Shin Song

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

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Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/05/2025	She lectures straight out of the textbook and takes exam/weekly quiz questions from textbook practice problems so the best way to prepare for exams is to reread the textbook and do her recommended problems. The weekly quizzes and matlabs are all pretty easy and there was a generous curve at the end of the semester. While she isn't the best lecturer (and sometimes likes to bring up the applications of the topics discussed in class which are interesting but ultimately irrelevant), her exams and assignments are fair and she's very understanding if you speak to her in office hours (no idea how fast she responds to emails).
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 12/21/2024	Dr. Song is a great professor, especially for her first semester teaching MATH240. Pros: - She is a good lecturer overall. She writes notes very clearly on her iPad and posts them to ELMS. I found her lecture notes to be very helpful when studying as they contain examples of the concepts and get straight to the point. Generally, I found her lecture notes to explain concepts much better than the textbook. Overall, I found her lectures to be engaging. - In addition to her handwritten lecture notes, she uploads chapter summary pdfs for some chapters. These are great for quick review of many important concepts in one place without having to dig through the textbook or her lecture notes. - She is very nice and helpful. She kindly answers students' questions after class and even has office hours twice a week which don't require any advance appointment. Just show up and you can get all the help you need. It is clear that she really cares about her students. - She dropped our last MATLAB project when she figured that there wasn’t enough time left in the semester for it before finals week. Another example of how she really cares about her students. - Weekly quizzes are very easy and she drops your 2 lowest scores. - Relatively fair exams overall and she is generous with partial credit. Her practice exams are also very useful for studying. - She curves grades when exam averages are low. Cons: - She doesn't always explain certain concepts the best. Particularly, more abstract and theoretical concepts. As some have pointed out, she sometimes doesn't go through enough examples or explain certain theorems very well. At the same time, the material is difficult, so doing the homework problems and attending discussions is very important. Just attending lectures isn't enough. - It would be nice if she had chapter summary pdfs for all chapters and sections. She only had them for chapters 3, 5, and 6 and only section 4.4 for chapter 4. These were super helpful when studying and it would be awesome if she had them for every chapter. - While the exams are mostly fair, they can be lengthy and contain some difficult questions. But enough practice on the material can definitely help. Plus, she revised the rubric on one of the exams to give more partial credit for a difficult question. - The final exam was hard, but it isn’t specific to Dr. Song as all MATH240 professors gave the same exam. Plus, she curved our final grades. Overall: Very good professor, especially for her first semester teaching. While other professors like Khurana and Yashinski may be better, I can definitely recommend Dr. Song and I am sure she will get better next semester. Overall Rating: 4.5/5 (rounded up to a 5)
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2024	She’s a pretty good teacher and is fair with her exams.
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/20/2024	I would recommend taking linear with someone else. The way she explains stuff is just not good so the lectures weren't very useful. Discussions were never useful since they were just repeats of the lecture beforehand. I only managed to get a B by learning everything from youtube videos.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2024	As someone who did not take calculus in high school, I thought Dr. Song's class was beginner-friendly yet very in-depth. If you show up to lecture, actively follow along with Dr. Song as she works through the many example problems, and complete the homework assignments, you should be very well prepared for her exams which are not all that different from the homework assignments and in-lecture practice problems. Overall I had a great experience with Dr. Song, register for her MATH140 section!
