Professor Desveaux may ramble on occasion (well maybe more than on occasion) but he is bar none one of the best and most caring professors at UCLA. He's the kind of guy you can get trapped in the hallway with in the UCDC center and spend an engaging half hour talking about random, interesting topics.
The CAPPP program in and of itself was one of the best experiences of my college career and one that I will remember for sometime. For anyone considering the program, do it! But like many people have said narrow your topic ahead of time, advice I failed to heed until after turning in the rough draft. This meant a very stressful last week attempting to write a bulk of my 25 page research paper while the few who did chip away at it ahead of time got to enjoy the city of Washington DC. Like other people have said, the seminar is more or less a waste of time and one that many people attended hungover. However, the one on one time spent with Professor Desveaux and the TA were very helpful in bettering your paper. It helps that Desveaux shared an interest in my topic so he gave me a lot of insight towards where my paper should head. All in all it was a great experience and Professor Desveaux is definitely one of my favorite professors at UCLA.

I'm just returning from CAPPP Fall '10. I would highly recommend this program for PoliSci / Public Policy / Social Science majors or those interested in things related to D.C. It's a great city and you'll have a lot of fun.

That being said, I would advise two things. Firstly, narrow your research paper early. Most people (including myself) don't really know what they're actually writing about until probably the last week of the quarter. Sure, we turned in research proposals and rough drafts and the like, but we didn't have a firm sense of what we were truly saying in our papers. This was quite stressful for many students as the looming 25 pg paper worth 50% of your grade is still up in the air and needs then to be written in about 5 days. A few students managed to narrow their paper a lot early on and then simply wrote a bit per week and found the whole ordeal much more pleasant. In other words, put your dreams aside about the most tremendous paper that you're going to write, and instead make it super specific and narrow early on. Go in and talk to Desveaux (or the TA) about narrowing your paper in the first two weeks and I'd say do that again so that by week 4 or so you're good to go and are not still figuring out what you're writing about.

Secondly, don't expect much out of the seminar portion out of the class. Desveaux means well and wants students to succeed, but his long winded off-topic speeches mean that the 3 hr seminar each week is essentially a waste of time with you sitting there rolling your eyes. Know that in advance, and the rest of the program's great. Additionally, skim only those reading in the course reader that you find interesting -- the rest you don't have to do.

Enjoy! The quarter will go by faster than you think.