I took IB math A&A HL in high school and took this class as my first math class at UCLA. I thought it was at a good level and I did decently despite what everyone said about it being really challenging. I didn't find it too hard since I already knew about half from high school. I don't think the professor is very good at explaining the material, but he definitely tries his best. The nice thing about this professor was that the exams were very similar to the textbook problems, and before each exam he would write a list of problems to practice. I found that if you did the problems, the exams were very doable.

Padilla is a nice professor, and he clearly cares for his students- but I have to admit he is not great at lecturing and explaining mathematical concepts. The lectures were often very disjointed, with us jumping between different concepts. He often over complicated fairly simple topics, making them very hard to understand. The midterm and finals often covered these nebulous topics, making it significantly harder. The homework was easy, though you definitely need to do additional practice problems to prepare for exams. If you're okay self studying significant portions of the course, this class shouldn't be too hard for you. However I would not rely on Padilla to accurately explain ever concept to its fullest extent- even in office hours. Again, he is a nice professor and clearly wants his students to succeed; his lecturing and explaining skills just are lacking.

I hated this class. The lectures / material are honestly not too bad and the homework/weekly workload is minimal. The tests are hell. Way too hard for what the class is supposed to be teaching and it feels like a personal attack against you every time you take an exam (there are 2 midterms and a final). Padilla clearly loves math, but he is hard to understand and goes on tangents. In the end, I'm unsure if there are other professors that will give you a better experience but be prepared for a rough class if you decide to enroll.

Pros:

- The lecture material itself is pretty interesting. I don't know about previous reviews, but even though the prof. was sometimes unclear in his pronunciation of a few concepts and definitions, I believe he taught pretty well. I found his teaching to be pretty easy to follow along to (apart from a few instances where he made things more complicated than they had to be and I had to rely on my TA for an explanation).

- You don't have to buy the textbook, an online PDF is easily available.

- The homework problems aren't too bad.

Cons

-It takes a long of work to get an A in this class. While the content isn't difficult, Padilla gives pretty difficult tests so you need to review his lecture problems, textbook problems, and past exams (if you can find any) to help prepare yourself. If you do all of this, you'll be fine.

- He isn't really responsive but seems helpful during office hours (though, I didn't really go to one).

Note: See if you can get Steven Truong as your TA, he was great and answered all my questions over email super quick, even during the weekend.

Jose isn't a terrible lecturer though he gets very theoretical at times, and it gets difficult to follow. As a result, he has poor time management when it comes to lecture schedules and it feels as if he's rushing through the material right before the midterms. I feel that most of what I learned came from self-studying the material and doing additional practice problems besides the homework.

Overall, however, he's quite generous with grading (drops the lowest homework grade and curved the final). The exams are mostly fair, but they're much more difficult than the homework problems. One drawback is his grading system where the final exam is 45-55% of your grade, just pure insanity.

This is definitely not an easy class. To get a good grade, you need to do lots of practice (he usually assigns a ridiculous number of practice problems right before the midterms, and I tried to do some problems daily). The tests mostly involve concepts that can be found in the practice problems, usually with one or two curveball questions that are nothing like the practice problems. I found doing his practice midterms from 2019 (which can be found on his website) was really useful in preparing. The 45-55% allocated to the final was stressful, and should not be taken lightly.

Luckily, his curve is generous. I bombed one midterm but it was dropped. The final was technically out of 60 points but he took the score out of 55, giving everyone a 5 point buffer (no extra credit though). He tried not to fail anyone.

It is possible to get a good grade in this class, but know that your grade will be the result of the performance on two or three massive tests.

This class really put me through it. I took AP Calculus BC in high school and it was my favorite class of all time, but for whatever reason I just could not do well in this class. Maybe it was because the tests were hard and worth the majority of the final grade, but I think I have to attribute it to the professor's teaching style. Because the lectures were online and only a mere 50 minutes, lots of the content that was necessary to know for the exams was covered during office hours. There was always some little trick that would cost you an incredible amount of points if you didn't know it. As the quarter went on, we started to fall behind on the teaching schedule, so he taught us like 4 units worth of stuff the week before the final. Occasionally, he'd make an out of pocket comment that'd make us feel bad about ourselves, but I'd like to think he didn't mean it. Don't get me wrong, Jose is a great guy, I just don't think this year's teaching format was for him.

I took Calc BC in high school and this class was still confusing for me. The professor has an accent that is a bit hard to understand and he doesn't really explain things clearly. If I hadn't taken calc BC I would've been extremely lost. Homework was due every week on Friday at midnight (none on midterms and finals weeks) and it was only about 10 problems or so. Also I noticed he tends to cut students off when they're asking questions. He starts responding before the student even finishes the question and sometimes his response doesn't even answer what the student is asking because of this. Overall, wouldn't recommend but the curve is pretty high because the average on midterms was like 60%.

I probably enjoyed this class more than most people. His lectures are not great, just him doing example problems for 50 minutes, but if you can keep up with that, the homework, and the exam review problems you will be fine. Do not snub the exam review problems. He told us that he frequently takes example problems from his lectures and puts them in the exam, so you should consider doing your best to pay attention and take notes during lecture.

I absolutely hated this class. I took AP Calculus BC in high school, but 31B was like hell compared to AP Calc. Although lectures were online, the exams were all in person, which I believe is unfair and unreasonable.
Professor Padilla is a disorganized and confusing lecturer; he would jump back and forth between examples and theorems, and he sometimes wouldn't even finish solving the example. Although other students have complained about his accent, I didn't think it was that hard to understand his English... He simply just did not explain the concepts well enough for me to understand.
Homework was reasonable, which just consisted of a bunch of problems from the textbook. I believe your lowest homework grade is dropped.
Exams were AWFUL. They were nothing like the questions from the textbook/lectures; the exam problems were far more complex. Averages were low for the exams.
The only "review" questions that he offers us for the exams were some problems assigned from the textbook, and he didn't even provide an answer key for the problems, so I had no clue if I was even getting the problems right. The only way to check your answer is by comparing with peers or by going to his OH.
The only thing that saved me from actually failing this class was the fat curve at the end of the course, but nobody truly knew their grades until they officially came out.
I would avoid taking this class with this professor. If it is absolutely unavoidable, watch Youtube videos that explain the concepts, read through the textbook, solve extra problems, and work with your TA.