Professor
Cuiwen He
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2021 - Biochemistry is hard, there’s no doubt about it - and the 6-week summer variant of this class makes it feel like you are drinking water from a fire hydrant. Dr. He does not make it easier. With a non-transparent, micro-detail grading rubric, and exam questions designed to be ambiguous AND penalize you for writing over sentence limits, it’s clear that this class was structured to weed out pre-meds, rather than to facilitate student learning. This is the only class I have ever taken at UCLA that penalizes the WHOLE class for regrade requests made by each student; the TA told us that when a regrade is approved, the student may have their score improved but all other students’ grades drop as a result. There was outrage resulting from students’ grades dropping AFTER their exam scores were released this quarter. Mind you, this policy was not made transparent on either the syllabus or rubrics, it was just offered as an explanation after-the-fact. Furthermore, grades were due today, and our final exams were released 30 minutes before midnight, with an email explaining that “since today is the final day”, no regrade requests would be accepted, no curves made, and no corrections accepted. Although convenient for the Biochem grading team, it reflects the “deduct first, ask questions later” policy that has been shown all quarter. Having said all that, I can’t recommend Dr. He for Chem 153A. Do yourself a favor - save yourself a lot of headache - and take someone else.
Summer 2021 - Biochemistry is hard, there’s no doubt about it - and the 6-week summer variant of this class makes it feel like you are drinking water from a fire hydrant. Dr. He does not make it easier. With a non-transparent, micro-detail grading rubric, and exam questions designed to be ambiguous AND penalize you for writing over sentence limits, it’s clear that this class was structured to weed out pre-meds, rather than to facilitate student learning. This is the only class I have ever taken at UCLA that penalizes the WHOLE class for regrade requests made by each student; the TA told us that when a regrade is approved, the student may have their score improved but all other students’ grades drop as a result. There was outrage resulting from students’ grades dropping AFTER their exam scores were released this quarter. Mind you, this policy was not made transparent on either the syllabus or rubrics, it was just offered as an explanation after-the-fact. Furthermore, grades were due today, and our final exams were released 30 minutes before midnight, with an email explaining that “since today is the final day”, no regrade requests would be accepted, no curves made, and no corrections accepted. Although convenient for the Biochem grading team, it reflects the “deduct first, ask questions later” policy that has been shown all quarter. Having said all that, I can’t recommend Dr. He for Chem 153A. Do yourself a favor - save yourself a lot of headache - and take someone else.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Pretty straightforward class. She advises students to read the textbooks, but overall the lecture slides are really straightforward and so are her tests (so you don't need to read any books, she won't be testing anything not in her slides). I got through the class just watching all her lectures on 2x and paying attention. She had iClickers during class for participation, but you can honestly just hop on the iClicker reef website and hit the answers while working on something else. She offered extra credit points if you answered/asked questions on the forum so that's a plus. Going into her first midterm, I was definitely a bit anxious since there were no previous tests for practice (I think she's new?). However, her tests are very straight to the point and very doable if you paid attention and took decent notes on everything she mentions (no curveballs!). The sections with Chris Caro were great too, he just provided us the answers to the problem sets and helped out if anyone had questions (really chill guy). If you want to do well, I'd say watch her lectures 2x, answer all the problem sets and compare your answers to Chris's key, and follow along her test guidelines through your notes. Yeah sometimes she may be a little strict in some regard, but it's to keep us on schedule. Highly recommend!
Summer 2020 - Pretty straightforward class. She advises students to read the textbooks, but overall the lecture slides are really straightforward and so are her tests (so you don't need to read any books, she won't be testing anything not in her slides). I got through the class just watching all her lectures on 2x and paying attention. She had iClickers during class for participation, but you can honestly just hop on the iClicker reef website and hit the answers while working on something else. She offered extra credit points if you answered/asked questions on the forum so that's a plus. Going into her first midterm, I was definitely a bit anxious since there were no previous tests for practice (I think she's new?). However, her tests are very straight to the point and very doable if you paid attention and took decent notes on everything she mentions (no curveballs!). The sections with Chris Caro were great too, he just provided us the answers to the problem sets and helped out if anyone had questions (really chill guy). If you want to do well, I'd say watch her lectures 2x, answer all the problem sets and compare your answers to Chris's key, and follow along her test guidelines through your notes. Yeah sometimes she may be a little strict in some regard, but it's to keep us on schedule. Highly recommend!
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