Prof Adamchik is difficult to understand at best. He mumbles when he speak and does not pronounce his words properly. I am sitting in his class right now and compared to another professors discussion class, Adamchik tends to skip explanations and important slides in class. Students who do not have prior knowledge tends to struggle a lot under him.

His lectures are very confusing. His tests are purely math tests. Class average is B+ which is not that good. He does not try hard to explain the intuition behind each machine learning model, instead gives you endless math derivations in class. He laughs at students when they ask a stupid question. One of the worst classes Ive taken.

He has a trait that no professor should ever have. He makes fun of people who raise questions in class. He is being paid for teaching and not for humiliating people who are putting in genuine efforts to learn something. He is not at all humble and very egoistic. He makes the course hard with his weird accent. No knowledge can justify his arrogance!

A USC professor that doesn't care about the students during the COVID19 and that stresses them to the limit. This was his response to me: "the 570 course structure does not permit extensions, because otherwise you won't be able to do the next assignment. i suggest you take penalty, but continue learning"

I JUST WANT TO SAY ONE THING. PLEASE PRONOUNCE WORDS PROPERLY. YOU MADE STUDENTS SIGN THE TROJAN OATH SOMETHING BUT STILL STUDENTS HAVE COLLABORATED IN EXAMS.

tough grading criteria, he wants half of the students below B in graduate course. What amazing grading criteria. Besides, in our online test, we cannot go back to revise our answer. great job victor

He wrote a terrible textbook full of mistakes and "force" everyone to buy it by not sharing his slides. During COVID-19, while other professors are trying to make everyone's life easier. He decides to give exam that randomizes the order of the questions for everyone while not allowing people to change answers for previous questions.

He forces you to buy the book he wrote. He is more a salesman than a professor. The exams, which take 80% of the grades, have so many mistakes, that you cannot even understand the meaning of the questions. Never answer the emails.

I took it this summer. I have expertise in algorithm design and what I can say is this is a terrible course. The textbook used is bad with lots of typos. Victor was just trying to sell his textbook. The TAs are not qualified. They're trained to blindly follow the rubrics when grading exams and HW. What's worse is Victor allows them to do so.

Content is not very useful for actual software dev. More like 104 p2

The worst CS prof I've ever taken. If I've taken him as my intro class, I've had already dropped. 0. Boring 1. The professor's accent is bad. Not terribly bad, but bad. (This one is actually not a big problem) 2. He can't understand students' questions. Merely repeating. 3. Not organized. 4. Lecture not related to hw, at all! 5. No communication

Cannot answer questions for his life. He gets frustrated if you ask a question he already covered, but dare ask anything relevant and he will dodge the question or flat out refuse to answer it. His programming assignments are just PDFs he pulled from his time at CMU, and are in no way related to the material that is supposed to be in 201. Avoid.

Never written one of these but Adamchik has been terrible so far teaching 201. Realize it's a weird semester but he doesn't turn camera on during lecture (small, but still), and his accent+his poor connection makes lectures quite literally impossible to understand. Seems like he's much better at teaching the algos class

Avoid this man at all costs. He made 201 a terrible experience for all of the students and even the course staff. He has absolutely no idea what he's doing and refuses to teach us anything that we will need for the quizzes, exam, assignments, labs, or final project. Do whatever is in your power to avoid taking classes with him.

I wish there is a tag "skip class and you WILL pass". Class is easy A but unorganized and unnecessarily confusing. First time in school I questioned myself why I am listening to my professor lecture. Once he tried 1/2 a class to make his demo work (in the end failed). Lecture is only useful in his little quizzes, full of errors, regraded every time

Class itself is just an undergraduate level Algorithm class, with literally the same material as CSCI 270 in USC. However, the professor's accent is thick and instruction is confusing. resort to repeating "ok?" a thousand time instead of actually explaining things clearly, which is quite amusing. Much more lenient than before though.

Class was universally agreed to be a train wreck Fall 2020. Awful. Mark of honor for USC CS students if you survived this class online. Assignments were irrelevant to material covered in class, final project's technical skills were wholly undertaught, tests were a joke, hundreds of grading errors and legit petitions to have the class reworked.

Midterm 35%, Final 47%. Homework, while being tricky and lengthy, is only 18%. If you mess up either one of the two tests there is no way to recover. Ridiculous class.

Took 201 online in Fall 2020. Terrible class, I stopped going to lecture after a few weeks because it was useless. Weekly multiple choice quizzes were easy, the midterm was the same questions from a combined quiz pool. The class gave no preparation for the group project, and was overall useless.

