Mihai Pop | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2024	Professor Pop is an excellent teacher. He offers numerous different ways to learn the material. For example, if you find that it is too difficult to understand the material in the lecture you will look at the videos and notes he provides on ELMS.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Anonymous 05/16/2024	He was very lenient with deadlines like if you were sick. But this class had a programming assignment due every week and it easily led to burn out. He would always complain about how no one comes to lectures (fair) but then he would proceed to make lectures unorganized and very hard to keep up with. I would overall gain not too much from attending lectures because he had a hybrid format. Overall I think the class could have been structured better but it wasn't the worst class I took. I also think that he expects a lot from us students, and he also is VERY SASSY - you can tell he gives attitude.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/13/2024	Really kind and caring man. Cares about students deeply. Class is lowkey very difficult and honestly not super interesting. Be prepared to do a lot of string algorithms. The weekly end of module assessments (that all essentially replace having midterms) open response questions are very very difficult, the other sections are pretty easy. The finals open response questions were also very challenging. They are all basically asking us stuff we have not learned before (which is an important skill but on exams with limited time I find it a little unfair to ask these types of questions). Take the class if you want, he's pretty flexible. There is a weekly programing assignment which can be challenging, especially if you have projects in other classes having one project a week in this class is pretty demanding. Overall a decent experience but if I could do it again I would have taken something else.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 03/06/2023	The good: Professor Pop is lenient with deadlines and as a student with health issues, this is very helpful. The bad: Professor Pop gives us a choice between watching pre-recorded lecture videos or doing a reading prior to coming to class in person. This way we learn the material outside of class then he reviews in person. I personally am against this teaching style. Lastly, sometimes coming to lecture in person feels like a waste of time because it’s hard to follow along with what he’s saying. He’s clearly super smart but makes things harder than they really are
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/17/2022	Professor Pop was very accommodating to students: he offered both in-person and Zoom recorded/streamed classes and allowed you to propose your own deadline for some assignments. The workload was also very reasonable. Make sure to study for the final; it was a bit difficult.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/16/2022	Probably the most understanding professor I've ever had. The entire class was basically asynchronous, every week we had a online "mini-exam" (called End Of Module Assessment) that wasn't too bad, you could easily get full points on a lot of them. The in-person lectures themselves are review of the videos we have to watch before class, but he goes in more depth and they are helpful for the end of module assessments and the final exam. Has a great late policy for projects (you're allowed to turn them in late if you write a reflection as to why you failed to turn them in on time). The projects themselves weren't too bad, most of them you can complete in less than two hours. My only problem with this class is the amount of quizzes each week. It's not a lot, but they were all due on Tuesday, even for material that he wasn't going to cover in class until Thursday. The final was somewhat difficult, but in the end he curved pretty well after accounting for this. Overall, Mihai Pop is a great professor to take for CMSC423 and I heavily recommend him.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/01/2021	As someone who has mental health problems and turns things in late a lot, pop's class was perfect for me. His class is a decent amount of work, but I excelled at it because of the way he taught and walked away learning a lot.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/30/2020	Passionate teacher and very understanding about stress and potential extenuating circumstances during online classes. He provided many ways for us to manage deadlines for projects and exams.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Anonymous 12/25/2020	Dr. Pop was a wonderful professor this online semester. He spent the whole summer planning for the class and it showed. His lectures helped clarify the confusing parts of the textbook. He had a generous late policy for programming assignments and quizzes and was very helpful in office hours. Highly recommend.
Mihai Pop CMSC423 Anonymous 01/24/2018	Great professor who cares a lot about bioinformatics and the success of his students. Fun (well, as fun as lectures can be) classes and interesting presentation. Lots of tiny programming assignments that weren't harder than 330, but the last two can be a little bit of a pain. His exams are really fair, pretty much only covers what has been said in course unless he explicitly stated it. I'd recommend to final semester seniors.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2024

Professor Pop is an excellent teacher. He offers numerous different ways to learn the material. For example, if you find that it is too difficult to understand the material in the lecture you will look at the videos and notes he provides on ELMS.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Anonymous
05/16/2024

He was very lenient with deadlines like if you were sick. But this class had a programming assignment due every week and it easily led to burn out. He would always complain about how no one comes to lectures (fair) but then he would proceed to make lectures unorganized and very hard to keep up with. I would overall gain not too much from attending lectures because he had a hybrid format. Overall I think the class could have been structured better but it wasn't the worst class I took. I also think that he expects a lot from us students, and he also is VERY SASSY - you can tell he gives attitude.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/13/2024

Really kind and caring man. Cares about students deeply. Class is lowkey very difficult and honestly not super interesting. Be prepared to do a lot of string algorithms. The weekly end of module assessments (that all essentially replace having midterms) open response questions are very very difficult, the other sections are pretty easy. The finals open response questions were also very challenging. They are all basically asking us stuff we have not learned before (which is an important skill but on exams with limited time I find it a little unfair to ask these types of questions). Take the class if you want, he's pretty flexible. There is a weekly programing assignment which can be challenging, especially if you have projects in other classes having one project a week in this class is pretty demanding. Overall a decent experience but if I could do it again I would have taken something else.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
03/06/2023

The good: Professor Pop is lenient with deadlines and as a student with health issues, this is very helpful. The bad: Professor Pop gives us a choice between watching pre-recorded lecture videos or doing a reading prior to coming to class in person. This way we learn the material outside of class then he reviews in person. I personally am against this teaching style. Lastly, sometimes coming to lecture in person feels like a waste of time because it’s hard to follow along with what he’s saying. He’s clearly super smart but makes things harder than they really are

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/17/2022

Professor Pop was very accommodating to students: he offered both in-person and Zoom recorded/streamed classes and allowed you to propose your own deadline for some assignments. The workload was also very reasonable. Make sure to study for the final; it was a bit difficult.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/16/2022

Probably the most understanding professor I've ever had. The entire class was basically asynchronous, every week we had a online "mini-exam" (called End Of Module Assessment) that wasn't too bad, you could easily get full points on a lot of them. The in-person lectures themselves are review of the videos we have to watch before class, but he goes in more depth and they are helpful for the end of module assessments and the final exam. Has a great late policy for projects (you're allowed to turn them in late if you write a reflection as to why you failed to turn them in on time). The projects themselves weren't too bad, most of them you can complete in less than two hours. My only problem with this class is the amount of quizzes each week. It's not a lot, but they were all due on Tuesday, even for material that he wasn't going to cover in class until Thursday. The final was somewhat difficult, but in the end he curved pretty well after accounting for this. Overall, Mihai Pop is a great professor to take for CMSC423 and I heavily recommend him.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
02/01/2021

As someone who has mental health problems and turns things in late a lot, pop's class was perfect for me. His class is a decent amount of work, but I excelled at it because of the way he taught and walked away learning a lot.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/30/2020

Passionate teacher and very understanding about stress and potential extenuating circumstances during online classes. He provided many ways for us to manage deadlines for projects and exams.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Anonymous
12/25/2020

Dr. Pop was a wonderful professor this online semester. He spent the whole summer planning for the class and it showed. His lectures helped clarify the confusing parts of the textbook. He had a generous late policy for programming assignments and quizzes and was very helpful in office hours. Highly recommend.

Mihai Pop
CMSC423

Anonymous
01/24/2018

Great professor who cares a lot about bioinformatics and the success of his students. Fun (well, as fun as lectures can be) classes and interesting presentation. Lots of tiny programming assignments that weren't harder than 330, but the last two can be a little bit of a pain. His exams are really fair, pretty much only covers what has been said in course unless he explicitly stated it. I'd recommend to final semester seniors.