Tein-Min Tan

School: Drexel University
Department: Engineering
Location:Philadelphia, PA
Overall Rating
rated by 10 students
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Easiness
Rating Comment
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 Pros: Covers all necessary material (that's far from a given in this class). Was always striving for students to understand the material.
Cons: The class is hard and a lot of material is covered.
The homework didn't always line with lecture and recitation, which could be confusing and frustrating.
Lectures could be pretty intense some days. He couldn't always answer all the questions.
Get a good TA, don't fall behind in the homework.
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 Pros: No
DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS
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 Pros: Smart. Available for office hours. Easy Grading
Cons: None
Professor Tan is by far the best professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, and definitely one of the best at Drexel. He teaches extremely well and his examples make sense. Homeworks may take a little bit of time, but they are extremely straight forward. Only one midterm is given and is just like the homeworks and in class examples. The final project is also an easy and fun way to end the class. One of the best courses Ive taken at drexel with the best professor. Every MEM student should take it, even if you were not a fan of mechanics of materials.
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 Pros: Very good professor, explains complicated material well, especially vector calculus
Cons: Does not provide many examples in class. All practice is in the form of homework and not many problems are given. Test are harder than homework but he does curve.
Genuinely wants students to learn material.
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 I agree with the comment below me that Prof. Tan is a very knowledgeable professor. All of his lectures are taught from PowerPoint slides and some chalkboard teaching. However, the material is very hard to grasp and needs to not cram so much of it in one term. Maybe that is just me. Midterm class average: 48, which meant the class had to take a make-up midterm which the avg was a 60. Those two grades are combined and averaged out to be your final midterm grade. He doesn't curve either which is bolded in his syllabus. However, you can do no work at all and if you pull off an A on the Final exam, you will in return receive an A for the class. Don't count on it because his exams are very difficult. Homework isn't part of your grade but if you submit homework he will give you say an A- if you are one point below. He will expect a lot from you. So beware.
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 He's very knowledgable on the subject, and while he tries to make everything clear, he seems determined to make it through Ch. 8 in the textbook by the end of the term... since most of the other professors who teach the course only get through Ch. 7 (according to Tan), it means that Tan has to move faster in order to meet his goal. His first midterm had an average of 48% whilst his goal was a 75% average... yet he is going to plow ahead with the later topics. I don't know if it's just me, but it certainly seems like he should SLOW DOWN and try to ensure that we fully understand the concepts. Is it better to fully understand a handful of concepts or barely understand a boatload of concepts? Tan seems to think the latter is better and I'm not so sure I agree.
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 Good prof. Doesn't curve, but offers an A to anyone who aces the final.
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 likey
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 Makes statics about as good as you can
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 Cares about students a lot and grades very fairly. Tests are also very straight forward.

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