WORST PROFESSOR I EVER MET.

not a hard course, but probably have to self learn the material as he mostly reads of slides during lectures. homework and projects take a lot of time (not too hard but time consuming)

Imagine this: toughest class in the undergrad math division combined with one of the most challenging professors out there... thats what this class feels like. Tough to understand his style of teaching and doesnt really care for students when it comes to lecture - goes way too fast and goes over the class period making me late to my next class.

One of the worst professors I have ever met. Does not care about the students and not reasonable when it comes to clarifying questions. Horrible with email response and very rude. TA are also horrible graders and make a lot of mistakes when delivering assignments and correct them close to the deadlines. Never will I take any of his courses again

Two exams weight more than 80% so if you don't do well in either one, you fail the class already(afaik he doesn't curve). He is really rude to student too. If he thinks you are asking an easy question, he will humiliate you in front of the class. Also he forces student to buy a textbook he wrote using a different name. Avoid him!

Seriously, go cancel your lecture. A combination of humiliating students, lecture is not informative and confusing, tough grader, heavy weighed tests, and so on. Awful.

You're better off reading the textbook, watching YT videos, and seeing the TAs than learning anything from this professor. Quizzes are due before the HW assignments on the chapter we're learning about. Avoid taking his class if you can take it with another professor.

I just failed my midterm, and he doesn't even curve wtf, despite this class being heavily curved or having an adjusted grading scale in past years; literally doesn't care about his students

If you know, you know, literally doesn't care about his students and makes fun of them in class; doesn't even curve the exams despite many people failing despite CSCI 170 historically having a very lenient grading scale in the past; partial credit was so trash on the midterm, multiple people just got 0/15s on problems despite writing things down

Prof. Viktor Adamchik is not a good instructor. His 170 course is constructed to emphasize gotchas and seems to pride on issuing difficult, nonintuitive problems that are generally difficult to prep for without doing every question known to mankind. Make no mistake, 170 is not an easy class. But Adamchik certainly does not make it easier. No curve.

I wish I could give a 0. Adamchik is a terrible and stressful professor. He belittles his students and is unwilling to provide any help, despite his lectures being poor in quality. Rubrics are never released before homeworks are due, and his grading policy is often unclear. There is no curve, there is no leniency, despite the courses difficulty.

He is a terrible professor, who is rude, doesn't care about students, makes grading incredibly harsh, and his lecture slides often have mistakes. His grading is strict and tough, and even though many students are failing, he doesn't plan on curving the class. Overall, I would not recommend having him as a professor.

Avoid if at all possible. You will learn more from skimming the slides for five minutes than Adamchik's entire lectures. Much of the content will have to be learned on your own. He is dismissive of student's questions and concerns. The assignments are not clear and it is often hard to tell what the requirements are.

Inconsiderate

Adamchik is a nightmare for pre-engineering students. Whole package: condescending, humiliating students who ask students, answers student questions with "because it works" or "common sense", does not care about students, and does not explain most concepts. Only thing I appreciate about his lectures is that he provides a lot of examples.

Avoid him if you can. Couldn't understand his lecture. Always ended up going through the lecture slides by myself. He's terrible at answering students' questions. Lot of mistakes and confusions in lecture and assignment instructions. Grading criteria were not event consistent among TAs. Very unfair. Not an easy A.

Most awful instructor one can ever imagine, unclear PA instructions and lots of mistakes on quizes. Does not give the TA answers to the homeworks until a few days before it's due so students cannot get hepful info from office hours. Most important he is disrepectful to students, would tell one to go off if he thinks the questions are too easy.

Prepare to go to a lot of office hours.

Don't even think about registering for her course

AVOID. You'll be teaching yourself the entire semester. VERY long exams with limited time.

He teaches you nothing, but expects you to fully understand a niche topic within JAVA.

Exams are hard and not curved. Hes so disrespectful toward students, belittling them and humiliating them when they ask genuine questions. Easily the hardest Ive worked for a class, but the exams are impossible regardless

I learned a lot from CSCI170 but I am learned from Youtube or textbooks, not from the LECTURE AT ALL!!!His slides are full of mistakes and unclear at all. You have learned by yourself. I have spent so much time on HW because as long as you make a small mistake, he will cut off points. Please do not take his class, just avoid him as much as you can

He is not good at teaching, and he is very rude to students who ask questions during lecture. The exams are very hard as half the class is currently failing. Midterm averages and medians are a C- with little to no curve.

