Margaret Doucette

This professor has taught: MATH246, MATH246H, MATH401

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Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/06/2026	Seems like a chill person, though stopped going after week 2 since lectures were just reading off of Justin's notes. Class is not too hard, especially if you've had prior experience with Lin Alg. Matlab assignments were a decent grade booster and didn't even show up on the exam. Midterms were reasonable, the TAs taught everything in the lectures in 1/10th of the time in weekly discussion sections.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/27/2025	Exams are fair and u get a lot of partial credit. She's also nice and her lectures got better throughout the semester.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/18/2025	I have no idea why she's so hated. Yeah she's clearly new to lecturing, but she's clearly making a great effort to be a good fair professor. Over the course, I've seen her become a much better professor. Her exams are super fair, and match the level of questions she uses as example perfectly. Yes it's MATH246, you'll be studying quite a bit, but you'll be fine if you're putting in the effort. 5 stars would totally take again.
Margaret Doucette MATH246H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/18/2025	I will keep it short. Are her lectures perfect? No, but they are not bad by any means. She teaches well but could use more examples. She is, however, the nicest math teacher ever and gives you an absurd amount of fantastic resources. If you put in the work, read her lecture summaries, and just do some practice problems, you will do great in this class. She cares about her students, and is an incredibly nice grader as long as you proved you understood the general concepts on exams.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2025	Super nice, gave all the material needed to succeed. Every test was fair and the quizzes made sure you were keeping up timely. The TAs were insanely good and I really liked my discussions.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/16/2025	Doucette is an extremely nice teacher and genuinely cares about each and everyone of her students. Her exams are very fair, and she posts helpful reviews for each midterm. There are also weekly quizzes, which sounds bad, but I actually liked these because they were a good checkpoint to see how you were doing on the content. I would highly recommend taking Doucette for Math 246 if you get the chance. The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is that I would have liked to do more examples during lectures.
Margaret Doucette MATH246H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/13/2025	A lot of resources are provided for studying outside of class. Justin Wyss-Gallifent's notes in tandem with practice problems from the textbook were particularly helpful for me. For assignments: 3 midterms, 3 matlabs, 1 final - if you feel confident in the material it is not hard to do well on any of these. I think she does a good job of setting you up for success: go to class, study outside of class, and use the resources she gives you. One big thing that I really appreciated about the professor that I think is probably not emphasized enough: the teacher asked for feedback during the middle of the semester. AND, she very noticeably incorporated our feedback and her teaching improved (I think do more examples was a popular response). I wish all my professors did this. The only reason I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5 is that the beginning of the semester was a little rough. As other people have said, she stutters a bit and didn't do a great job of explaining concepts (though if you go through the online resources after class and study, it will make sense eventually). But, like I said, she improved drastically after receiving feedback, and has been much better since. I think she'll only continue to get better, and if she's teaching one of my later math classes I will happily take her again.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/13/2025	This course was not made to be one that students struggle through. Professor Doucette made it as lenient as possible, and made it clear that she is willing to help whenever. The quizzes and tests are very straightforward, and there is plenty of material for preparing. My TA, Sanghoon, made discussion extremely helpful, as he would cover what we needed to know. Sanghoon prioritized our learning and made the weekly quizzes a good opportunity for that.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/12/2025	Since this was MATH246, taking her felt fine - her lectures were sometimes improperly paced or didn't cover required material, and were sometimes difficult to follow - she still seems pretty new to lecturing. However, she gave many online resources, including alternative notes and additional review materials, which made the class content easy to catch up on. Halfway through the semester she changed the format of her lectures for the better, so she might be even better next semester.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/11/2025	Dr. Doucette is very nice; lectures can at times feel very dense / rushed, but that is more due to the amount of DiffEQ content rather than a fault of the professor. Ask a question literally any time during lecture, and she'll answer it immediately. Exams are very fair and build off of weekly quizzes, first exam average was 94%. At least with my TA, weekly quizzes were in the discussion section and mostly served as attendance. If you attend the lectures, the quizzes are a breeze, I think the average for the quizzes was 95%+ and they count for 15% of the grade. She also provides a lot of external resources and handouts, yeah you'll probably just cheg or organic chemistry tutor a concept you dont understand but its nice that its there.
