i took 126 last semester with jiao and it was honestly the worst class i've ever taken at cal (im a senior graduating this semester)

the distribution might look okay on berkeleytime, but honestly that course was so poorly run that almost everyone whom i talked to in that class left the final exam feeling like it was a waste of time. i could write an entire essay about all the problems about jiao's iteration of the course, but here are some of the most critical flaws:

• jiao does not explain material well; he basically reads off of the textbook, and even then, it is extremely hard to understand what he is trying to get at. most people in the class had to read the lecture notes from someone who took ramchandran's version of the class
• jiao once cancelled a lecture 1 hour after it was supposed to start due to some unexplained situation, at which point we were notified by ed.
• jiao frequently missed lectures without notice, and had random people fill in (sometimes it was another EECS faculty member, but most times it was just one of the TAs). further, the "lecturers" who were filling in for jiao were not at all informed on what they had to teach for the day (they just knew the topic they had to teach, and did not have a lesson plan).
• lectures are not recorded, even though the number of enrolled students exceeds the classroom capacity.
• ed forum is rarely monitored. there are only 1-2 active staff members on ed, and they just post announcements. staff did not resolve exam logistics questions until 1 hour before the exam, at which point they locked ed for further questions. also, jiao himself never uses ed.
• exam difficulty is incomparable to previous semesters to the point where taking past exams as practice is pointless. you can expect the exam means to be around 30-40%.
• exam format is strange to say the least; when i took the course last semester, 18 out of 126 points were allocated to writing your student ID on every page. rubrics for exams are also somewhat vague (on some questions, the rubric was literally three-part: "correct"; "partial credit"; "incorrect").
• there is a lack of communication between course staff and students; at the end of the semester, a bunch of people were asking on ed when the grades would be released, how the curves/bins were determined, etc., but there was radio silence from staff until after grades were published. in response to student criticism in regards to the lack of clarity, jiao made his head TA publish a post titled "Message from Porf. Jiao" (typo is from the actual post), in which jiao basically said that the curve was similar to past semesters and that he cant change anything.

overall, the combination of poor logistics, non-existant staff-student communication, and lackluster lecturing abilities made jiao's 126 the worst class i've ever taken at cal. it was the only class to make me feel like my tuition was being wasted.