I'm mostly submitting this review because a lot of the previous reviewers got good grades and I don't want people to think they're over-exaggerating how miserable this class actually was. I just want to clarify that I full-on flunked this class. I did pretty well in the rest of the math series, so I don't think this was just me slacking off or something like that. Avoid this class. I found her teaching style extremely condescending. When I got questions wrong, I had a hard time asking for help because she was very much a fake 'tough love' teacher, where it felt like she was going to put you through hell for getting it wrong so you could learn from it. My TA had a similar attitude, so not only did I fail miserably, I hated going to class and I hated asking questions in office hours. I did about average on every test and was going to be perfectly content with a C (I needed about a 2% curve for that) but, as others have mentioned, no curve at all. Her averages were also a little deceiving because it seemed like people were either doing very well, or they were doing very very poorly (so on one I think the average was a 75, but not very many people were in that 70-80 range). hours and hours of homework meant I ended up taking shortcuts to get right answers, which meant I didn't know the material (my fault, but still). I think she will get better as time goes on, but I really would not recommend her to anyone. I cannot think of a single redeeming aspect of this class.

The professor was a very good lecturer, and her office hours were useful. Her practice exams are pretty good review material for the final, along with her homework.

32B is a hard class, and May is probably one of the hardest 32B teachers out there. Her homework is graded based on how many questions you get correct, which is pretty dumb. Her test averages are in the 60s and low 70s, and she appears to use a flat scale, which hurts. She does drop one test, allows you to use a note card, and is an effective lecturer, which sort of helps.

The homework is 100% mandatory, and hurts your grade. It’s also unnecessarily long. But, you can easily pirate the textbook.

IDK what the experience of the other reviewers were, but I personally had a great time taking 115A with May. The lectures were super engaging and she seemed passionate about teaching linear algebra. I can't speak for her office hours because I never went to them, but she was super nice and did her best to explain whenever I did have questions. Her midterms are definitely on the harder end, and the grading for the tests and homework was pretty strict, where I'd usually miss points for not explaining something thoroughly enough, but it's to be expected since this is supposed to be the first real class on mathematical proofs. The homework was pretty straightforward, 5 questions to be handed in every week, along with some practice problems. The final was similar in difficulty to her midterms, but with much more time, so it was very doable. Overall a great professor, definitely would take another class with her.

May was definitely the worst math professor I have had at UCLA. It was not that her teaching was bad, because she did explain things fairly well, but rather that her tests were not even close to the level of difficulty of the homework or any other preparatory material she provided us with. I would often find myself understanding the quizzes and homework material very well before exams and then realizing how different the exam questions were. She is a nice professor, but I would never take a class with her again

May gives clear and helpful lectures with lots of examples, but her tests are HARD. She even admits to giving long, hard exams. Her homework, quizzes, and examples in class aren't similar to the exam. Maybe you'll get lucky with one question similar to a homework problem. I went into her office hours every week to ask for homework help and even just listen to other people's questions, but no matter how much I studied for the exam I never felt fully prepared. I wouldn't recommend taking any class with her.

Like most classes, her lectures and homework were straight from the textbook. However, these resources did not prepare you for the exams at all. To do well, you have to understand the materials conceptually and be able to apply it to real-world scenarios. This is perfectly understandable, but the fact that she doesn’t curve the class can be detrimental to your grade. To put it all together, the textbook and homework problems are very surface level, and her exams are very challenging.

She barely knows anything about linear algebra, and I'm surprised she's interest is in Topology. She told us that she didn't care much about our grade.

May is simply not a good lecturer for this class. Most of the time, she wouldn't finish the planned material for a lecture on any given day, and that would set back the schedule ever so slightly, until there's a day where she would blow through a whole load of content to catch up with the syllabus. Because of this, most of her lectures don't manage to go beyond what's written in the textbook (I ended up not going to 1/2 the lectures because I could just study out of the textbook and go to discussions and I still got a 92 on the second midterm). Just go to the lectures immediately preceding any tests and you should be A-OK (I did semi-bad on the final because I didn't go to the last two lectures, apparently).

Professor May is very tough, she does not cover the material very well (only superficial), her tests are very hard and long that you can not finish them in 50 minutes, (the exam period is 45 minutes only), expect new material in the test completely different that the lecture. She does not respect the time, always starts the lecture at least 2 minutes before the time and ends the lecture up to 5 minutes after the time. She does not provide the answer key for the exams or for the worksheets, she does not care for students at all. She does not want to put any efforts to help the student, her assignments are due the first 5 minutes of the discussion and she does not accept the assignments after these 5 minutes, even if it is 1 minute late after theses 5 minutes, she is very strict and she tells the TA's to do that. Her TA's actually do nothing, they let the students working in groups and they don't even give the answers for the worksheets.

Professor May is absolutely a good lecturer as she makes her points very clear in class. Also, as opposed to other comments, I find the exams difficult but reasonable. If you review the practice exams, you will find the exams not that scary because the actual exams are so similar to the practice ones. However, I agree with other comments that the normal workload is insane. Usually, it takes 5-7 hours to finish her homework every week. If you cannot bear this, do not take her class.