Adamchik is a horrible professor. His lectures don't make any sense and he makes this class much harder than it needs to be. He doesn't really curve the course (unlike other professors), due to which, many students are considering taking the class P/NP. The worst part being, given the way Adamchik set up the class, they're still scared of failing.

Prepare to self-teach everything if you take his class. I personally can't tolerate his accent, the lectures don't help with hw, so half of the class stopped going after a few weeks. I was lucky to have smart friends teach me the course, and was able to take is PNP, yet I still need to try very hard merely to pass it.

Good luck learning anything in lecture. Heavily discourages questions from students, and often responds to questions saying that he doesn't know the answers either. Assignments often don't reflect what is being learned in class, so you need to self-learn a lot of things for an assignment. Grading takes forever, so no feedback between assignments.

Just not a good professor all around, he doesn't care much about students and doesn't give good feedback and often times has very confusing lectures. The lectures seem very poorly put together and typos in lecture, quizzes, and homework make the class much more hard because you effectively need to figure out what you should be asked and answer.....

170 is an inherently difficult class. Adamchik does not help this. He doesn't care. He's not "underrated," other professors who instruct this course have in the high 4s. Delay this class to another instructor if possible. Quizzes are useless, lectures are unclear, grading policy is inconsistent, and no curve despite 65 mean and most students P/NP.

201 with Adamchik has been the worst class I have taken at USC. The class is clearly disorganized. The topics would be useful but way too much time was spent learning about threads while all the other just as important subjects were glanced over. I felt like I rarely got anything out of lectures. Adamchik was also rude to students several times.

He adamchickened out by removing the course evaluations early. Guess he didn't want to hear all those complaints. Both students and TA's have described him as rude and disorganized. Most people gave up on going to lecture halfway through the semester.

Prof. Adamchik was unempathetic inside and outside of the classroom. He would often shut down questions from students or give them answers that did not answer their questions. The lecture slides were often filled with errors, so the majority of students (those that did not go to lecture) were being fed misinformation on the slides published.

This class is just so poorly run. There are not enough TAs to support the entire class, and the majority of TAs are absolutely useless. For 2 of the 3 PAs, I received a 0 because they "couldn't run" my program when I redownloaded my file and ran it fine. The instructions on all assignments tell you nothing, and lectures aren't worth going to.

If you can take another teacher, do it. Adamchik may be okay for others, but he was absolutely terrible for me. I would consider myself a strong student, but with him I feel so clueless in lecture and assignments. Be prepared for a bunch of cramped office hours, confusion, and not getting questions answered. All around hell.

Genuinely one of the hardest classes ive ever taken. Adamchik doesnt care about his students. Homework is impossible to do without getting answers from TAs at OH. Quizzes were super wordy and very difficult. Excelling in this class is not a function of effort. You can study super hard for this class and get trash grades.

Lectures are terrible, homework instructions are long and vague, etc. Difficult to get an A.

A horrible CS professor! He clearly is not interested in teaching the class and that is reflected in the quality of the lectures. Sometimes Professor Adamchik was so clueless about the lecture material he asked students to come up and help him. This is not to mention that PAs and the group project were a mess. Don't think I learned a single thing.

Worst professor I've ever had. Avoid at all costs.

If only I had another choice, I wouldn't think twice about not taking his class. EXTREMELY unorganized, lectures , quizzes ,hw and discussions full of errors. TAs were saying different things than Adamchik, there were also discrepancies between what adamchik/TAs said and what the textbook said. Overall a horrible experience, avoid him if you can

Victor is a bad teacher. He is prettyfunny and definitely knows the material. His skill for actually teaching is abysmal at best (which is further hindered by his strong accent). Concepts aren't difficult, just make sure to do well on the midterms and finals. Homework graded for accuracy-free points if you go to office hours where TAs explain it.

Adamchik is awful at teaching this course. He is definitely knowledgeable on the material but assumes he teaches students who know the material as well. Tips: go to OH for HW (its an easy 100%), the textbook breaks down concepts so it becomes more understandable (definitely use it as a resource), practice problems are your friend

Lectures were very unclear. many mistakes in the homework, slides, and even exams. I was left constantly confused and in office hours all the time just to not understand the class. Refused to curve until the very end because he wanted people to "work hard". This just left the entire class stressed about whether they would pass the class or not.

