Professor
Jau-Nian Chen
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Most Helpful Review
Course Taken: LS4 Prof. Chen was a decent professor. I'll go over the pros and cons: Pros: -When she explains something in class, she always asks if everyone understands and in the past has supplemented our questions with new examples. Don't be afraid to ask questions in lecture, as there is a high probability that someone else has the same question -She gives practice finals and midterms. For me, these worked great for studying. The one thing I would recommend doing is not just understanding the problem, but branching off and seeing how you can change it. (My TA was great at this) -In lecture she was very friendly and easy going -She gives blatant hints in class about specific things 'you should study' (aka will be on the exam) Cons: -I never went, but I heard office hours with her were frustrating. -The practice midterms she gave tended to be deceivingly easy. Our exams were significantly more complex than the practice, but again expanding on the problems worked best. -Occasionally she was unclear about a few points in her lecture. Although it was seldom there were times where you could see her getting frustrated at us not getting it because she was explaining things the same way over and over again. Overall, I feel like this class was not a breeze. LS4 will require studying and practice problems, but if you take it with Chen I would recommend getting a good understanding as the exam questions are not always simple problems.
Course Taken: LS4 Prof. Chen was a decent professor. I'll go over the pros and cons: Pros: -When she explains something in class, she always asks if everyone understands and in the past has supplemented our questions with new examples. Don't be afraid to ask questions in lecture, as there is a high probability that someone else has the same question -She gives practice finals and midterms. For me, these worked great for studying. The one thing I would recommend doing is not just understanding the problem, but branching off and seeing how you can change it. (My TA was great at this) -In lecture she was very friendly and easy going -She gives blatant hints in class about specific things 'you should study' (aka will be on the exam) Cons: -I never went, but I heard office hours with her were frustrating. -The practice midterms she gave tended to be deceivingly easy. Our exams were significantly more complex than the practice, but again expanding on the problems worked best. -Occasionally she was unclear about a few points in her lecture. Although it was seldom there were times where you could see her getting frustrated at us not getting it because she was explaining things the same way over and over again. Overall, I feel like this class was not a breeze. LS4 will require studying and practice problems, but if you take it with Chen I would recommend getting a good understanding as the exam questions are not always simple problems.
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%.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Chen was the BEST professor to take this class with. Her class gave us over 6% extra credit -- extra credit that was merely based on completion (and tbh I didn't even need this extra credit at the end of the day). The only homework due were reports based on the papers she assigned, but the TA discussion slides posted explained these papers so well that the reports were a breeze (and graded very generously too since I got 100% on most). Reports were also very short -- only 2-3 questions/1-2 pages double-spaced total at most. Exams were all take-home though timed (midterms were 2 hours, final was 3 hours). The exams were a bit of a time crunch but consisted of a good balance of 50% MCQ, 30% T/F, and 20% FRQ. The exams were a bit tricky at times since the answers to choose from all seemed quite plausible (and spanned multiple units even within one question), so it's important to have notes to easily refer to during the exam to. I will note that her lectures are not mandatory to attend but did have extra credit iClicker (not location-based) every so often at the very beginning of the lecture. Her lectures also weren't that beneficial to attend IMO -- she answers questions very wordily and all lectures were recorded -- everything I studied was from the notes she posted (a life-saver) and all slideshows (good for visual representations of what we learned). Overall, I loved taking this class with Chen and recommend it again! She is so understanding of our busy student life, which is reflected in the online exam format and generous extra credit.
