Celine Torres | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/25/2023	Though she is a bad lecturer, keep in mind that she is fairly new in teaching so she has big room for improvement. She is very nice in person. I agree with what the other reviewers had to say as well. Kind of wished we touched more on applications as the course name is applications of linear algebra, but we've focused on so much of abstract concept it feels like MATH405 instead.
Celine Torres Expecting a B Anonymous 05/24/2023	Lectures are impossible to follow, do yourself a favor and take this class with someone else
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/17/2023	The worst professor I've ever taken at UMD, wish I could give 0 stars. Lectures are very confusing and hard to follow, especially considering you must spend the majority of the time copying sloppily writing down notes from a chalkboard since no lecture materials are given online. Even still concepts given are hard to follow and examples gone over in class are too basic to be useful for homework or exam questions. homework and exam practice are not given answer keys so it's extremely hard to know if you are making mistakes and the professor refused to provide answer keys when requested in class. The professor is also slow to respond to emails and is not great at explanations even during office hours. The professor overall seems like a nice person and was always understanding but it was clear teaching this class was an afterthought compared to whatever research/graduate work she is doing. Avoid this professor.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/16/2023	She seems so nice and open, I can tell she is very knowledgeable on this subject and wants us to succeed. However, she doesn’t have a lot of teaching experience and this unfortunately led to a god-awful experience. All the other reviews are completely true, she teaches the theory and then expects you to understand it enough to figure out word problems with hardly any (if any) examples. While I thought the class was going to be on the Applications of Linear Algebra (like the class name says), she spent the first couple weeks going over everything from linear algebra (461) except making it way more complicated and confusing. I’d know how to do the problems she was going over but then she’d spend twice as long doing it in a super convoluted way and not explaining her process well. So that was a bad sign for when we moved into new topics. She gives absolutely zero resources for students, all lectures are written in chalk on the board so if you miss a lecture or are just sitting in a bad spot of the room where the board is not as visible, you’re screwed. No Canvas uploads, no links to resources, no example problems, not even solutions to homeworks or practice exams. There’s the textbook, but that can be even harder to understand when trying to compare it to the lecture notes. She doesn’t even tell you what will be on the exam, just “you should know everything we’ve covered”. Which, yeah I get that we should know it all, but that’s completely unhelpful when you’re trying to study and don’t even know what types of problems to practice. She expects everyone to be as smart as her (she’s clearly very smart) and be able to apply theoretical understanding to word problems with no prior experience or examples. For the final, after most people bombed the first two exams, she thankfully gave us a practice exam. However, when asked if she would provide answers for the practice exam she said no because she didn’t have enough time to write the solutions. But she expects us to have the time to be able to solve all the problems with no examples or references during finals week when we’re studying for multiple classes already? Frankly this class was ridiculously hard for no reason. She gave the solutions to our midterms (thank god) after we took them, and seeing the solutions you can see the problems aren’t that difficult to solve if you understand what they’re asking. However, when you’ve never seen a problem like it before, you don’t even know where to start. I’ve heard great things about other 401 professors, and I would recommend to anyone considering taking her classes to not, unless you’re super good at linear algebra and theory and understanding textbooks without any examples (there were 2-3 really smart students who did really well and brought up the exam averages, but the rest of us are lost and scared for the final)
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/08/2023	Current reviews are accurate, but note she is a really new teacher so she might be better over time. Nice person but not a good lecturer would avoid right now.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/05/2023	She seems like a nice person, but the lectures are very confusing, and the exams are difficult. You will have to spend lots of time on the weekly homework assignments and especially the Matlab projects. Would not recommend taking the class with her if you're taking this class with the mindset that it's the easiest 400 level math class, this is by far the hardest math class I have taken.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/05/2023	I think she's a nice person, but many of her lectures made no sense, and the Matlab projects were ridiculously difficult for no reason. The exams were also hard, and the class average is in the 50-60% range. MATH401 is supposed to be the easiest 400 level math class, but I felt like this class was harder than any other 400 level math class I have taken.
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/03/2023	Terribly confusing. Rambles on about theory that is so beyond human comprehension. Awful, awful MATLAB projects that require selling your soul to complete. Homeworks are also pretty bad and as the semester progresses her lecture notes become more and more useless. Nobody knows what is happening at this point and I fear what we will face in the final Exams are terrible and averages were low 50s, which she was not concerned about. Overall a terrible confusing experience that I wish I had avoided. She seems nice, but good lord.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 04/28/2023	trash professor; terrible handwriting (very weird way of writing number 1s), extremely confusing matlab projects with vague wording, hard exams that take too long to finish; horrible at explaining concepts and very few people in the lecture walk out understanding the material; avoid at all costs

