Dave Levin

This professor has taught: CMSC330, CMSC388U, CMSC389O, CMSC389R, CMSC396H, CMSC414, CMSC614, CMSC798, CMSC818F, CMSC818O

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Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting a B Anonymous 08/27/2024	I had an A in this class but he refused to acknowledge my regrade requests and ignored all my emails so I received a 17 percent on project 4 and my grade dropped 3 letter grades gg
Dave Levin INST335 Expecting an A- Anonymous 06/11/2024	Dr. Levin is a great professor; and very dedicated to her students. She is very knowledgeable in her field and committed to her students' success. Her lectures were not only informative but also engaging, and directly connected with real-world situations. Each class session felt like fun, and I always was looking forward to attending her lectures. Professor Levin is always accessible after lectures, she not only teaches but mentors students and she is eager to provide support every step of the way. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from her and cannot recommend her courses highly enough. If you have the chance to study under Professor Levin's guidance, grab it—you will not be disappointed.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2024	Dave's an engaging lecturer and explains topics relatively well. His exams are fair, but he likes to throw some curveballs. The projects were not too difficult, but the TAs were awful. The only issue is that he's really bad with course organization. Projects and midterms have an extremely late turnaround which can get quite annoying. However, he makes it up by lowering cutoffs and giving extra credit (up to 5%). He covered some topics this semester such as ML security which didn't fit in the scope of the class, and he also didn't do the traditional build-it/break-it which was disappointing.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2024	The content of this class is incredibly useful, even to those who are going for a career in software engineering, which is something the title might not initially suggest. Dave does a really good job of covering the essentials for all the topics in the class, without diving into details that aren't relevant. He reminded us regularly that this is not a course in networking or crypto, and thus when we get to the security of those topics we treat concepts as "black-boxes", as in he goes over applicable functionality without diving into details. This is something I really appreciated, because it kept the class relevant and focused on security. Assignments in this class are each weighted heavily because there aren't that many of them. Projects are generally somewhat difficult, but you have plenty of time to work on them and they reinforce the topics well. The exams are fair, the questions are hard but he gives tons of partial credit and practice exams. The grading in this course wasn't great. It took about 6 weeks to get our midterm 1 grade back, and some of the project grades didn't come back until weeks after the deadlines. Going into the last week of the semester a lot of students weren't sure where they stood in the class since we were missing a lot of our grades. He frequently missed the deadlines he set for himself to get grades back to us. This was my only real complaint with the class.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/16/2024	One of the best lecturers UMD has, but his research is what really makes them interesting. Always has funny stories and is a real expert in his field. Couldn't recommend this class (with Dave) any more to any CS undergrad. The content is super relevant, eye-opening, and you'll learn a lot. First two projects were most challenging. Take the class seriously and you'll be rewarded, not something that can be said about every upper level cs class.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/15/2024	Pros: Excellent lecturing Kind professor Reasonable grade distribution (projects are weighted 50% and exams are the other 50%) Nice workload (though I wish we have more practice) Cons: Piazza is fairly unanswered Projects are released far later than stated Grades are far behind schedule. Midterm 2 was a month after 1, but we took the 2nd midterm without having grades for the 1st. OH are limited <10 hrs a week total with insane queues. Dave is great. His TAs were the problem imo. I'm giving him 5 stars because he did a pretty great job overall.
Dave Levin CMSC396H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/30/2024	The guy is really great. The class has barely any work at all, really just a way to connect with professors to do research with. I was able to do that, so this class deserves an 5 star from me.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Anonymous 01/23/2022	He's nice and includes all sorts of really cool cybersecurity stuff in the lectures including some of his research. The course organization was stressful at times BUT he also gave us a million extensions and wild amounts of extra credit, and the exams were easy and take home. So it all works out, 5/5.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Anonymous 09/28/2021	Really interesting lectures and great instructor!
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/26/2020	(Disclaimer: had him during fall 2020 virtual semester) He’s a really chill and caring professor. Some of the projects were a bit difficult, but he provided plenty of extra credit so you can definitely make up for a poor project grade with that. We were virtual so tests were open note, but I thought they were fair.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Anonymous 06/08/2020	He is a super passionate professor that knows a lot about security. His lectures are great since he seems to really enjoy it, and brings up ideas from his research and experiences. The only negative of his lecture style is that he doesn't do a lot code modeling which hurts some students.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/17/2019	Great lecturer, poor administrator. He co-taught the class with Bobby and Michelle and logistics were an absolute nightmare. Project descriptions were changed in random, unpinned Piazza posts at a whim, right up until the day a project was due. Points were deducted arbitrarily as there was no grading rubric and no defined test cases on the submit server like there are in other cs classes, so if you fail a single edge case that might have been covered in one test on the submit server, it could cost you a lot of points. After a while into the semester his lecture start to sound more like Ted talks than informative lectures about cyber security. At least they were entertaining. Build it break it at the end of the semester was very disappointing. Most of the points were just for writing a report, and there was very little emphasis on actually trying to break your peer's code.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A- Anonymous 06/11/2019	He seemed like a good professor, but I think co-teaching 414 was a mistake. Between the three professors (Bobby, Michelle), he was the best lecturer but was barely there and oftened talked about the more interesting but less important (for exams) topics.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 10/23/2018	Favorite cs professor ive had. great lecturer. super nice guy. projects and exams were extremely fair
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 07/29/2018	Love this man. We would do our work in the student lounge, he would pass by and say hello since he recognized us and would hang out for a little while or ask us about the class. Always went up to him after lecture to ask questions and he was very cool about it. The material itself I became less and less interested in. The exams were quite open ended. A lot of short answers and a few multiple choice or word bank style questions thrown in. I did awful on all the exams, but fortunately the projects for the class were 50% of the final course grade. I did very well on all the projects but they were quite challenging...Basically they are a bunch of individual tasks you have to try out and they range from write a .c file that does this or make a txt file with a piece of code that does blah. I really disliked the final project which was a paired/team project. It caused me a lot of distress. Also several people did not submit a working project so there were only 20% of the class where you had to try and 'break' their code and write reports about it. Taking this class, I learned that Security is NOT for me. This class was more security than it was Networking which I actually like a lot more. Maybe the last month or so was focused on the Networking aspect of the class which I found quite disappointing. If you like security and networking, Dave is the man for you. His shiney bald head will make you fall in love with him.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/02/2018	Best lectures I've had for a computer science course. Lecture recordings were also posted online so attendance wasn't mandatory. Exams and projects weren't easy but they were certainty fair. Highly recommend taking CMSC414 with professor Levin.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/11/2018	Wonderful lecturer. Great teacher, and great guy in office hours. His projects are difficult and the specs contain typos, but I believe that is the fault of the grad student TAs, not Dave's. I recommend taking the class, but make sure we're working with someone.
Dave Levin CMSC414 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/04/2018	AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING Professor. One of the best professors I had at UMD.