MCDB 1LL
FINKELSTEIN R
Ruth Finkelstein
2.0
105 reviews
NGUYEN A T
Alice Nguyen
1.2
83 reviews

188
1.6
EEMB3 . Nguyen A T 1 Year, 7 Months Ago

Absolute joke of a coordinator. She split a single course into 3 different professors, already confusing students, and 1 of the professors is teaching ENTIRELY on zoom. 0 accessibility, 0 transparency, 0 accommodations, and honestly the worst professor in all of UCSB. You cannot avoid her classes, but hopefully she loses her job one day.

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 1 Year, 7 Months Ago

Honestly so so so unbelievably unfortunate that Alice heads a lot of the prerequisite classes for Pre-Biology majors because she is just so unaccommodating. I'm not sure why she makes everything so difficult and gives me the impression she does not care for the students taking her class to succeed. All of these reviews about her are 100% justified.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Genuinely the worst teacher I have ever had in my 20 years of existence. Boring, monotonous, poorly taught lectures followed up by the most unreasonably difficult and unnecessarily detailed tests of my life. Bio majors, I implore you to not make the same mistake I did and take little bio instead. AVOID HER AT ALL COSTS.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Her tests are so detailed. Be prepared to know every single detail about every single topic. I reviewed the slides at least 8 times and reviewed for hours, just to get completely thrown for a loop on the test. You need to know and remember everything, search for the smallest error in the answers.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Do not take a class with Professor Finkelstein. Not only is she a very monotone teacher, but she is also very bad at teaching. She will make the exams very detailed yet barely explain anything during her lectures. She should retire soon or look at her ratings and fix the way she runs this class.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Awful professor. Please retire

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

I absolutely despise Ruth. Her exams are insanely difficult. She will mention something once and put it on the exam. It doesn't matter if you learn the material, they care about you memorizing all the slides (impossible). The exams are purposely made to trick you, so you must know every detail. I'll be lucky if I pass, and I studied like crazy.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Finkelstein ruined this class for me. Her lectures are unbelievably monotone and she often explains topics using scientific vocabulary never previously introduced. To top it off, she'll casually introduce key terms/topics without any indication of their importance and her tests will focus on specific details of these underexplored topics.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

She isn't terrible to learn from if you have a basis in what shes teaching. However, because you do need to actively seek outside class resources to understand whats going on (the book is meh) this makes her an awful professor. Only reason I'm doing decent is because I have heavily relied on Khan Academy and then watched the lectures.

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

RUTHlessly hard exams, monotone asf, do not take

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 8 Months Ago

Extremely monotone lecturer. Teaches things giving no background which makes it sooo hard to understand. The worst professor I have ever had.

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MCDB1AL . Nguyen A T 1 Year, 9 Months Ago

One of the worst human beings I've ever had the misfortune of meeting in my entire life. Not only is she hard to reach outside of class (which she doesn't even teach herself), she is also EXTREMELY insensitive. You can't miss any labs unexcused. My boyfriend thought he had covid and she still made him go to his lab because he didn't have a DR note

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MCDB1B . Finkelstein R 1 Year, 9 Months Ago

The most inadequate professor I have ever had. She briefly introduces topics without any consideration that most students have never seen this information. I hope she reads her reviews because something needs to change with her teaching. It is disappointing to see such an interesting class ruined by such an awful lecturer who zero teaching skills.

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MCDB1A . Nguyen A T 1 Year, 9 Months Ago

Does not respond to emails, very unhelpful. Pretends to be a resource for students to reach out to via the "Intro Bio Team" but refuses to help students, posts practice tests with incorrect answer keys, does not respond to any emails/will not meet with you if you have questions. Unhelpful and honestly just rude.

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2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

Joke is the only good word. No organisation, no clear expectation, a huge mess. Nguyen is not accessible out side of class room, she's like a ghost who tries to haunt down every possible student who needs to unfortunately cross paths with her. Lazy is pretty nice in this case when it comes to exam in which every question was copy pasted.

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MCDB1ALEEMB2 . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

All the labs and classes were a mess. Most of the time for exams we are left in the dark. Expectations of the material we need to know is unclear and the lectures are a mess. Your grade is basically just based on exams. If you can take the other eemb professor. Their class has better structure and direction.

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

She really took the challenge of making these weeder classes the most unenjoyable classes

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2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

I have her for EEMB 2LL and EEMB 2. She seems like a nice lady at first but her classes have been the worst I've taken here at UCSB. Lab is tons of busy work with unclear instructions, absolute waste of time. Lecture has 3 classes' worth of info smashed into one with cumulative 125 question final. Absolutely drained any passion for learning.

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

Literally learned nothing this entire course. Full of busy work with terrible organization. There were little to no guidelines on the one single project we were assigned for this class. A major headache of a class and the administration made it so much worse.

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

Just spent three hours in a lab counting animals on a picture and then plugging the results into the same equation over and over... I don't know how she manages to absolutely ruin one of the most interesting/easy lab series

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

This class is so dumb. The entire class is busy work that no one explains. The final project is even dumber than the in class labs and no one has any idea what we are doing. Please send help.

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

Soooo unclear about the directions for the research paper assignment + the whole class is just busy work. Don't even get me started on EEMB3, a class with fascinating content that she made terrible by giving a cumulative/in-person final that covers stuff we barely talked about--my quizlet for the class had more than in ochem and biochem combined!!

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EEMB2LL . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

I don't even know where to start. It's like she intentionally makes her classes, which are supposed to be easy intro bio topics, the most confusing/unclear courses possible. She throws sooooo many busy work assignments at you, including a research paper with the most confusing instructions I've ever seen.

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MCDB1ALEEMB2 . Nguyen A T 2 Years Ago

Ugh I thought MCDB lab was disorganized but just wait until you get to EEMB lab. My EEMB T.A. has no idea what's going on (she wasn't helpful), can't answer any of my questions. Like how am I supposed to write my 6pg paper when no one knows shi Istg I just can't with her anymore. Was pretty easy depending on TA. MCDB better than EEMB.

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