, likely due mostly to the TAs) because others have already covered that. The instructor seems to assume that if one person gets an A on the midterm, then everyone should be able to get an A, which completely ignores the reality that students juggle many responsibilities. It’s not just “do research,” “teach,” eat, and sleep. Her teaching style ends up overwhelming students and reinforcing unnecessary competition, especially coming from someone who didn’t go through the same level of modern academic pressure, unstable economy, or constant distractions. Overall, the class was mentally draining because of the uncertainty around how to actually learn and retain the material, what to expect on exams, and how to find reliable resources for long-term understanding. By the second midterm, the stress had taken a significant toll on, I’m sure, the majority of the class. Amazing and thank you!
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting a D+ Anonymous 11/20/2025	I agree with the latest reviews, and I really discourage you from taking this course with her. It’s just very bad. Half of the class literally got a D on Midterm 2, and she called it a “solid performance”? OK, let me be honest—half of the class did better on Midterm 1 by getting away with a C-. How is that solid? Maybe there’s something wrong with how the course is being taught and structured. She seems completely unaware of the issues in the class. It's okay with her that half the class is doing well while the other half is failing. This basically means she doesn’t question why 50% of the class is failing. For her, the most important thing is that a small portion of the class does well, and the rest should just be “failures,” which she accepts as normal. I’m not the type of person who doesn’t put in effort and then blames the professor for that. Even in the most difficult core CS classes at UMD, I could get a B+ or higher if I put in a lot of effort. This class, however, is different. You can put in a lot of effort but still get lost when you're taking the exam. The issue might also be with the slides and the lack of practice material. Unfortunately, this semester was super stressful because of this class. I just want to warn others about the potential distress this class can cause, despite your best efforts to learn and perform well.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Anonymous 11/19/2025	horrible tests, confusing teaching, nothing good. I've never learned so little. Feels like I'm memorizing. can't perform well even if I tried tbh
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/15/2025	Prof. Carpuat seems like a very nice person, so I don’t want or intend to make personal criticisms or insults toward her — just share my experience with the class. First off, there is a lot of emphasis on memorization (even if she never directly admits it). It genuinely feels like the class is training us for a competitive memorization bee rather than machine learning. Instead of relying on memorization, there should be a broader and more diverse set of practice problems after each topic so students can actually understand and retain concepts through, you know, practicing. Students aren’t going to magically derive new ideas on the spot — especially not when the slides barely explain the material in the first place. If the foundational explanations are weak, you can’t expect students to perform theoretical acrobatics on an exam. The cheat sheet on exams isn’t really helpful either when you don’t know how to use it because the slides are bad. Am I supposed to analyze and figure out each slide on my own? Unfortunately, I can’t, because I have other classes and responsibilities (like job searching in this bad market). Also, the midterms are borderline impossible to finish on time; they feel like the SAT, except with fewer breaks and more panic. The point distribution is baffling: somehow a multiple-choice question can outweigh an open-ended one that requires actual reasoning. Grading is strictly “right/wrong,” and partial credit is treated like a rare mineral you have to mine via a regrade request on Gradescope. In regard to the TAs, they act as if they’re doing charity work by helping students or grading assignments. Guys, undergrads pay tuition. We don’t have funding or tuition remission like PhDs, so please take TA responsibilities seriously. The number of grading mistakes is honestly impressive in the worst way. And one TA is borderline dismissive toward students. Yes, we know you’re all busy revolutionizing research science with your “Einstein discoveries” and preparing your Silicon Valley IPOs, but TAing is still part of the job. Treating it like an unpaid internship doesn’t magically make it one. Her teaching style isn’t very effective. Every time she asks a question in class, it’s clear the majority of the room is lost. And while pre-class reading is important, the textbook she assigns does not clearly lay out the foundations of ML. She may think students are struggling because of the math, but that’s not actually the problem; the issue is the chaotic slides and unclear explanations. There’s an overwhelming amount of theory with very little practice to anchor any of it. Then there’s the SVM (or any other topic) situation. You’d expect a core ML topic to come with diverse practice problems. Instead, we get about 10 nearly identical questions across quizzes, problem sets, and practice exams. Same structure, same notation, same tiny subset of concepts. Meanwhile, the midterm features completely different