Boy oh boy, if you take this class with him be ready for a WILD ride.

I'll start with the pros:
•Really hard to get anything less than an A if you show up to class and try a little. The amount of extra credit he gave out was ABSURD, some students would get a 5% grade boost for answering a single question
•Material is not too difficult if you understand physics 1A well
•a VERY entertaining class given all the drama

Cons:
He was by far the least professional professor I've ever had. He'd yell at students for the smallest things. One time a student just trying to be helpful explained to him the situation of the midterm, which was a no-calculator midterm with sin/cos of 20,70,etc and the TAs requested exact answer for full credit. Many people ended up doing long division. This student was basically harassed and told he could not redo his midterm like the rest of the class because he was "complaining" (more like explaining). The professor wasn't even present during the midterm to answer questions. His overall demeanor was like a child, throwing tantrums at the slightest things. Ironically, he told us that we were the ones who needed thicker skins. (Maybe that's true, but he should speak for himself)

He also canceled the extra credit on two separate occasions, then reintroduced it both times, kind of giving whiplash to a lot of people. My grade didn't depend on it, but I know a lot of peoples did and it gave them a lot of stress. Also, thats not to mention that actually seeing what our grades were was extremely difficult, as grades were not posted online anywhere except for twice in the format of an excel sheet. It was impossible to tell how we were actually doing and know with any certainty how the class was graded.

He also basically told everyone not to talk to the dean about any concerns because he knew what he was doing was not good and didn't want to get reported again. I'm pretty sure his giving extra credit to people who played basketball with him was against tons of UCLA rules.

His lectures were average, neither bad nor good. He showed up late pretty frequently, occasionally so late that the TA had to teach for 30 minutes.

Overall, take this class with Goyal if you want drama and an easy A. Skip if you want to learn the material peacefully.

Having done BS and MS at UCLA in mechanical engineering, I can say that MAE 261a is all of the following at the same time: 1) the best and most important class in the department for ME's who want to do structural work, 2) the hardest class in the whole department, and 3) the most exciting class in the whole department.

1) This class has a lot of content for structural ME's that I feel should have been introduced in undergrad but isn't. e.g. structural theories and how they are approximations of the "true" 3d field theory, how approximation theories behind FEA work, how to do structural optimization, and buckling theory.

2) Prof Goyal doesn't play around and has high expectations. In the end, basically everyone gets an A, but the caveat is that ~25-50% of students get weeded out (drop out because of workload and difficulty). The homeworks and tests are extremely long and difficult.

3) I felt like this class opened a whole new world of techniques for structural analysis. The optimization techniques are very exciting for someone who wants to design parts with high structural efficiency.

Prof Goyal cares deeply about his students learning and understanding the materials. The lectures are very good and he is very accommodating in helping you outside of scheduled lectures and office hours.

If you want to be a structural component designer/analyst in aerospace or some other performance application, this class is a must-take.

Goyal is such a great professor! Definitely requires a lot from students but I have learned so much about engineering in general and how to set up problems and what to look for. how to question results. analyze results. why safety is important. Goyal is funny, witty, and interactive with students. sometimes intimidating. a lot of work in the class but you'll definitely feel that rewarding feeling after taking his course. great that he provided many extra credit opportunities to help us students manage time and earn that A.

Excellent course. Vinay Goyal has extensive background in finite element methods in the aerospace industry and is probably the best person imaginable to teach the course. He is able to teach the material in a very practical way through many Abaqus tutorials while still getting you knowledge of all the theory. He is an engaging lecturer. For anyone desiring to work as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry, or as a stress analyst, this class is a must take. The workload can be a bit more than average, but there is a ton of extra credit offered and it isn't difficult to get an A.

By far both the greatest class I've taken at UCLA, but also by far the most workload. Many of the concepts can be pretty "mathy" but the projects that he assigns (1 project every other week) are really awesome projects ranging from aircraft wing analysis, fuselage buckling, launch vehicle analysis, composite analysis, all of which are straight from his connections with industry. If you want to learn something useful that will conglomerate all of what you've learned in your undergrad thus far, take this class without a doubt, but be sure you're seriously willing to put in upwards of 10-15 hours of work a week.
PS No final or midterms, just 5 homeworks, 5 projects, and alot of extra credit

This class was a roller coaster. Vinay Goyal is unlike any other professor I have ever had. For one thing, he's from industry, so he approaches things from a "common sense" or intuition perspective instead of an academic approach. Additionally, he throws extra credit at students. Seriously, I ended up with so much extra credit by the end of the quarter that my quiz category was worth over 150%. Halfway through the final, I decided to leave the hardest questions unfinished because I was confident that I would get an A. Finally, Goyal is truly invested in seeing his students succeed. For the first half of the class (statics), he created Youtube videos to go over numerous example problems so that, in his own words, we would have no excuse to not do well on the exam.

