Psych 115 is a lot of material to study, but very interesting. I loved how Stan teaches the lecture as he is very fair and knowledgeable about the subjects. If you are interested in the pdf copy of Behavioral Neuroscience 8th edition for cheap, text me at **********.

you have to memorize

Do not bother with the textbook. Focus in lecture and take detailed notes of what he says! Some of the test questions come from what he speaks of in lecture, not necessarily what's on the slides. Make sure you understand every single slide because even slides that may seem irrelevant could still be tested on.
Midterm 1: 66/100 (average = 70)
Midterm 2: 86/100 (average = 77)
Final: 90/100 (average = 77)
Final Grade: A-
FeelsGoodMan

Psych 115 (Fall '11), LS2 (Fall '10)

I've taken two classes with Professor Schein. The subject matter of the two overlaps greatly and the classes were both very similar in structure. Basically, I've got 2x the experience with the guy.

As a lecturer, Schein is one of the best I've had. He's very clearly interested in what he's teaching, and he really* wants his students to pay attention. He tries to keep them involved by asking questions and playing the "repeat after me" game (be prepared to aimlessly repeat a variety of vocab words). He learns the names of the students in the front rows, and his general excitement leads to an above-average lecture. The downside is he will often run over in time, trying to cram the last 10 lecture slides into 3 minutes of your time.

As a tester, Schein is one of the only teachers I've run into that really tries to test on concepts rather than rote memorization. He doesn't want to make his students memorize the entire Kreb's cycle every step of the way. He admits himself that he gets things confused all the time, so if he can't remember it, why should his students? THAT BEING SAID he often falters when making his tests, throwing in questions like "what's the size of a eukaryotic cell." This greatly increases the difficult of the tests, because you'll not only need to understand concepts, but also pick out the small facts that he may ask you to produce. All in all, his tests are difficult. They require a lot of thinking and a lot of patience. He loves the "which one of these is NOT true?" question format, making up about 8/50 of his questions. Without a really solid understanding of the chapters, you'll find yourself guessing pretty often.

How to succeed:
I've gotten an A in both of his classes. What I found to be most useful was reading the chapter AFTER reading through the lecture slides once or twice. The lecture slides outline important parts of the chapter, and these parts will probably be the majority of his exams, but the slides don't tell the whole story. The book was necessary as a supplement in order for me to really grasp the concepts. After reading the book, memorizing the slides is recommended. He's a really concerned teacher and is fairly approachable. He has a bit of an ego which really threw me originally, but I got over it. I really respect him as a teacher, though I'm not really sure if I'd get along with him.

**tl;dr** Don't let the difficulty scare you off. Schein offers pretty rewarding classes given that you put in the effort. Don't slack, don't fall behind, and the grade will fall into place. There ARE easier teachers out there, but this one may be one of the most concerned/helpful.

I dont know where this last person is coming from, but schein is totally the opposite of what this person is saying. Even if you know the material inside and out, you'll still struggle to get a good grade thanks to his tricky test questions. The man is totally condescending. He thinks the world owes him something since he has both an MD and a PhD. His office hours are at the worst time. Late in the afternoon when most people are exhausted and usually at home. Worse, if you just drop by his office during the day without an appointment, he gets grumpy and might even start to chew you out.

Class was interesting, but lots of material to learn. Professor is very passionate, but his lectures were hard to understand and a bit complicated at times. His tests are very difficult. Reading the textbook really helped me a lot! I'm selling it if anyone is interested! Please text me at ********** or email me at *************

Schein definitely knows what he's talking about. With that being said, he expects you to know way too much information in a 10 week course. It's overwhelming. He says he tests on concepts and main points so don't memorize and that's pretty accurate. I skimmed some chapters in the book. Also, I definitely relied on background knowledge from the LS 7 series and other psych classes like 120A. No way I would've gotten an A without those classes. For the class itself, the exams are noncumulative. Grade is composed of 3 exams, clickers, quizzes in discussion, and a paper. The top 35% gets an A, which is pretty generous. In retrospect I like him a lot more than I did during the course lol. Good luck!

Schein is a good professor and super knowledgable. But he does go a bit fast and kinda glosses over a lot of topics in lecture - basically just reading super fast from his slides which have a TON of text and bolded terms.

His big emphasis is to not memorize, but to be honest you do need to put a lot of studying in because his exams are very specific. Your grade isn't just exams -- he gives you clicker points, you have discussion points, theres a movie showing, etc. There are two midterms and a final. Pretty standard for a ucla science class.

Exams are weighted the most, so its important to do well on them. But his curve is SUPER generous. 35% get an A.

Forewarning to my fellow Bruins: DO NOT take this class the final quarter of your senior year. Stein knows his material really well, no doubt about that. However, there are instances in lecture he'll have to go back and retract something because it was incorrect or he forgot to include something in order to explain something further along in the lecture. You gotta put in a lot of effort to be successful, let alone pass. Other than that, he takes a really complex and vast topic and explains it well.

A big worry amongst our particular class was the grading by rank scheme. Although this is the norm at a lot of UC's for STEM related courses, I believe it prepares people terribly for real life. Competition amongst students inherently discourages teamwork and working through/learning things together. I couldn't imagine going to my job and being afraid to ask my boss or coworker something about a problem. Let's encourage skills we will need post-grad, not turn us into robots.

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