Akshat Patel

This professor has taught: INST346, INST464

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Information	Review
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/16/2025	Decently easy-going cybersecurity course, and definitely take it if you want to start exploring the security world. Lectures sometimes felt boring with a lot of theory, but homework made them meaningful.
Akshat Patel INST346 Anonymous 12/16/2025	Professor Patel is a very genuine and kind guy. He supported me with my work when I needed help the most, without making me feel like I was dumb or not serious about the deadline. I found him very helpful. The examples he uses helped me relate the concepts directly to the real world, and I truly, truly enjoyed his class. Labs are also engaging; TAs sometimes fumble and struggle to support, but overall a great handson experience. I would take any course Professor Patel teaches. I am very happy to pass with an A-.
Akshat Patel INST346 Anonymous 12/09/2025	I was excited at the start of the course, but my perspective has changed. It feels like the instructor lacks sufficient cybersecurity knowledge to teach this subject effectively. This has affected the learning experience, and I hope the department reviews the course structure and instructor qualifications to ensure better alignment with the field.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/08/2025	The professor is really kind and easily reachable. A lot of the class is self-paced, but definitely do-able.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2025	Smooth class but can be tough to manage all the homework altogether. The professor is fairly good and helped with makeup assignments without deducting points. He is not teaching spring 26 or after he said, but if he does, there’s nothing wrong with taking him but good.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/02/2025	A good class to take! The networking concepts the course emphasizes are not at all complex. I would have enjoyed the class more if there had been more discussions about BGP, OSPF beyond just the basics. But the class was good, and the professor waived the late penalty once. It's an easy score if you put in work, but the workload is huge.
Akshat Patel Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/26/2025	This professor is terrible changed the class async midway through the semester and the packet tracer models just felt like pure busy work.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/20/2025	Doesn't know how to teach properly just long videos and lengthy assignments doesn't mean a good class structure
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/17/2025	Project-based learning! A good starter if you're interested in diving into the cybersecurity world. Prof is good and flexible with due dates and lectures. Content sometimes feels like it could be taught better, but since this is AK's first time, no complaints. I took the professor's help to get some ideas on my fraud detection of network project; super helpful, and the ideas he gave worked wonders for me. I'm here to say this as I won JP morgan hackathon yesterday by making what AK suggested and helped, very grateful for dude's help
Akshat Patel INST346 Anonymous 11/17/2025	Not a Native American, but what the professor says makes sense if you stick to the example he gives. He has a very bad habit of making one example and using the same cast in all the rest of the lecture. If you miss it in one slide, you won't be able to pick up from the next slides as it builds on the previous one. But ngl, he is greatly knowledgeable and wants you to succeed. I was unsatisfied at the start of the semester, but now I feel good about being in his class. Not teaching the next sem prof said, but if he does, take him, you won't regret it.
Akshat Patel INST346 Anonymous 11/16/2025	Very lengthy class! Prof is flexible and accommodating and teaches well. Liked his way of linking topics with basic examples to explain bigger more complex topics.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/14/2025	Interesting course topics, but could have been more interesting if there were some practicals included in the curriculum
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/14/2025	Akshat is a okay professor, he relays information well and is organized. Grades easy but could be TA's
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/13/2025	Take this class with any other prof. Course concepts are genuinely very interesting but he is not the right person to teach. He reads off of another professors slides and doesn't even try to clarify or help students so you're basically self teaching. Excessive amount of busy work as well, have not had a good experience taking this course.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/12/2025	Cool professor and chill course. Learned about the theoretical GRC side concepts!! Don't expect any practicals, nothing like that in this course at least, but the course is doable, and the professors' support helped me to finish it smoothly.
Akshat Patel Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/05/2025	He is a cybersecurity legend, had a great chat during a meeting and he listened to my interest and helped me prepare a roadmap. He cares about his student's success a lot and that's very obvious. His lectures feel not interesting to be honest, but if you ask the right questions, then you will enjoy. Take him, recommend him for this course to anyone in the infofan who wants to progress in networking and security, as this class greatly prepared me for 464.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/03/2025	Young dude, lots of hubris. Not prepared for teaching. Doesn't understand the concepts he's teaching. Much rather take this class with anyone else
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/02/2025	Hate the Packet Tracers, assignments in this course. Time consuming. Professor helps whenever I asked via email and hosted a office hours for me. But this course sucks for sure
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/30/2025	horrible professor, doesn't teach and doesn't try to be helpful. Midway through the semester instead of having lectures he just posts old content and went pseudo-async, except he doubled the homework and busy work. Just awful.