Margaret Doucette MATH246H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/11/2025	Not sure why the other reviews are so bad, exams are usually fair and generously graded (averages in the mid to high 80s) and she is very nice and helpful in office hours. The lectures are sometimes hard to follow and could generally use more examples but its partly just that 246 is a very difficult class. But definitely read Justin's notes as they are very helpful for doing well on exams and problems.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/05/2025	Super nice teacher. Exams are super fair, you don't need to put in too much work to do well.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/18/2025	I have NO idea why her reviews are so low. For 246, she stated herself that the pacing of the class is not up to her. We cover an insane amount of material in this class, which can be difficult given that we only have two lectures a week + one discussion section that basically just serves as time to take our weekly quiz. However, she tells us what topics are going to be on the quiz beforehand, so as long as you do the practice problems, it should be an easy A--or a B at worst if you make a small computational error. Also, her exams are beyond fair. All I did to prepare was do all the practice problems, look at her extremely detailed lecture summaries, study guide, and one practice exam, and the midterm was basically the same thing. The average was an A. You can tell that she truly wants her students to succeed. Even though her explanations can be a bit hard to follow every now and then, I really do chalk that up to the unintuitive order/pacing of the course. (For example, you're allowed to take this course without having taken 240, even though linear algebra concepts quickly become fundamental to understanding the material.) All in all, this is the most fair math class I'm taking right now. I think most people giving her low reviews have just been spared from having a truly unfair math class and/or a professor that doesn't care. If you do the work, which trust me really isn't that much, you will be FINE. I'm sitting at a 99.25% right now having just done the textbook problems, study guide questions, and asking for help in office hours--which are useful by the way!! Math at UMD is hard. This class, however, is reasonable--and oftentimes even enjoyable.
Margaret Doucette Expecting an A Anonymous 09/19/2025	If you want to be given Justin's MATLAB projects, told to read Justin's notes, and have the lectures then be confusing instead of make sense, she's the best choice for that.
Margaret Doucette MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 09/05/2025	Assigned a quiz first week that has topics not covered in lecture. All over the place during lectures and very hard to follow.
Margaret Doucette MATH401 Expecting a B- Anonymous 08/14/2025	Dr. Doucette is not a bad professor, but I think she’ll get better over time. Her lectures can sometimes be confusing, for me mainly due to occasional backtracking to small, situational points instead of focusing first on the big picture idea. At times it makes explanations feel more complicated than they need to be. She is a very nice person, is open to feedback, and it does feel like she cares. All the assignments were more than fair, exams included. The course isn’t necessarily hard, I would just say you need to heavily rely on doing very well on the exams. The homeworks can be long at times, but the questions are usually straightforward or at least entertaining and fun. Groupwork really isn’t that bad, it isn’t necessarily super difficult, but if you can get a group of people you enjoy working together with it can fly by fast. If you are taking MATH401, just make sure you go over Justin’s notes and review, she’s a decent option and will definitely get better with time.
Margaret Doucette MATH246H Expecting a C Anonymous 05/27/2025	Lecture: This was her first time teaching so I expect it to get better but overall a mid to bad lecturer - she stutter a lot and go pretty fast sometimes. Obviously diffeq is a difficult class but I don't thinked it helped the majority of students' understandings when she would go over the proofs for formulas/methods for a long period of class. She got better at the end with more examples but other students and I completely stopped going to class after about 2/3s of the semester. I personally think that learning from the textbook website helped a ton, I would just either read through it or copy it and have ChatGPT explain it to me with examples, after I would do a ton of examples the textbook website gives. If you did this and went to lecture like a couple friends did you will understand lecture much more but probably not all of it. Tests: There were 2 midterms unlike other sections who had 3. The midterms were very fair she said multiple times that she doesn't want us to have to memorize the crazy formulas which was completely true, there was no mechanical vibrations or runge trapezoidal formulas on the tests or anything crazy even though she would go though them in class. If you don't procrastinate studying like I did then you will be fine on the tests just be really good at the main stuff and know when to use each method. Our averages were a B and a C with a B average on the final. The grading was also fair with a decent amount of partial credit, although she wouldn't give points back easily. Homework: There is homework in her class unlike other sections and if you take tests decently then I would recommend taking another section just because of this reason. If you take tests poorly then the homework will help because they were graded pretty easily if you put in effort. This was by far the worst part of the class there would be about 1 a week but they were insane especially if you weren't caught up on material. Pages and pages of work, on average I would say about 3-5 hours per homework if you do them with no help but some of them would be much worse. The matlab assignments were also crazy there were 3 but were definitely a lot.
Margaret Doucette MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2025	Pros: Pretty nice person Class is not hard at all for a math400 Pretty receptive to feedback IMO, this is her first time teaching at UMD Cons: Lectures are kind of all over the place, it's hard to learn/glean anything from them She also just reads off Justin's notes, once I realized this I never showed up for lectures Groupworks SUCK, they are done in groups of three but what always happens is one person does matlab one person writes and if you are not one of those you are kind of just sitting there. easy points but sometimes the most boring hr of my life Some of the homeworks are SO LONG Overall shes not the best, but if you have her you will be fine. She also improved over the semester and I can see her being a lot better in the future