Ravi Sundaram is a Computer Science professor at Northeastern University rated 2.84/5 by 249 students, with 3.79/5 difficulty and 13.0% who would take them again (TRACE + RateMyProfessors + Reddit, updated July 2026).
Ravi Sundaram professor reviews and ratings: 2.84/5 from 249 student reviews at Northeastern (13.0% would take again). TRACE + RateMyProfessor + Reddit.
Instead of explaining concepts properly, Ravi will say, "take the time to learn it yourself", and "what do you think"? Then, he will go on a wild rant about one of his many opinionated beliefs. Then, you will get slapped with a HW with problems he did not teach how to do at all during the class. Ravi is a net negative to your learning process.CS5800 2026-02-05 01:57:28 +0000 UTC
Jumps around topics but never gets to the actual thing at hand. More interested in expressing his personal opinions than actually teaching stuff. Goes on a tangent every few minutes, and ends up taking 15 hours to teach something that would actually take a competent professor half an hour to accomplish.CS1800 2025-11-05 06:51:23 +0000 UTC
He does not set high standards for the course staff which results in unhelpful TAs and slow grading dragged by a few people who don't meet deadlines. He is overall unhelpful and inattentive.CS3000 2025-04-27 17:49:07 +0000 UTC
Gives hard assignments, but grades on a curve. Questions are often not well-worded. Jumps into long, high-speed math or logic proofs that you don't need to know. Surprising amount of calc+algebra was required. Does give neat puzzles in class. Not bad at answering questions in class. Knowledgeable. (CS 5700 = CS 4700, it is mixed grad/undergrad.)CS4700 2010-12-21 11:50:15 +0000 UTC
Grade was entirely problem sets so when you went to his office hours he refused to help at all. Sometimes explains things clearly then puts some impossible-to-follow proof on the board and loses everybody. Homework questions unrelated and much harder than info covered in class. Copy everything from the internet and you'll be fine, minus learning.CSU690 2008-12-17 14:56:48 +0000 UTC
The course work for Wireless Communication was too tough and on top of that, he made my life still miserable by putting in projects! There was absolutely no help from any corner and he expects us to pull rabbits out of our hats. Although he taught some concepts clearly, the course is by no means worth taking; simply because of its difficulty level.CSG250 2008-11-20 16:43:11 +0000 UTC
No CommentsCS645 2007-11-06 21:19:53 +0000 UTC
The class itself wasn't bad, but the workload was obnoxious. This class was an order of magnitude harder than even the other PhD courses, and the problems sets so difficult that most students in the class put 20+ hours into EACH. This was his first semester teaching it, and he promises it will improve, but overall it was a miserable experience.CSG713 2005-12-02 19:51:26 +0000 UTC
Oh wow, you can read PPT and make an already difficult topic more difficult with bad explanations. i've had enough of this and listening to your course is pure sufferingCS5800 2024-01-27 03:06:12 +0000 UTC
Ravi's accent makes it a little harder to understand him, and he's not exceptionally good at explaining things to begin with, but unless you have a hard time with the material you should be able to follow him and he will do his best to help you if you ask. The biggest problem with this class was that it was like 300 students, he did well given thatCS1800 2019-01-29 01:29:22 +0000 UTC
Nobody understands what Ravi is lecturing about in class. This class is mostly self-study and to do well on the problem set due each week, you need to do a lot of self studying. We were once taught a concept the day after the problem set was due. It is also really hard to pay attention in lecture because Ravi is not good at explaining the concepts.CS3000 2025-01-31 19:02:44 +0000 UTC
This professor has the amazing ability to make a difficult concept event more difficult to understand. There are way more useful video on Youtube than this professor's recored videos. He doesn't even have a decent mic and a quiet environment when he did those recordingsCS5800 2023-07-25 01:04:29 +0000 UTC
Not good at explaining things in ways that are understandable to someone who doesn't already have knowledge of the topic. It is intimidating to ask questions in class (200+ students) and he doesn't answer questions well anyways. In my opinion, he shouldn't teach intro classes because he made the class a lot more difficult than it needed to be.CS1800 2018-11-07 10:02:53 +0000 UTC
This instructor unfortunately makes difficult topics even harder to understand. Since he mades the online quizes and videos for CS 5800 online classes in NEU, I would recommend taking the in person classes whenever possible. The quality of his lectures do not worth the money spent on the tuition.CS5800 2023-03-06 07:18:11 +0000 UTC
Funny guy. Expects a lot of knowledge coming in to the class. Continues topics without students fully understanding them .CS1800 2015-11-19 12:43:33 +0000 UTC
Ravi Sundaram has an average rating of 2.84/5 from 249 student reviews. 13.0% of students said they would take them again.
Ravi Sundaram's classes have a difficulty rating of 3.79/5 based on student reviews.
Ravi Sundaram has taught CS1802, CS3000, CS7870, CS5800, CS3001, CS7880, CS1800, CS7805, CS4800 at Northeastern.
Data updated July 2026.