Literally the WORST HUMAN to ever grace ucsb campus. is the least understanding person and hardly responds to emails on top of how HORRIBLY she coordinates classes. My house literally flooded and she said It wasn't fair to other students for me to submit my assignment late. (bro my house flooded). awful courses for an awful coordinator

It is hard, ngl. But if you can do well, you will remember content for the rest of your life and will ace any physiology MCAT question. Grind every single slide, every single word until you understand. Watch lectures on full volume because she literally SAYING what will be on exam and gives you an answer. Every time the explains, it will be in exam

Low gets more hate than she deserves just because her tests are SO HARD. Her lectures are hilarious and you can tell she knows her stuff. I put in more work than I ever have for MCDB 1B and it was well rewarded. If you can truly understand what shes teaching, even the minutia, an A is very possible. Test questions were specific but still relevant.

Ruth is one of the most unorganized and unclear professors I have EVER had. I spent so long attempting to parse her lectures and put them in somewhat of an order. The plants section of the final was brutal and felt unrelated to much of the material that she had haphazardly taught us. She laughed at students who asked questions/ got iClicker wrong.

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.

her online recordings just make me chuckle

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.

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.

I have never had the misfortune of dealing with such a terrible person until I had to take a class the Alice Nguyen was in charge of. She is the most unaccommodating person if you have to miss any classes and she doesn't allow you to make up any grades if you do. Avoid any classes with her name attached at all costs.

I did the bare minimum and passed, but tbh it was my past biology knowledge and the curve that saved me. This is a difficult class for PBS majors bc it requires gen chem levels of studying which a lot of people don't realize until it's too late. Drill the textbook.

Quizzes and practice exams are NOTHING like the actual exams. The exams are very difficult and be prepared to be tested on topics that are only covered in the textbook or briefly in lecture. Lectures are also very dense in material. The article summaries are an actual assignment that counts for credit, not extra credit like she makes it seem.

I don't really know where to start... she is extremely power hungry and bureaucratic. I had an instance where a TA told me something regarding the course policies and I took it to be truth (as one does). Turns out that wasn't the case and when I did everything else right (turned in my assignment EARLY) she didn't listen during our meeting at all.

WORST professor in the MCDB department. Has no sense of social skills whatsover, and is not lenient to different circumstances. Never met a "professor" like her before. DO NOT recommend! Would rather take this class at cc than here. Not a great coordinator, the worst by far at UCSB.

if I could give 0 stars I would. probably the least empathetic person you'll ever meet in your life. and the lab manual, quizzes, and poster project are all very poorly written. on the good side, it's easy as long as you don't miss a deadline.

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.

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.

Awful professor. Please retire

insanely difficult exams, and it's just so much material. she vaguely goes over stuff and then adds them to the exam. she's not as bad as ruth, however combined for this course they're no help. the weeder course is definitely weeding. I went to all the lectures, to CLAS, and rewatched ALL her videos, and I still bombed her midterm. boo introbioteam

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.

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.

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.

RUTHlessly hard exams, monotone asf, do not take

I'm typically an A/B+ student but I had to withdraw from this course after the first two midterms were graded so difficultly that I was going into the final with a D+. The worst part is, when I asked her about my exams that I felt were marked down incorrectly, she took away MORE POINTS from other questions on my tests and my grade went down more.

Absolutely abysmal class. Only 1.5 units but the biggest hassle of a class. O chem lab is ten times easier and more fun. Least enjoyable class I have taken. Intro bio team is not helpful at all with turning in assignments late, getting excused absences, etc.