This man put no effort into 201. An hour into the online exam time, we got an email saying to ignore 5 questions because they were incorrect. Then after the exam was done, like 8 more were thrown out. He didn't check the exam before giving it. All of the assignments were also horribly worded and graded based on unannounced requirements. easy 1/5

The TAs basically did all the work and grading took a long time, because the TAs were so overworked, so I got my grades really late. It seems like if you have any issue with your work, they basically give you a zero. No partial credit if everything works except one glitch. This class was torture.

Assignment specs and skeleton code are super confusing with no comments given. Class material left students very underprepared for the PAs and final projects as well. Quiz and test questions were often mistyped and required correction after everyone took them. The professor was also disrespectful to students for asking questions.

Worst professor I've ever taken. He is super hard to understand and expects everyone to know a lot of stuff from high school. He responds very vaguely when he email him. Expect to get a lot of help from TA/CP

The professor was so so disrespectful and unprofessional to student.

Avoid

Had to take him because he was the only 170 professor last semester. He's really bad at lecturing and he doesn't curve at all. He puts the A boundary at a 93 despite the fact that Cote puts it at an 85 for the same class and is a way better lecturer. Thank god I had pass/fail for this one.

This is my first RMP review ever just to warn how bad this class with adamchik is. The class itself is terribly constructed as it is but somehow Adamchik and the whole course staff manage to make it 10x worse than you could imagine. Avoid. He needs to be fired.

i love the part where he doesn't answer questions and then assigns homework on topics we've never learned! my favorite professor

Professor Adamchik is simply awful. His lectures are incoherent, the homeworks are unfair, and the disconnect in difficulty between lecture content and test content appears insurmountable. I would not recommend ever taking this professor. Frankly, Adamchik's continual employment stands as a direct affront to the University of Southern California.

Instead of paying thousands for this joke of a class, I could have been homeless and happy

Without hyperbole, he is the worst professor at this institution.

NEVER TAKE ANYTHING W ADAMCHIK

His exams are the most poorly written exams I've ever seen. You'll be extremely lucky if you see a question that makes grammatical sense or was covered in class. He refuses to allow regrades and doesn't release the answers, so good luck getting points back for questions that are incorrectly graded. Worst experience I've had at USC.

If you're looking at this right now and thinking about taking CS 170 with Victor... please... do yourself a favor and take it with ANYONE else. Take a leave of absence if you have to. Terrible lectures, exams, slides (they're all comic sans btw), homeworks, and office hrs. Want to do well in this class and be successful in 270? Follow this advice.

Adamchik is the worst professor I've had in my life, and this class was the most unorganized in history. Final project expects us to combine a web application developed as an Eclipse Dynamic Web Project with multi-threading and networking. We never saw even an example of this in class. Don't take Adamchik, he's awful.

I love how the assignment's skeleton code never works! I especially love the part where they use outdated software and technologies that are 40 years old, and then when you have questions Adamchik ignores you and/or says "I am not the compiler"! Great professor, I loved taking this class!

201 is the utter embarrassment of CS department: they teach you something that's 40 years out of date. You'll get nothing useful for your academics or career. Adamchik and the course staff only make it worse: piazza takes days to respond, he hates students asking questions, ignoring students' suggestions. He thinks he is funny, but just ridiculous.

Funny guy but... well, read the other ratings. Consistently muddied the waters with unnecessary information largely unrelated to the class, all explained through overcomplicated examples that failed to communicate any of the important points. Very strict grader on homework, quizzes, and exams. Openly hostile towards many student questions.

Worst lecturer in recorded human history. The only thing he inspired me to do was switch out of CS. Avoid at all costs.

Likes to pick on students which is funny. Literally incomprehensible.

If you ask a question, he will give a very helpful answer and will repeat his answer five times consecutively so you clearly understand what he means. Get the full Adamchik experience by sitting in the front row as he will persistently pick on you.

Fails to explain concepts very clearly in class. Doesn't answer questions clearly and often just restate the question to be the answer. Tests and homework are very hard.

Stay away at all costs

Can't understand what he's saying. The content of lectures, homework, and discussions is totally different.

He does not answer questions in class and have extreme difficult quizs.

Literally, he's not great at all.

Pair shoddy teaching and difficult content and you have disaster. He does not break down complex topics. Instead, he just reads off of his powerpoint slides, which are obscure. Exams are much harder than the practice tests and rely on knowledge not taught in class. 15-hour problem sets every other week, and quizzes every other week.