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/18/2024	Unclear grading scale, no idea of what an A, B , or C is. Randomly went from 4 mat labs to 2 mat labs at the end of the semester. No curve from what I could tell. Teaches straight from textbook, no alternative explanations added. Exam Averages (Fall 2024) : Exam 1: 76.0 Exam 2: 78.7 Exam 3: 72.3
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/18/2024	Pros: Nice person and I at least think she cares about students Responds to emails most of the time within a couple hours Gives Practice Exams Will Most likely curve Cons: -Shin straight up cannot teach, every single lecture consists of her reading off of her phone which contains a copy of the textbook. The whole time she just writes complex definitions from the textbook without much further explanation. She "answers" questions but most of the time her answer leaves you with more questions then you had before. I have learned about 95% of the class material from youtube and other outside sources. I personally stopped going to lecture after the second exam because it was such a waste of time as I was teaching everything to myself anyways. I actually scored higher on the third exam then I did the previous 2 after I stopped going to lecture. -While I was studying for the final I did all the practice exams she gave, which she did not really give she just took yashinskis old exams and answer keys and gave them to us. I did all of them and felt very prepared and despite all of this scored a 71 on the final. The average was a 70 which is about 6-7% lower then both wong and yashinski from what I have heard. I think this speaks to how much less her class was prepared in comparison to other profs. There was a question on the final that I had straight up never seen before in my life. Given all of this it was her first semester teaching so hopefully she can take this feedback and improve for next semester, I also have to give her credit because she said she would curve.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2024	Shin song is a very good professor who cares about her students and gives out a lot of resources to use. Tells you everything you need to know for how to study for exams and the final. Exams are not very hard and curve is very generous.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2024	I would recommend having Professor Song. Her lectures can be boring and sometimes she doesn't explain concepts too well, but she posts all the notes and when you ask for clarification, she helps a lot more. She's very understanding and nice, and she is always willingly to help for office hours. The grading curve was very helpful, and you can tell she only wants the best for her students.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/14/2024	For her first time teaching MATH 140, professor Song did great, her lectures could be sometimes boring but they were easy to follow, and she uploads all lecture notes. Homeworks could be pretty annoying but are manageable, weekly quizzes are easy if you do the homework, and her exams are pretty fair if you do the practice exams and understood the concepts. There was also a generous curve at the end
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/14/2024	Knowing the fact that this is her first year teaching MATH140, Professor Song is a wonderful professor. Sure, often she refers back to the textbook during the lecture, but she is very considerate and is willing to help any student if they are confused. MATH140 is definitely not easy if you never taken calculus in your life before, so if you're going to have her as a professor for MATH140, please understand that the majority of the class may have taken calculus in high school, so she just assumes that people is understanding what she is talking about. Again, a lot of people before taking MATH140 already has prior experience with calculus, so this doesn't mean that she is a bad professor, it just means that you would need to put in more work in order to understand what's covered in class. Another thing is that she does curve at the end by dropping assignments with the lowest scores, which have helped many others to have a passing or get their desired grade. If you are a student, if you can, please take her for MATH140. But if you want the grade you desire, please put in effort in understanding the material, as well as do all of the homework on the WebAssign, attend lectures, and most importantly, discussions since there are graded assignments and quizzes each week that counts towards your final grade. Thank you Professor Song for this wonderful and pleasant experience this semester!
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/14/2024	Dr. Shin's teaching is great and she curves exams. I had few horrible grades and still was able to clutch it. There shouldn't be any major problem taking her for MATH140.
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/11/2024	Would put a 0 if I could. Lectures are out of the textbook and weekly quizzes aren’t that hard, but she is a bad teacher. Bad examples, doesn’t really “answer” any questions, puts out very few sample exams/reviews, and she doesn’t really explain a lot of the important things of the class. If you take this expect to have to learn on your own.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/10/2024	I think for her first year in Math140, Prof Song did a great job. :)
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/09/2024	For her first year being a professor I personally think she did a great job. Her teachings were right out of the textbook so if you didnt understand it you could look in the textbook to help yourself out. She also posted her notes after lecture which was helpful for studying. She had a weekly quiz in discussion but if you understood what was taught in lecture it was really easy and just like a problem done in class. Her exams weren't the easiest but if you do her practice exam and look over your work you will be fine.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/05/2024	Not much to complain but I'd agree that she just goes over the textbook. Nothing wrong with that but everything could be self-taught and or learned from youtube if the time given and you would probably retain the information better. This class was offered in Freshman Connection so I had it later in the day but what was confusing at times were the online homework assignments. It was my first time using WebAssign for math and the questions on there would be completely different than the test and or what we learn in class.