SVM topics that only showed up in two or three theoretical slides. At this point, I genuinely can’t tell if this is intentional — like a way to force a “normal distribution” so fewer people do well — or just poor planning. The class is generally demotivating. You’d think that a course this central to AI would be taught with enthusiasm and would foster a real learning environment, but no. Instead, the class makes you feel like you’re not good enough because the focus is entirely on exams, not understanding. Why are there no projects? Because she’s convinced everyone will cheat using AI. Maybe instead of eliminating projects, design them so that AI isn’t enough to do the intellectual heavy lifting — just like in actual research, where a model spitting out code doesn’t magically produce hypotheses, perform data analysis, or make expert judgments. This class is just too much of emotional lifting, so I'm good with bare minimum of studying for the "right/wrong" final exam moving forward. I can't definitely go on with how disappointing this class has been but overall, the course doesn’t feel thoughtfully structured. It feels like something thrown together and held together with theory-heavy slides and a hope that students will just figure everything out on their own.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 11/13/2025	From my perspective, the grading was harsh, and the support from the TAs (John Kanu and Manan Suri) didn’t feel sufficient for the level of difficulty. They often seemed unfamiliar with parts of the material, which made getting help frustrating. It also felt like this course wasn’t a major priority for the instructor. Based on my experience, I’d recommend taking this class with a different professor who has stronger reviews.
Marine Carpuat Expecting a C- Anonymous 11/13/2025	In my experience, the material itself isn’t very difficult, but the way it’s taught made the class feel much harder than it needed to be. The lectures and slides felt vague and not very supportive, almost like we were expected to figure things out on our own. The exams were extremely tough, and overall the course felt much more stressful than it should have.
Marine Carpuat Expecting a C Anonymous 11/13/2025	The material is not difficult in itself, but you might think you didn’t do well because of a poor math background. That’s not true. The professor doesn’t know how to properly teach the material. The slides are not very detailed, almost as if implying, “fend for yourself.” The exams are brutal. The grading is brutal as well, especially because of the TAs — John Kanu and Manan Suri. The TAs don’t seem qualified to teach the course, possibly because they are not familiar with the material or with the American education system. It also seems like this course is the last thing on Marine’s mind. I could go on about how stressful this semester was because of this class. Take it with someone else who has more reviews and credibility.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting an F Anonymous 11/11/2025	I don’t understand where the positive comments about the class structure are coming from. Yes, ELMS is organized, but the lectures and homework don’t actually help with understanding the material (the class relies mostly on Eastern-style rote memorization). Her exams are unreasonably difficult, and the grading is extremely harsh; even small mistakes are treated as "fatal". It feels like she expects undergrads to perform at a graduate level. I didn’t get much out of this class and wouldn’t recommend taking it with her.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2024	Marine is a good professor who is very knowledgeable about ML topics. The concepts are interesting, but I found the class structure (this was probably a result of co-teaching with Furong) was rather strange, since we were responsible for watching Furong's lectures as well. The slides in this class are not good (to learn concepts, I would do the discussion slides and look at videos from Youtube to understand concepts). However, the assignments are pretty straightforward and exams (both final and midterm) were fairly simple. Overall, nice class, but needs better organization and better slides.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/16/2024	Marine is a very knowledgeable professor who explains topics well and can answer questions during class extremely well. She is understanding and accommodating while not being a pushover. The class is organized well and homework and exams are fair. I definitely recommend Marine.
Marine Carpuat CMSC422 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/24/2024	Great teacher!!! Well organized, clearly explains topics
Marine Carpuat CMSC421 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2021	The course was well planned. All projects were all public tests so you knew your grade when you turned it in. Lectures at times were unengaging. Recorded all lectures so you didn't have to attend.
Marine Carpuat CMSC421 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/09/2021	Insanely generous professor. We had a dropped homework and PROJECT. Incredible! However, the lectures are unengaging and I found it faster and more effective just to review lecture slides.
Marine Carpuat CMSC421 Anonymous 09/21/2021	She's okay, some things are a little confusing and the projects so far are acceptable. Sometimes her accents make things a little hard to understand. However, the slides are nice and clear, you just have to download them before hand and take notes while she teaches.