Lectures are a complete joke, makes fun of students, couldn't find a seat in the beginning of the class but now lecture hall is pretty empty. Hws are all from TA and CP. The class is such a joke that he lectures in comic sans.

Does not explain concepts well. Tests are difficult.

Just no..

One of the hardest CS classes for those without a contest math background. Most people don't get anything out of Adamchik's lectures. He picks on students who ask questions. You're better off watching videos and studying the slides. TA/CP office hours are often super crowded. My advice is to make friends and attend discussions but AVOID if you can

Simply awful. Pure Evil.

For future students: If you have to take this class in order to graduate on time, take it. Beware that you will suffer hard if you do not ask questions in office hours (do not ask Adamchik else he will be aggressive). Homework is easy as long as you do it with 30 people at office hours, or were born a math prodigy/genius at logic and reasoning.

kinda rude and hard to understand. doesn't give practice problems for tests so expected question type and difficulty is unclear.

DO NOT TAKE HIM. He gives very unclear explanations. Never really answers questions. You will leave lecture more confused than when you came in. Is very rude to students publicly. Does not seem to care about students or their success in the class at all. If you have to have him, get a good discussion section TA so they can reteach you everything.

This professor was very strict in class, calling out the names of those he thinks aren't participating. Lots homeworks. Each homework contains 10-15 questions and is counted for the grade. Never take his CSCI570.

Worst professor I've ever had. Be prepared to read up everything on your own, from scratch. You will learn nothing from his lectures. Also, nobody (including the TAs) seem to know how final scores are assigned grades in this class.

Avoid this professor at all costs unless you really need this class to graduate. The lectures are so hard to understand and he is not very good at explaining. Professor spends almost every lecture asking if students are psychology majors whenever they can't answer a question. Most of your grade comes from the exams which are graded quite harshly.

He insults his students for answering questions incorrectly, asking questions that he deems obvious, and not answering questions at all. Confusing lectures, heavy homework assignments, and ridiculously difficult exams. I am only passing this semester because everyone's final grade was curved generously, but don't count on it for every semester.

Worst

TAs are horrible. No regrade requests, not helpful, constantly cancel/change their office hours, barely answers questions on piazza, the list goes on. I hope majority of them don't get employed because if they treat their actual job as unprofessionally and poorly as they treat their TAing job then they are worthless and will get fired on the spot

Awful. Question about quiz problem asked by students, he replies: "Neither do I [know the answer], let us wait for the TA's response" TA led review session during lecture hours on exam week, he argue with TA on audience seat, rather clarify the question. No regrade on HW. Exam regrade request may lower your grade. Prepared to learn by read HIS book

Complete and utter neglect towards the students. Questions on Piazza are rarely answered. Also, he often ignores questions when asked by students in class. You can't expect any straight answers when asking questions in person during office hours. He tries to make it impossible to get any regrades. Summary: he does not care; communication is poor

There is a lot of pressure on this course in HW and Exams. Choose another course if you can.

Man knows his stuff but can't impart his wisdom effectively. You better prepare with Leetcode (LC) in advance for MT1 or you're screwed. Assignments usually have some direct LC hard questions. Lot of self-learning and better form learning groups. Most TAs aren't helpful. Skip his lectures. Watch it on DEN. You'll mostly get an A-/ B+.

Professor dont help clarify doubts of students.

I would not recommend this teacher. Firstly, their accent is unclear, making it difficult to understand them. Secondly, their explanations are not very detailed, leaving many concepts unclear. Additionally, the exams have a lot of questions. For this course, you will mostly need to study on your own using online resources.

The instructor's strong accent and lack of detailed explanations make content hard to follow, often leading to confusion. Most learning is self-directed, as little additional insight is offered. Getting homework clarification is frustrating -- Q&A management is sooo ineffective. Grading is fair.

Harder to understand than Žižek, his accent feels like telegraph especially for non-native speakers. Assignments & exams are overly difficult & demanding. Teaching quality is poor. Many concepts left unclear. We were forced to use his self-written textbook, which riddled with errors. As a lecturer, his only redeeming quality is his sense of humor.

The professor has a strict grading policy. Despite consistently scoring above average in homework, quizzes, and earning more than 10 points above the average on the final exam, I received a B+ for the course. The grading criteria might discourage students who work hard.

Midterm and final takes up 75% of the grade. The midterm was graded harshly as if the Professor told the graders to take off as many points as possible. The final was a bit better. Some students were cheating during the exams but the TAs didn't care, and I believe this significantly impacted the curve at the end.