LIFESCI 107
Genetics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, 75 minutes. Requisites: courses 7C, 23L, Chemistry 14A (or 20A), 14C (or 30A). Not open for credit to students with credit for course 4. Advanced Mendelian genetics, recombination, biochemical genetics, mutation, DNA, genetic code, gene regulation, genes in populations. Letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Professor Chen was a very dedicated and professor. Her lectures were engaging and well-paced, and she listened to what her students needed to focus on to help optimize the lectures to what most people were struggling with. She also provides ample opportunities for extra credit (which you should take, they just involve taking a small survey to help her optimize the lectures). The class is structured so that you watch pre-class lectures (20-50 minutes depending on the week, 2x speed is helpful), attend lectures 2x a week (live, required with clickers), attend discussion 1x a week. Before the first lecture of each week, you take a pre-class quiz based on the pre-class lectures, and at the end of each week you take a quiz created by your discussion section TA. The exams and quizzes are all quite straightforward (1 or 2 controversial questions here and there on long exams), but the TA's and Dr. Chen are very fair and listen to student concerns and will consider regrades. The best part, you get to do corrections on your exams (midterms AND final), which will allow you to get about 20 points back per exam (depends on # of questions you missed), which could bring your exam score up 20%.
Winter 2021 - Professor Chen was a very dedicated and professor. Her lectures were engaging and well-paced, and she listened to what her students needed to focus on to help optimize the lectures to what most people were struggling with. She also provides ample opportunities for extra credit (which you should take, they just involve taking a small survey to help her optimize the lectures). The class is structured so that you watch pre-class lectures (20-50 minutes depending on the week, 2x speed is helpful), attend lectures 2x a week (live, required with clickers), attend discussion 1x a week. Before the first lecture of each week, you take a pre-class quiz based on the pre-class lectures, and at the end of each week you take a quiz created by your discussion section TA. The exams and quizzes are all quite straightforward (1 or 2 controversial questions here and there on long exams), but the TA's and Dr. Chen are very fair and listen to student concerns and will consider regrades. The best part, you get to do corrections on your exams (midterms AND final), which will allow you to get about 20 points back per exam (depends on # of questions you missed), which could bring your exam score up 20%.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - This class was co-taught by Laski and Cohn, but since Laski has retired, Cohn gets the review. The structure is as such: Midterm 1 100 points Midterm 2 100 points Final (6/6/22) 200 points Pre-lecture Quiz (16 quizzes x 2 pts) 32 points (lowest dropped) Clicker Questions (18 lectures x 2 pts) 36 points (two lowest dropped) Discussion Section (8 attendances x 4 pts) 32 points (two lowest dropped) Up until the first midterm, everything is pretty much a review of LS7B - lot of Punnett squares and pedigrees and the questions are straightforward probabilities/multiplying fractions. After the second midterm, bacterial genetics is introduced and it's still pretty interesting and easy to do well. The averages for both midterms with 90+. After the second midterm, however, it becomes super difficult to understand Cohn's lectures and people starting flunking the pre-lecture quizzes en masse. The final predominantly covers this latter portion of the class, so many people did poorly and their grades pre-final and post-final were significantly different. There are 4 points of EC on each exam that can help you, but overall, this class started off easy and then the final kicked out butts.
Spring 2022 - This class was co-taught by Laski and Cohn, but since Laski has retired, Cohn gets the review. The structure is as such: Midterm 1 100 points Midterm 2 100 points Final (6/6/22) 200 points Pre-lecture Quiz (16 quizzes x 2 pts) 32 points (lowest dropped) Clicker Questions (18 lectures x 2 pts) 36 points (two lowest dropped) Discussion Section (8 attendances x 4 pts) 32 points (two lowest dropped) Up until the first midterm, everything is pretty much a review of LS7B - lot of Punnett squares and pedigrees and the questions are straightforward probabilities/multiplying fractions. After the second midterm, bacterial genetics is introduced and it's still pretty interesting and easy to do well. The averages for both midterms with 90+. After the second midterm, however, it becomes super difficult to understand Cohn's lectures and people starting flunking the pre-lecture quizzes en masse. The final predominantly covers this latter portion of the class, so many people did poorly and their grades pre-final and post-final were significantly different. There are 4 points of EC on each exam that can help you, but overall, this class started off easy and then the final kicked out butts.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Dr. Ko is in my top 2 most amazing professors I've taken at UCLA, she is so sweet and her lectures are organized so logically and beautifully. I never walked out of lecture confused because she's just so good at explaining. The grading and midterms were also super reasonable. I love her!!!
Fall 2023 - Dr. Ko is in my top 2 most amazing professors I've taken at UCLA, she is so sweet and her lectures are organized so logically and beautifully. I never walked out of lecture confused because she's just so good at explaining. The grading and midterms were also super reasonable. I love her!!!
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Originally, I was not going to write this review because I felt like the only one who experienced these problems. But, after seeing another student share similar concerns, I'd like to also share my opinion. It was almost impossible to contact this professor. He originally said he would not give his email out because he checked CampusWire more often, which is completely acceptable, except there were multiple occasions where he did not log onto CampusWire for 4+ days straight in a 6 week Summer Session (you can check when someone last logged on via DMs). When he did log on to CampusWire, he often only upvoted student responses instead of actually answering the questions themselves, even when some questions were left unanswered for 3+ days. Additionally, he made multiple mistakes on his first midterm and instead of acknowledging them, he just wrote on the answer key that one answer was "more correct" than his incorrect answer (even though there was only one actually correct answer). Students won't bother checking answers they already got right when reviewing the answer key, so many students were left making the same mistake on the Midterm II and Final Exam (I could tell because one of the review questions another student made for future exams was similar in concept and I had to explain it to fellow confused students). Despite this, as long as you take this class with a friend so you can ask questions to them, this class is an easy A.
Summer 2020 - Originally, I was not going to write this review because I felt like the only one who experienced these problems. But, after seeing another student share similar concerns, I'd like to also share my opinion. It was almost impossible to contact this professor. He originally said he would not give his email out because he checked CampusWire more often, which is completely acceptable, except there were multiple occasions where he did not log onto CampusWire for 4+ days straight in a 6 week Summer Session (you can check when someone last logged on via DMs). When he did log on to CampusWire, he often only upvoted student responses instead of actually answering the questions themselves, even when some questions were left unanswered for 3+ days. Additionally, he made multiple mistakes on his first midterm and instead of acknowledging them, he just wrote on the answer key that one answer was "more correct" than his incorrect answer (even though there was only one actually correct answer). Students won't bother checking answers they already got right when reviewing the answer key, so many students were left making the same mistake on the Midterm II and Final Exam (I could tell because one of the review questions another student made for future exams was similar in concept and I had to explain it to fellow confused students). Despite this, as long as you take this class with a friend so you can ask questions to them, this class is an easy A.
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