THIS CLASS IS NOT AN EASY GE!!!! This was probably one of the most time-consuming and confusing classes I have taken here. Now, the class is very interesting if you enjoy learning about the environment but the professor doesnt use a textbook, does not write words on the slides, and constantly mentions her other classes and opinions during the lectures. Although it is pretty funny, I took this class online but it has an in person discussion which often involves fieldwork at ucla and attendance is mandatory. If you have a good TA it is so much more helpful but if you have a bad TA you are on your own. The final is cumulative and there is no study guide or mention of what you should study besides to watch the lectures so you really have to put in the work in order to get a good grade on the midterm and final which are 60 percent of your grade. Literally everything she says in the lectures are up for grabs including the mention of any numbers and the videos she includes in the lectures. The workload itself ranges anywhere from 1-6 hours of lectures and I would never recommend unless you have to take this class for your major.

I can't say how much I disliked this class. First off three weeks after our midterm was graded, a point was randomly taken off my test grade dropping it from a B- to C+ and then when I asked Professor Illes why that happened she said she would get back to me with an answer and never did. Next she gave us a "study guide" to help us out which literally consisted of ALL the topics we had gone over as if that helped at all. Would not recommend if you're looking for any easy GPA boosting class.

Great professor!! I've had her for Animal Geog., Conservation in Developing Countries, and Geog. 5. Smart. entertaining, passionate, and very clear in what she expects from you. Her exams are straight forward and don't aim to trick you. You do have to take good notes and know them well before you head into her exams, but it's comforting to know that as long as you put in the effort you will get a good grade (and learn something in the process). Her work loads are fair. She does have 10-page research papers in her upper-division classes, but they are more than do-able, as she gives you the entire term to work on them. You can't go wrong with Prof. Illes. I wish UCLA would get more professors like her.

Illes was my first professor at UCLA, and I've had her for 3 classes. She is GREAT. Very reasonable about grading. If you attend every class and take good notes, you will likely get an A. Very helpful and responds to e-mails quickly. Extremely knowledgable from her research experience and her lectures are very engaging. Also has a good sense of humor, which makes 3 hour lectures a little more enjoyable. Tests (a midterm and a final) are combination of short answers and essays, both of which are on basic principles and ideas that were taught. Weekly readings are worth 10% and are interesting and do not take much time. Also a research paper on an animal of your choice for another 10%. If you are debating taking any of her classes, DEFINITELY do.

Professor Illes is one of my favorite professors at UCLA. I have taken four of her classes, and from the first one that I took, I got into the habit of going to her office hours. She was extremely helpful in reiterating content from her lectures and making me understand the concepts if I had questions. She has a wealth of knowledge and actually passes that on to her students so they can succeed beyond the test -- something not all professors are masterful at. She is also an entertaining lecturer, and I was never bored in any of her classes, despite the fact that each lecture was three hours long. She usually kept it balanced by showing some videos relevant to the course material in between her speeches. If you want an excellent geography class, you should definitely take Professor Illes' classes. It's difficult to find even a decent professor, but Illes goes above and beyond to make her classes enjoyable and informative, and the information from her classes actually stick!

Professor Illes is engaging and funny in her videos, but she is brutal and cutthroat in my opinion. She basically does not tolerate late work unless your mom died. Her 90 multiple choice midterm questions (with no given study guide besides hours of rambling lectures) were written so vague and confusing and sometimes conflicted with lecture material and that was a huge scandal. The final was better, she dropped a study guide but it was vague and I basically only got a good grade because an angel student made a Quizlet. In terms of the class, GEOG 5 is a great lab GE to take, and in terms of the content it is very easy and comparable to AP Environmental Science. I took asynchronous lectures and in-person lab, so I watched 4-6 lecture videos ranging from 20-50 minutes a week, with the weekly assignment being to write 3 questions and answers per lecture video. The lab is mandatory with no makeups (depending on your TA), but the labs are incredibly easy and often group work.

Overall pretty easy GE class, felt like a high school class tbh. Lab participation is mandatory, but It's just group work that you'll always get 100% in as long as you do it. The class itself is asynchronous, which was pretty nice. All you had to do each week was watch 4-5 25-50 min lectures and create 3 questions with answers for each lecture.

The structure of the class is good and manageable, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was the professor and how she lectured and created her midterm/final. Illesburg was lowkey annoying in her lectures because it felt like all she did was rant in the recordings, but its tolerable if you skip past her rants. The midterm wasn't that bad, I got around an 87% even though she changed her test structure from 90 MCQ to 85 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. She also changed the structure of the final to be around 40 MCQ and 10 short answer questions because the class voted to have more free response, which didn't work in my favor because I forgot a lot of stuff and didn't have 4 options to choose from.

I didn't take this class that seriously, as I didn't watch the lectures thoroughly until the last couple of weeks leading up to the midterm and did fine thanks to my friend's notes combined with 2x speed. My advice to pass this class would be to work together with your lab group to make notes from recorded lectures and study it thoroughly before the exams.

I don’t know if I can necessarily recommend this class. This class is an online class with a required in person lab once a week. The labs and homework assignments are so easy and you will likely get 100% on all of them. The tests, however, are pretty difficult. A lot of people did really badly on the midterm because we were given no information on what to study and what content would be on the exam. To do well on the tests, you basically need to memorize everything the prof says in all the lecture videos. Every stat, fact, and random statement is fair game to be on the exam. Overall, this class is definitely not the easiest GE you could take, but is doable.

I thought that this class was really engaging and enjoyed Dr. Illes's lectures. I liked that it was online/async and we could watch the lecture videos on our own schedule. The TAs run the in-person labs and exams, so you will never see Dr. Illes unless you go to her office hours. I loved my TA which made the labs enjoyable. You really need to take notes about every single thing in the lectures because you will be tested on it. There were some questions on the midterm that felt a little tricky, leaving not one person to get a 100%. Since many people did badly in the midterm, she decided to make the final easier. The workload was manageable, but if you take this class in the fall, keep in mind that the biggest workload will be over Thanksgiving break; you will have a group project/presentation that requires on campus work outside of class and you will have a lot of homework due. Overall I enjoyed this class and would enroll in another class of hers again, especially if it were online. Another piece of advice is to make flashcards as you go, so you don’t end up having to cram study at the last minute. One last thing: there was no textbook! I enjoyed this because my other classes were loaded with reading, so this was a nice break from that.

Do NOT take geog 5 with Lilia Illes. I enrolled in this class with the hubris of a cs major having survived being egged. Surely the only professor with such terrible bruinwalk scores on a renowned easy GE is not that much of a red flag?

That are demanding professors with ridiculous workload. There are professors who give tough exams. There are disorganized professors. Like the powerpuff girls Illes is the combination of all of the above.

To start off with the class structure: all lectures are on bruinlearn with a 2 hour lab a week. Grades are initially 30% lab, 30% midterms, 30% finals and 10% weekly assignments. I say initially as after the midterm grades came out, where the average was around a c-, rather than curving it or even giving extra credit like a normal human being, she gave everyone the option of converting to a scheme where their finals count double. Not the best of the 2 schemes, you either stick with your terrible midterm grade or risk it all with the finals. I pass/failed the class right after.

Here are some highlights of this class:

No textbook: Sounds great, until you realized that she recorded the lectures and created the exams in previous quarters when there was a textbook.

Disorganized lectures: the lectures are highly disorganized with little in structure. She seems to think herself as one of those ted talk people and refuse to have detailed slides. Except she is not one of those ted talk people. And she still expects you to know the details (oh, and there is no textbook!). It makes you realize that those lecturers who just read off the words words words on their slides are not all that bad. Of course she does not give out lecture notes either.

Heavy workload: about 4 hours worth of those lectures a week. Sounds easy? Well if you want scrape by with even a b you have to take down every minute detail of the lecture because of the exams. The weekly assignments is a strange affair asking us to craft "university level questions" for full credit, "good questions" only gets 2/3 of the marks. It is really unnecessarily stressful.

Ridiculous exams: the exams are multiple choice and short answers. This seems easy until you see the content of the questions. For example, one of the question asked for the exact number of plastic bottles consumed by the average American each year, a number that came out once in the lectures as an offhand comment. This is some extreme level of rote memorization. However, you can argue that that's fair game. What is not fair is that some of the questions tested on content that was not on the lecture (and she specifically said that only content in the lecture will be tested). She probably recycled those questions from years ago without caring that the lectures have changed.

Finally, a personal point: she gives off the air of an extremely condescending and arrogant person. This would be fine if she knows what she is talking about, but comes off quite bad when she doesn't. Just recently she insisted that the common cold has been the most deadly strain of corona virus. This would have been pretty funny had she been a politician.

This class would have been more unbearable had it not been for our amazing TAs seemingly reining in the worst of this class. The nonsense with "university level questions" was struck down to full credit as long as we showed effort in our work, and the labs were graded really leniently.

Why did I write this review before the class has even ended? Well, it is because right as I am about to go home for Thanksgiving, i saw an amazing 5 hours worth of lectures on bruinwalk waiting for me. This is on top of assigning labwork OVER the Thanksgiving break. What an amazing person. This is my first written bruinwalk review after all this time in ucla. Learn from my mistake. Do not take this class.