McCarty, Michael  

Mike is unreasonable in a reasonable way. He took each lab manual and basically summed it up in 7-10 simple steps and usually demonstrated part of the lab that is confusing or something that you previously didn't know (like a feature on the oscilloscope that you didn't know before). However, he grades labs very hard. But I get why he would grade labs hard. He treats you like an actual Electrical Engineer college student who should be putting in the time and effort to write nice and comprehensive lab reports. I felt like every lab report was equivalent to a 10+ page paper in Tech Writing (with Figures and Tables and such). Most lab instructors let students slide with poorly written lab reports, but not Mike. tl;dr Mike is a hard grader, but for good reasons. Put the time and effort in your lab reports and you will be rewarded.

I took EE 295 with James Tuccillo as the instructor and Michael McCarty as the lab grader. It's pretty clear that neither of these gentlemen are suited to ever become professors at Poly. Tuccillo is rarely happy to see his students, is rude and blunt (not in a good way) when answering questions, and treats anyone who doesn't know something like an idiot. McCarty, the grader, is much, much worse. We were not given any sort of explicit guidelines or requirements for lab reports, and even though we completely met every objective on the (vague and short) list given on the syllabus, we got a low D. The subsequent labs were hardly better, in that he doesn't show or explain why you lost points on the labs, he simply marks things wrong. And where any other professor would take off a point or two for mistakes, McCarty takes half a letter grade. Do not take McCarty or Tuccillo. You will not learn any more than with an actual professor (in fact, probably less), and your only reward for this is a sharply lowered GPA.

Taking this instructor is like being in a Twilight Zone episode. You just can