Shin Song

This professor has taught: MATH113, MATH140, MATH240, MATH401

Sort By:

Information	Review
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/20/2024	The class itself is not that difficult and she is super nice, but I've had to teach myself almost everything past the first couple of weeks because her lectures are just her reading from the textbook and copying down formulas. Some topics she won't even do examples on. But, discussion quizzes are free, my TA would basically work out the problems on the quizzes right before we take them. Exams are also pretty easy if you do the practice exams she gives. I think you'd be better off taking another professor if you can, but it's not the end of the world if you have to take Song
Shin Song MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/31/2024	Professor Song has always provided very clear and useful lectures in her section of math401. She doesn't go too fast but also doesn't get bogged down on tangents or details or long proofs. She focuses on making sure students understand the important points and know how to apply whatever method or formula is in question. Her tests are pretty fair, I think with an average above 80, and we are given a packet of practice questions before each exam. We also have one in-class groupwork per week, which I found to be useful since it helped me apply what was went over in lecture, and these are pretty much free points as long as you show up to class. She also seems like a nice and friendly person in general. In conclusion I would highly recommend taking math401 with Song.
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/26/2024	Very nice person, but lectures are useless as she gets content straight from textbook(no need to go if you do assigned textbook probs and look at posted online notes). Discussions are actually really useful (but still don't rlly need to go), weekly quizzes are free as TA shows similar problems right before quiz. Has decent practice problems for exams. Exams are stupid long and always has one question that we had little practice with but aren't too bad. Take if you're fine with only coming exam days and can learn from textbook.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 10/24/2024	she’s a nice enough person but not a good professor. her lectures don’t really make sense and i’ve had to teach myself everything. the discussion sections are basically just a second lecture that still doesn’t make sense. there is no homework, only suggested problems that she uploads days after the lecture, which she doesn’t give the solutions to. for the second exam she didn’t upload the practice exam until 10pm 2 days before, leaving us with one day to do it. she also didn’t put any practice problems on a certain subject on said practice exam but there were questions on it on the actual exam. she also doesn’t drop any exams…hoping for a big curve at the end of the semester. TDLR; you’ll basically have to teach yourself this course. study hard for exams because you never know what she’ll put on them.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 10/22/2024	She's a nice person, but her lecture style is really not great. The lecture consists of her writing down theorems word by word directly from the text book at a incredible speed without much explanation. This is really not good since linear algebra involves a lot of abstract ideas and her lecture style does not help breaking down the concepts. I ended up needing to self teach myself everything through textbook and youtube videos because the lecture is so hard to follow.
Shin Song Anonymous 10/15/2024	She's nice and seems to care about her students, but the way she teaches is not the best. She teaches straight from the textbook and provides not many examples in class and the ones she does provide are not very good nor helpful. Overall I would say I've understood about 20% of the material she taught this semester and have had to self teach most of the course. For the most part you are better just watching youtube videos on the sections and reading the textbook yourself. On the bright side the first exam was pretty much a copy and paste of the practice exam aside from one question.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 10/15/2024	She's nice and writes decent notes, but she relies completely on the textbook. There's barely been a single lesson she's done so far that wasn't doing the exact same thing the textbook was doing (same variables and examples), which isn't great due to the textbook itself being unclear too. She occasionally makes mistakes in the material being taught, making the lectures even more unreliable. The only real plus to lectures is the review day before the exam, but you're most likely studying by yourself at that point. For many professors, the textbook is more so used as an additional tool to help students review and study, but for Shin, the textbook is almost required. Quizzes in the class are lenient and graded fairly as long as you show that you know what you're doing. Even if you screw up on a few of them, you'd be fine grade-wise. Exams though are another beast. The questions range from rather easy (such as simple determinants or row reduction) to hard and obscure questions that are either relegated to the textbook or have only been done a month prior (looking at you, E1 Q3). The true and false questions are also particularly bad due to the fact that they're meant to trip you up at the end of the test. The worst part of it is how so many points are allocated to justifying your answers in English, which is especially bad due to how she wants you to explain them in a SPECIFIC way by question. You can be right in your explanation, but if it's not a specific explanation she was grading on, you're docked a few points. Speaking of, for the practice problems, you're only given the answers in the Tuesday discussion (where if you miss them on the board because the TA erased them as soon as possible, tough luck), adding unnecessary difficulty to the course. For practice exams, they only help for easier exam questions so if you think you're gonna get practice on the harder questions, you're SOL if you don't search the entire textbook. I will say that she's good at explaining questions and material when asked, most likely due to her being a highly-rated TA prior to becoming a professor (as seen in an older review and on other platforms). However, she still acts like a TA as a professor, meaning her lecturing style depends on other material, leading to the rampant use of the textbook. Overall, she's good if you want a decent grade without putting in too much effort on anything besides exams, but if you actually want to know the material (which may be necessary for Math or CS), it's better to take Yashinski or Wong over Shin. Tldr: She's good for your grades, bad for your education, but better than Rosca. You could probably do just fine in the course if you used the textbook instead of coming to class. Make sure to study like hell for the exams.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 09/22/2024	Her notes and resources are alright, but the way she explains things aren't the best. Just make sure to follow along with the testbook and you would be good.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 07/29/2024	Shin was my TA for MATH240 and she was the absolute best. She always went above and beyond, is a great discussion teacher, and cares genuinely about the material and her students! She also had a website where she updated and created supplementaty documents regularly. 100% recommend.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/22/2024	She is a great professor. She goes into detail about many topics but lets you know what you need to know for the course. She cares about her students and answers questions during office hours. I would suggest really revising her practice midterms to help you study. The only thing is that she takes a while to grade some assignments. Other than that, I totally recommend her!