Fall 2024 - Chen was the BEST professor to take this class with. Her class gave us over 6% extra credit -- extra credit that was merely based on completion (and tbh I didn't even need this extra credit at the end of the day). The only homework due were reports based on the papers she assigned, but the TA discussion slides posted explained these papers so well that the reports were a breeze (and graded very generously too since I got 100% on most). Reports were also very short -- only 2-3 questions/1-2 pages double-spaced total at most. Exams were all take-home though timed (midterms were 2 hours, final was 3 hours). The exams were a bit of a time crunch but consisted of a good balance of 50% MCQ, 30% T/F, and 20% FRQ. The exams were a bit tricky at times since the answers to choose from all seemed quite plausible (and spanned multiple units even within one question), so it's important to have notes to easily refer to during the exam to. I will note that her lectures are not mandatory to attend but did have extra credit iClicker (not location-based) every so often at the very beginning of the lecture. Her lectures also weren't that beneficial to attend IMO -- she answers questions very wordily and all lectures were recorded -- everything I studied was from the notes she posted (a life-saver) and all slideshows (good for visual representations of what we learned). Overall, I loved taking this class with Chen and recommend it again! She is so understanding of our busy student life, which is reflected in the online exam format and generous extra credit.
Most Helpful Review
Chen's class was not really difficult if you understood what was going on. **********LS 4 Review************ Her class is really doable and honestly not that hard. I think she is a very nice woman and she ALWAYS took the time to go over concept that people didn't undersand. Sometimes she took up half the class time trying to explain a concept that people didn't understand until most of them got it. In my book, that makes her a pretty good professor. Her midterms are relatively easy, just remember the examples that she goes over in lecture -- those should be the ones that you go to when studying. I did some of the questions in the book for the first midterm and almost none for the second midterm and I still did fine. Why? Because although I didn't go to class, I always watched the lectures online and made sure I understood her lecture notes (which I think are pretty good). I have to say though, her final was crazy. It was like that stupid meme where in class they'll ask you easy questions like 1 + 1 but on your exam they'll ask you to calculate the mass of the sun. Literally, that's what happened. Somehow I did pretty well on that final. Considering that I didn't know what the hell I was doing for most of it, it makes me wonder what the heck the rest of the class was doing. She's really not a bad choice of a professor for LS 4.
Chen's class was not really difficult if you understood what was going on. **********LS 4 Review************ Her class is really doable and honestly not that hard. I think she is a very nice woman and she ALWAYS took the time to go over concept that people didn't undersand. Sometimes she took up half the class time trying to explain a concept that people didn't understand until most of them got it. In my book, that makes her a pretty good professor. Her midterms are relatively easy, just remember the examples that she goes over in lecture -- those should be the ones that you go to when studying. I did some of the questions in the book for the first midterm and almost none for the second midterm and I still did fine. Why? Because although I didn't go to class, I always watched the lectures online and made sure I understood her lecture notes (which I think are pretty good). I have to say though, her final was crazy. It was like that stupid meme where in class they'll ask you easy questions like 1 + 1 but on your exam they'll ask you to calculate the mass of the sun. Literally, that's what happened. Somehow I did pretty well on that final. Considering that I didn't know what the hell I was doing for most of it, it makes me wonder what the heck the rest of the class was doing. She's really not a bad choice of a professor for LS 4.
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Most Helpful Review
AMAZING PROFESSOR!! DO TAKE HER FOR LS4!! To do well in LS 4, it's different from the rest of the LS series... . you need to be active about doing those genetic problems... . But DR. CHEN made everything easier because she's a very approachable person. Her office hours were """VERY""" helpful... . some people find her office hours to be useless since they don't go prepared with questions to ask. but if you do give an effort in understanding before asking for help, you WILL catch little bit of hints about midterm/finals here and there... . I've been to every single office hours, and honestly couple hard problems on the finals were giveaway points, because she mentioned/went over that similar problem through-out the quarter in her office hours. Hands down, THE BEST professor i've had at UCLA so far... .
AMAZING PROFESSOR!! DO TAKE HER FOR LS4!! To do well in LS 4, it's different from the rest of the LS series... . you need to be active about doing those genetic problems... . But DR. CHEN made everything easier because she's a very approachable person. Her office hours were """VERY""" helpful... . some people find her office hours to be useless since they don't go prepared with questions to ask. but if you do give an effort in understanding before asking for help, you WILL catch little bit of hints about midterm/finals here and there... . I've been to every single office hours, and honestly couple hard problems on the finals were giveaway points, because she mentioned/went over that similar problem through-out the quarter in her office hours. Hands down, THE BEST professor i've had at UCLA so far... .
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