| Information | Review |
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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. |
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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" |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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.. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |