The course is fairly easy to pass if you practice continuously (about 2 hours a week). It's not just a "read the slides and understand" course — you actually have to solve practice problems to understand the material better.

As mentioned before, if you are a new student looking for the best professor, choose Francis Duah; his teaching methods actually help you to understand the material rather than just memorizing it.

The major advice for any exams is NOT to wait till the week or a day before the exam. Continuous practice ensures that you are able to solve such questions on an exam or test like it's second nature. Take advantage of past questions from previous years and use them to practice; questions on the midterms/finals are always similar to the past questions. Ensure to master limits, derivatives, RIEMANN SUM, chain rule, and trig derivatives — they always show up on the finals.

Calculus I can be overwhelming if you fall behind a couple of lessons, it's important to stay on top of things as there are numerous new principles that build on one another to solve problems. It's better to prioritize in-class recommended problems rather than textbook recommendations. It's also important to move on from the practice problems if you have a decent understanding of the current unit; there will be plenty of opportunities to practice in future units.

The labs review course questions assigned by the professor, taken up by a TA. They are not mandatory, however, it is recommended to attend for practice and attendance. These questions are useful as they mimic the formats of exam questions. It is also a smaller classroom setting where you can converse and ask questions regarding the course material.

Past midterms are significantly different from the recommended textbook problems, it is wiser to study past midterms compared to recommended textbook problems. Attend the study hall it targets for relevant midterm questions, and you can ask the teaching professor for clarifications. Performing well on the midterm allows leisure for the final exam as well, however the midterm exam for this course is usually harder than the final.

Like the midterm, it is wiser to review the past exams, as you will find similarities. Attending the study hall also helps, however self-practice beforehand of all the study hall questions allows you to follow along easier.

If you struggled in Calculus I, that's totally fine. I struggled with Calculus I (MTH140) and honestly hated it. Calc 2 is where I actually started seeing the use of math, and where it became more interesting and even kind of fun. In Calc 2, you focus on specific areas of calculus, especially integration and sequences and series, and you actually spend time understanding them instead of rushing through everything. These are the longest parts of the course, and with practice they get easier and easier. I never thought integrals or series could be fun, but once things start clicking, they actually are. This was especially true for me because I had a good professor, Dr. Saeid Samiezadeh. I never used the textbook at all. I only studied from his slides, and they were more than enough, especially when combined with past midterms and finals to prepare for the midterm and final.

The labs were easy as long as you were caught up with the material. If you understand the content, the lab quizzes are straightforward.

For integrals, which make up a big chunk of the course at the start, I'd honestly recommend doing reps whenever you're bored. As corny as it sounds, repetition is the best way to understand it. You should be able to look at an integral and instantly know what method to use. If you can't, you just need more reps. I had a friend who used to solve integrals at the gym. You don't need to be that locked in, but the idea is the same.

Since the course mainly focuses on integrals, sequences and series, first order differential equations, and a bit of multivariable calculus, it's easier to follow. There's a lot of repetition, and you eventually get into a flow, unlike Calc 1 where it felt like new concepts were being thrown at you all at once.

This course builds upon your existing minor experience with programming from CPS188 to make you proficient in C coding. The labs are very challenging, not just because you're tasked with making a virtual robot move, but also because there are no youtube videos or reddit posts you can copy solutions from. Additionally, I feel you get a very solid understanding of C programming from the assignments and labs. It's very easy to cheat on those, but keep in mind that if you cheat/chatGPT all of the course your understanding in later courses (ex MTE502) will be hampered significantly.

It's important to ask questions as much as possible, Professor Chhabra can go rapidly through the slides but he's never afraid to explain topics when prompted. Professor Chhabra tends to go very in depth into minute details of abstract/unnecessary concepts that can be confusing. However, when you ask for clarification he has no qualms clearing things up. I recommend reading the textbook, unironically. It provides deeper insight into the purpose of the more complex OOP programming you do (inheritance, multithreading).

As mentioned above, the labs are extremely challenging. They are purposefully made in this way, to be uncheatable; you will not be able to ask ChatGPT, or Chegg, or find tutorials on youtube on how to do the labs. The best advice is to try and find an upper year mechatronics student who's taken the course, and ask for their advice on how best to complete the labs.

Usually you're allowed a cheat sheet on the final, and it's best to make that with a mix of theoretical understanding (i.e. what the 4 pillars of OOP are, what inheritance means) as well as coding examples, as those are also asked on exams.

The final project allows for a lot of customization. Don't be afraid to pick an ambitious project. You have a lot of time to complete it, and it's worth quite a large amount. It's also just a great opportunity to choose something challenging, as you have multiple students and a large amount of time to complete the project. Choosing something physical (i.e. a dexterous hand or a block sorting robot) also acts as a really addition to your resume, for next year's coop race.

MTE 401 is very formula-driven, but what really matters is process. You're constantly asked to convert a circuit into equations, pick the right method (nodal vs mesh vs Thevenin), and solve efficiently. Falling behind early — especially around nodal/mesh and source transformations — makes the rest of the term much harder.

Attend tutorials and try to stay on top of lecture material by working through the assigned and recommended problems each week. This keeps concepts fresh and directly helps with the in-lab quizzes.

Consistency is everything in this course. Weekly practice beats last-minute cramming.

Labs focus on real circuits: Ohm's Law, nodal analysis, Thevenin equivalents, RC/RL step responses, resonance, and AC behavior as shown in the lab schedule.

Student tips: Prepare ahead of time — labs can be confusing on first pass, and most groups end up using the full two hours. Doing solid pre-lab analysis and simulations makes in-lab work much smoother. Labs build directly toward the lab tests near the end of the semester, so treat every session as practice. Simulate circuits in LTspice before coming in. Wiring errors eat time — double-check connections early. Keep organized notes and screenshots; they help massively when writing reports.

The midterm usually focuses on DC analysis and early energy-storage concepts.

How to prepare: Practice as much as you can — volume matters in this course. Focus on understanding how to approach a question rather than memorizing formulas. Build a routine: identify nodes → pick a method → write equations → solve → sanity-check. Once the conceptual structure clicks, most problems become very manageable.

The final is comprehensive and emphasizes AC analysis, phasors, impedance, power calculations, resonance, and RC/RL transients alongside earlier DC topics.

Student advice: Keep practicing full problems under time pressure. Aim for conceptual mastery first — recognizing what a circuit is asking for makes the algebra much easier. Redo lab tests and tutorial problems. Drill phasor conversions and power-factor questions until they're automatic. Use external resources like the EES 512 playlist to reinforce difficult sections.

MTE 401 is challenging but very doable if you stay consistent. The students who perform best are the ones who practice weekly, attend tutorials, and treat labs seriously instead of leaving circuits until exam season.

If you master nodal and mesh early, prepare properly for labs, and keep up with lecture problems, this course becomes much smoother — and sets you up well for later mechatronics courses involving motors, machines, and power electronics.

MTE 501 is concept-heavy but very rewarding. It's less about crunching numbers and more about recognizing what kind of problem you're looking at (time domain, frequency domain, z-domain), and choosing the right tool: convolution, Fourier, Laplace/z-transform, frequency response, etc.

The math itself isn't brutal (mostly algebra, complex numbers, and geometric series), but there are lots of new ideas stacked on top of each other. Lathi's textbook is dense but solid, use it as a reference and problem bank. If you keep up with the concepts and do practice problems by "type", the course feels manageable. If you cram purely from formulas, it feels rough.

Think in question types, not chapters: "Given a difference equation → find H(z) and h[n]", "Finite-length DT signal → DTFT via geometric series", "Periodic DT signal → DTFS via Euler", "Rational X(z) + ROC → inverse z and time support", etc.

Build a 1-page cheat sheet of recipes: how to recognise each type, step-by-step "do this, then this", and common traps (forgetting the δ[n] term, wrong ROC, off-by-one in convolution).

When using solved examples or solutions: first identify what type of problem it is. Then cover the solution and force yourself to say the next step out loud before checking.

Treat complex exponentials as your best friends: once you see that e^(jωn) is an eigenfunction, frequency-response questions get way easier.

Typical structure (may vary by year):

Midterm (one page single-sided cheat sheet allowed) — up to and including Laplace transform: continuous-time signals and systems, LTI properties, impulse/step response, convolution (CT/DT depending on offering), Laplace transform, properties, solving differential equations.

Final Exam (cumulative but heavier on later topics, one page double-sided cheat sheet allowed) — sampling and aliasing, discrete-time LTI systems and convolution, DTFS/DTFT and frequency response, z-transform, ROC, poles/zeros, inverse z, stability.

For the midterm, focus on: being able to go diff eq → Laplace → H(s) → y(t) or h(t) smoothly, recognising when convolution in time is easier vs transform methods, and understanding what poles mean for stability and transient behaviour.

For the final, spend extra time on: sampling diagrams and Nyquist-rate questions, DT convolution (especially with exponentials and finite pulses), DTFS/DTFT patterns (using geometric series and Euler), and ROC reasoning for z-transform (causal vs non-causal, stable vs unstable).

MTE 501 is usually more theory + problem-solving than a big hardware project. Labs are Python experiments: plotting time-domain signals and their spectra, visualising convolution and filtering, demonstrating sampling and aliasing by changing the sample rate.

They're a good chance to see what the math is doing: how a filter actually shapes a signal, what aliasing looks like, how poles/zeros move the frequency response. Don't treat labs as throwaway "marks only". If you pay attention, they'll make the exam questions feel way more intuitive.

"It's one of those courses that feels abstract while you're in it but suddenly makes sense when you hit control systems and DSP."

"Don't leave it to the last week. Even 1–2 hours a week of practice problems by type pays off huge."

"Having a clean, organised cheatsheet of patterns and ROCs was honestly more useful than memorising giant tables."

If I could only give one piece of advice, it would be to practice. Practice helps build intuition for problem solving, and most questions are similar in how you have to approach them.