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/04/2024	In the style of another review: “People giving her good reviews are just glazing. She's a subpar professor, and the lectures are straight from the textbook. Tests are fairly hard.” In all seriousness, Shin Song’s class is a lot more disorganized and unnecessarily difficult than other professors. Her lectures are mediocre at best, due to her lecturing style. She used to be a TA, so she teaches like a TA. That is, she seems to rely on student input first and foremost, then her lecture plan. Unfortunately, a class of 150 students without questions respond a lot less than 20 students who all do have questions. To supplement this, she uses her lecture plan (which should be the primary thing to use) and asks herself questions she thinks students may have. Her lecture plan relies fully off the textbook too, meaning you can skip all lectures and read the textbook and get the same information. She also makes many mistakes solving textbook example problems (which have the solution right under it) and practice exam problems (in which practice exams are sometimes uploaded an hour before lecture) in both lecture and the literal answer key, which is probably a cardinal sin. For the class itself, there are 11 quizzes, what WAS supposed to be 4 Matlabs (in which there are only two that we have done by 6 days before the final), and 3 midterms (and the final). The quizzes are very easy and the worst two are dropped (which you wouldn’t need to worry about anyway). The Matlabs are also easy, but make sure that you submit it on time, because you lose 50% of the grade (which would be 3% of the entire grade for us) by half an hour after the due date (her policy). The exams are simply bad, too. The averages for them are Cs due to her making the exams more unnecessarily difficult than they need to be. Exam 1 had a curveball question worth 25 points that we had only done twice in the month before the exam (once in lecture and once in the textbook self-practice problems). To rectify this, she made the weight for each question a lot lower - by tripling the amount of questions. Exam 2 and Exam 3 were horribly long, to the point where many students couldn’t check any work or even finish the exam. I guess it’s good practice for the final, but I’d rather be able to actually finish the midterms first. It’s not gonna be the end of the world if you take Shin as your linear professor, especially due to her being generally nice and good at explaining questions you ask her, but you won’t actually learn anything and your grade is probably better with other professors. Personally, I’d take her over Sahinoglu and Rosca, but no one else.
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/02/2024	Lectures are pretty boring tbh, and you can honestly skip them if you want, but she goes over things pretty slowly, so its great for people who aren't as quick to learn things. The grading is pretty fair, and the grades are made up by quizzes (lowest 2 are dropped), 3 exams, Matlab, and then a final. Matlab is fairly straightforward if you have some basics in code, and also the grading for it is extremely lenient. The exams are quite long, but IMO they're very fair with no trick questions at all. She says that grades are also usually curved at the end of the semester. With like a bit of practice on your own time, it won't be a hard class. Trust me take Shin Song for Math 240 if you have a chance.
Shin Song MATH240 Anonymous 11/23/2024	Literally all of the content I've learned has been from youtube, she does not provide comprehensive examples on any of the sections, her exams are too long and declined to change the length of them even after SHE was the one who asked us for feedback on the first exam. She's a nice person but I would not take her unless you are prepared to teach yourself the concepts throughout the course.
Shin Song MATH140 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/22/2024	This class was very straightforward. Dr. Song is an excellent professor who covers all the material you need to succeed. The midterms are fair and closely resemble the practice exams. While the WebAssign assignments feel largely unhelpful, Exam 2 did include some questions related to the WebAssign problems. I honestly skipped many of the lectures, but her notes are so thorough that you can understand the topics just by reading them. To prepare for exams, I reviewed the notes, worked through the discussion worksheets, and completed the practice exams. The class structure includes the following: - 4 midterms (100 points each) - 1 final exam (200 points) - 13 worksheets (3 are dropped; 100 points total) - 28 WebAssign assignments (40 points total) - 6 quizzes (10 points each) Exam difficulty (from easiest to hardest in my opinion): Exam 4, Exam 2, Exam 1, Exam 3.
Shin Song Expecting an A Anonymous 11/21/2024	People giving her bad reviews are just dumb. She's a great professor, and the lectures are very straightforward. Tests are fairly easy
Shin Song MATH240 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/21/2024	Great professor. I definitely learned so much paying attention to lectures. To be fair, the lectures are a little boring, but if you pay attention and spend time reviewing the textbook after class, you will be fine. There are weekly discussion quizzes, but they are very easy, the lowest 2 of them are also dropped. The exams are definitely a lot harder than the quizzes, but still manageable if you are willing to put time to study hard outside of class. She also is very understanding, and gives a lot more practice and review for exams than other professors. Would highly recommend Song for Math240 as long as you are committed to putting in a good amount of effort studying after class.
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!