Akshat Patel INST346 Anonymous 10/29/2025	I found this course to be quite manageable thanks to the professor. He made some of the lectures asynchronous because he understands that this class is not my first priority as I'm a non tech lazy girl. Although the course material is incredibly dull (yes I'm talking about packet tracers)0, he makes an effort to make it interesting. Overall, excellent professor for this bad class. Take him as this professor is a recent grad and understands what students want the most to learn rightnow
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/28/2025	Low effort, lazy, rude. His videos that we need to watch for packet tracer are over an hour long, every single time. Some weeks you have 2 videos. BTW, the video quality is 240p or 360p, so rather than actually following along you are spending all your time squinting at the screen to see what the 6 and a half pixels are trying to tell you. Instead of actually reproducing the video for us, he just reuses old content. Pure laziness. Do not take this professor.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 10/25/2025	i went under surgery recently and was not able to attend the regular zoom classes and discussion sessions. I was stressed about how I would be able to recover by grade and learning. I contacted the professor directly and explained everything. He gave me time slots for his in person office hours and in total of 4 office hours, prof helped me with all the major concepts got covered in the class till now plus gave me hints in homework where I got stuck. I like the examples he added while teaching me, which helped me a ton. Very happy. TAKE HIM!! He cares about his students.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/16/2025	The lecturer is really kind and accommodating. There are moments when work feels a bit daunting and boring, but not separate final project and homeworks build your final project which is good for me.. However, this course has shown me that I hate cybersecurity, so there's that.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/15/2025	Knowledgeable prof. with a chill style. Assignments are lengthy but not very tough, no midterms, which keeps things fair. Strong class for building foundations in networking/architecture, but you’ll enjoy it most if that area already interests you otherwise it will be boaring
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/28/2025	This professor sucks. Do not take him unless you want to hate yourself because his lectures are terrible, he just rambles and gets nowhere, his slides are terrible for reviewing and you're basically teaching yourself everything when you do the homework with infinitely long directions that don't even tell you what to do for some of it. They deleted his old reviews I assume because they were all bad.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting a B Anonymous 09/21/2025	When I asked this professor to clarify a topic in class, he literally scoffed at me and said "this is a easy concept, what don't you understand"
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A- Anonymous 09/19/2025	I came into this class with high hopes taking a professor that was young and had relevant industry experience, but I am disappointed to say the least. He does not teach. He only sits there an reads slides, if you ask him any questions he brushes you off, work in the class is crazy with tons of extra outside learning. He expects you to do multiple readings in order to do the homework, and none of his lecture content is actually applicable to what is being graded.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 09/18/2025	This guy somehow takes the most interesting topics and turns it into a lullaby to put you in bed. He skips over topics and concepts and doesn't go in depth enough in class then expects you to do learn everything on your own. While he does respond to office hour requests, if you ask him questions he becomes visibly annoyed and gives you short snappy answers.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/17/2025	There is too much content to study, and this course covers many different topics. For someone like me who has never taken tech-savvy courses, it becomes tough to stay on track but overall it is doable even though it is time consuming. The professor uses lots of examples which helps me understand the content more easily. But lot of workkkk. I suggest taking this course a bit earlier and not waiting for the senior year
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting a B Anonymous 09/16/2025	I would take anyone else if you could or just don't take this class as an elective. He barely teaches and has a intense accent that leaves you scrambling to figure out what he's saying. I booked an appointment with him for office hours and he was incredibly dismissive of my questions simply because I was trying to learn more. This professor will outright hinder you when trying to learn and understand the concepts he is trying to teach.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/16/2025	I would submit a 0 star if I could. This professor does not teach at all and briefly goes over topics that require a much further dive to understand. But that would not be the worst part, as this professor was heard over zoom telling his TAs to submit positive reviews for him on planetterp. This is a insane ethical and moral violation, rather than improving his teaching he is instead trying to game the system. Downright upsetting to me as a student.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 09/16/2025	The course is very demanding making it tough to manage other classes at the same time. The professor is very accommodating and helped me with my doubts, but the thing is, you need to book an appointment with him, so there are no fixed hours. Still, he teaches really well with simple and effective examples. It makes learning easy, so it's worth taking. I'm not sure why some reviews mention his accent. It is understandable to me, at least, and seems fine.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A- Anonymous 09/16/2025	Best professor so far for cybersecurity courses with ISchool. He works in athletics and has real knowledge to share about what happens if something goes wrong. He is also humble and responds to emails quickly. Not sure how tough the exams are going to be, but with the current course structure and teaching, I believe I will be doing okay! The course discusses one framework if we could cover more, I would have been able to learn more, but the FAIR model itself seems to be time-consuming..
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 09/16/2025	There's a lot of work with homework and labs already, but it's worth taking this course. The material covered in class helps a lot and includes most of the homework content. The professor said he's new, but he seems to have a good experience with the topics covered in the course. I would recommend taking this course and this professor if ypou want to build your foundation around networking cybersecurity and computer hardware.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting a B Anonymous 09/15/2025	Thick accent, stumbles over his words and stutters. I understand being from another country but there should be a baseline level of fluency in the language you are trying to teach in. Class would be easier if I wasn't spending all class trying to decipher his verbiage and decoding how he jumps in and out of sentences when he has a new thought.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/15/2025	This is probably the worst professor I've had so far at UMD. He does not know how to teach, he goes over the slides but he doesn't give anyone a solid foundation on the knowledge and expects us to watch 5 videos after class to learn it instead. The homeworks are very tedious because of this and like someone else said, he does not teach any of the material required for the homework well at all.
Akshat Patel INST464 Expecting an A- Anonymous 09/15/2025	I was afraid to take this course at first as other cybersecurity courses have given me a bad experience, but I wanted to because I aim to build my career in cybersecurity driven by my passion for data analytics. Prof. Akshat is very smart and skilled in what he teaches. He is humble and very approachable. When I ask him questions at the end, he is very accommodating and helpful. He is also helping me with my side project that I discussed with him. I am very grateful to take his class.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/10/2025	Very early in the semester so I will give this professor a chance to get better. But so far he has no idea what he's talking about. He will yap and ramble in a very very thick Indian accent but won't actually cover any proper content. He gives such a wide overview of topics without actually explaining it. For example he tried to teach huffman compression on day 1 without teaching binary or hex, most of the students were incredibly confused. He then expects you to do all the learning on your own by giving you very long homeworks. You are required to read multiple chapters in a textbook, then watch 5 videos by Crash Course, then finally he asks you to do calculations on data transfers. All without actually teaching any of it but only going a brief theoretical pass. Do not take him, just take the other guy.
Akshat Patel INST346 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/09/2025	The semester has just started. It has been going well for me. I took his classes because a friend had experienced him as a TA for Dean Marzullo last Spring and found him very helpful. He seems to be a very knowledgeable professor and humble. Also, he is a new professor, as I came here to see his reviews before finalizing. I'll update my review if needed in the coming weeks, but I'm enjoying his classes for now.