There are a few downsides to this class, however. Goyal is a bit unpredictable. Meaning that he stopped doing Youtube videos halfway through the class because he got offended by an alleged complaint, and he gave us a very computational midterm without a calculator because he was afraid we would cheat. On the plus side, Goyal was not hesitant to change up his teaching style if what he did wasn't working, and as mentioned before, he gave out easy extra credit quizzes if he liked the level of participation.

Overall, this class was good for learning statics pretty well and gaining an introduction to mechanics of materials. Goyal likes to stress the easiness of his class, which is true if you have a good intuition for mechanics and do plenty of practice. However, I thought he went a little too fast through topics like stress/strain and deflection, and therefore I did not develop as much intuition as with statics.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of people did not take this class seriously and missed easy points. Don't be like those people: go to class, do the HW thoroughly, and do the example problems he assigns, and you will not have to worry about your grade at all.

Really tough to rate this guy. On the one hand, he started off the quarter just throwing extra credit points at students for answering questions in lectures. Then he got upset when apparently someone complained and he (kind of) stopped doing that (it still happened, but it was pretty rare). He was pretty random but he does constantly pride himself on being unpredictable so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Overall the topics of the class aren't that hard. If you understand that the net force on an object at equilibrium is zero then you should be fine with most of the setup. Nearly everything else is algebra to solve for some unknown. Also a lot of the topics are pretty intuitive if you're into mechanics at all (which you probably are if you're in an MAE course).

There was one homework assignment each week of 5-8 problems covering the previous week's material and a quiz on the topics from the homework in each discussion section. Also I'm pretty sure he gave extra credit points for attendance (he would sometimes pass a sign-in sheet around).

The midterm wasn't hard conceptually but there was a lot of computation of not-so-friendly numbers and we weren't allowed calculators. I know the TAs didn't like it either and were willing to fight for us to have calculators on the final (until coronavirus struck). The final was basically a homework assignment: we had a week to do six problems and turn it in online.

Overall I'd say the main negative was the unpredictable nature of the class. I never knew what I got on any single quiz and the overall grading system for the was unclear (when we'd taken 6 quizzes most of the class' quiz scores were something like 60/40, and lots of people ended up with about 200% in the quiz category with the other extra credits). Now I'm not complaining, but you couple that with a good midterm score and the final is essentially irrelevant, which seems weird but again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in his words "I'm the professor I do what I want" and "I don't want you to think you know what's coming." Again I'm not complaining since he was very generous with grading and extra credits.

My biggest tip is to GO TO EVERY SINGLE CLASS because you never know what he has in store.

Professor Goyal really wanted everyone in the class to get a good grade. He offered a ton of extra credit points, he offered online lectures, he offered a midterm retake, he really wanted everyone to not have to worry about their grade, and that was appreciated. With that said, he also held what he was doing against you. When he saw a mediocre average on the midterm he freaked out and individually handed back all the midterms saying outloud who did good with a "very nice work" and who did bad with saying nothing and giving a glare. In class his lectures were often unclear but his youtube lectures were helpful. Unfortunately due to "complaints" he stopped doing those. His version of "complaints" were just anything that brought a concern about his teaching. For example saying "Can you do more examples in class" could be seen as a complaint and therefore he thinks you don't appreciate everything he is doing for you and decides to take away youtube videos with all the examples and extra credit, since he doesn't have to do those things and theyre too much extra work that goes unappreciated. Overall if you want a good grade, he will try to help you get there. If you want a chill/level-headed professor he is not the guy. His temper and mood swings made this class way more stressful. When most of his style was trying to make this class have as little stress as possible

This course was a rollercoaster. He is very, very generous with his extra credit, as in you can get 2% of a final grade just for saying to draw a FBD or even 1% for showing up to lecture, but some complaints arose about grading and him giving pop quizzes, so he took extra credit away. Vinay doesn't curve his classes, but stresses that you learn and understand the material. His midterm was not really graded for numerical accuracy, but for the proper steps and problem solving approach. I would recommend taking this course with Vinay, but come in with thick skin and possibly be prepared for a rollercoaster of a quarter.