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/25/2023

Though she is a bad lecturer, keep in mind that she is fairly new in teaching so she has big room for improvement. She is very nice in person. I agree with what the other reviewers had to say as well. Kind of wished we touched more on applications as the course name is applications of linear algebra, but we've focused on so much of abstract concept it feels like MATH405 instead.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/17/2023

The worst professor I've ever taken at UMD, wish I could give 0 stars. Lectures are very confusing and hard to follow, especially considering you must spend the majority of the time copying sloppily writing down notes from a chalkboard since no lecture materials are given online. Even still concepts given are hard to follow and examples gone over in class are too basic to be useful for homework or exam questions. homework and exam practice are not given answer keys so it's extremely hard to know if you are making mistakes and the professor refused to provide answer keys when requested in class. The professor is also slow to respond to emails and is not great at explanations even during office hours. The professor overall seems like a nice person and was always understanding but it was clear teaching this class was an afterthought compared to whatever research/graduate work she is doing. Avoid this professor.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
05/16/2023

She seems so nice and open, I can tell she is very knowledgeable on this subject and wants us to succeed. However, she doesn’t have a lot of teaching experience and this unfortunately led to a god-awful experience. All the other reviews are completely true, she teaches the theory and then expects you to understand it enough to figure out word problems with hardly any (if any) examples. While I thought the class was going to be on the Applications of Linear Algebra (like the class name says), she spent the first couple weeks going over everything from linear algebra (461) except making it way more complicated and confusing. I’d know how to do the problems she was going over but then she’d spend twice as long doing it in a super convoluted way and not explaining her process well. So that was a bad sign for when we moved into new topics. She gives absolutely zero resources for students, all lectures are written in chalk on the board so if you miss a lecture or are just sitting in a bad spot of the room where the board is not as visible, you’re screwed. No Canvas uploads, no links to resources, no example problems, not even solutions to homeworks or practice exams. There’s the textbook, but that can be even harder to understand when trying to compare it to the lecture notes. She doesn’t even tell you what will be on the exam, just “you should know everything we’ve covered”. Which, yeah I get that we should know it all, but that’s completely unhelpful when you’re trying to study and don’t even know what types of problems to practice. She expects everyone to be as smart as her (she’s clearly very smart) and be able to apply theoretical understanding to word problems with no prior experience or examples. For the final, after most people bombed the first two exams, she thankfully gave us a practice exam. However, when asked if she would provide answers for the practice exam she said no because she didn’t have enough time to write the solutions. But she expects us to have the time to be able to solve all the problems with no examples or references during finals week when we’re studying for multiple classes already? Frankly this class was ridiculously hard for no reason. She gave the solutions to our midterms (thank god) after we took them, and seeing the solutions you can see the problems aren’t that difficult to solve if you understand what they’re asking. However, when you’ve never seen a problem like it before, you don’t even know where to start. I’ve heard great things about other 401 professors, and I would recommend to anyone considering taking her classes to not, unless you’re super good at linear algebra and theory and understanding textbooks without any examples (there were 2-3 really smart students who did really well and brought up the exam averages, but the rest of us are lost and scared for the final)

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/08/2023

Current reviews are accurate, but note she is a really new teacher so she might be better over time. Nice person but not a good lecturer would avoid right now.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/05/2023

She seems like a nice person, but the lectures are very confusing, and the exams are difficult. You will have to spend lots of time on the weekly homework assignments and especially the Matlab projects. Would not recommend taking the class with her if you're taking this class with the mindset that it's the easiest 400 level math class, this is by far the hardest math class I have taken.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/05/2023

I think she's a nice person, but many of her lectures made no sense, and the Matlab projects were ridiculously difficult for no reason. The exams were also hard, and the class average is in the 50-60% range. MATH401 is supposed to be the easiest 400 level math class, but I felt like this class was harder than any other 400 level math class I have taken.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/03/2023

Terribly confusing. Rambles on about theory that is so beyond human comprehension. Awful, awful MATLAB projects that require selling your soul to complete. Homeworks are also pretty bad and as the semester progresses her lecture notes become more and more useless. Nobody knows what is happening at this point and I fear what we will face in the final Exams are terrible and averages were low 50s, which she was not concerned about. Overall a terrible confusing experience that I wish I had avoided. She seems nice, but good lord.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
04/28/2023

trash professor; terrible handwriting (very weird way of writing number 1s), extremely confusing matlab projects with vague wording, hard exams that take too long to finish; horrible at explaining concepts and very few people in the lecture walk out understanding the material; avoid at all costs