The MCDB 1LL course was a mixed bag. TAs were often lost, prelabs were confusing, manual lacked clarity, and the course was disorganized/chaotic. Students were offered a small EC opportunity and GS was regularly updated (2 positives of this class). Email responses were unreliable. Labs could have been engaging if given better instruction/detail.

Honestly just awful in so many ways. Terrible PDF assignments that force students to buy Adobe Acrobat and then bait them into clicking links that make them lose all their work (this happened to me and many other classmates). Having to pay for the stupid lab manual that she probably makes thousands off of. Stingy and inaccessible. Horrible prof.

MCDB 1LL is way too much work for 1.5 units. In the first week during Winter quarter of 2022, we were doing remote learning and the LURE project drafts were so confusing, as no experiment videos were provided and we were just doing worksheets based on numbers/data given to us. The pre-labs are also tedious and time-consuming.

Insane amount of work, very disorganized, the work we are doing seems pointless

Overall, I found this class to be intolerable. I would choose to take classes with any other professor but that was not possible. Majority of your grade is based entirely on test. There was a small extra credit opportunity that saved me from a C. I found the test to be extremely difficult and often not on material in lecture or the book.

Easily one of the worst professors at UCSB. Both of the Intro Biology lab courses are incredibly disorganized. It's almost like Alice was the only one applying to be the head of the bio department and UCSB was stuck with hiring her. If she can get a job, anyone can >:(

Shes a super sweet professor! Her lectures basically just go through what youre reading in the textbook but in less detail so I highly recommend getting the textbook and taking detailed notes on it. Her tests are really hard and very conceptual but she was still a good teacher and the class averages were always reasonable.

The Biolab classes (1LL and 2LL) are horribly organized and a huge waste of three hours every week. This class also has super strict rules on grading and attendance and they will almost never make an exception for students under any circumstance. The only upside is that the final exam is a group test in 2LL.

Prof. Low is great! She is caring and funny and her lectures aren't too difficult or boring. Our entire grade is made up of a midterm, a final, and a few quizzes, but the curve is pretty forgiving. Her tests are pretty hard though, but she is a great prof.!

In-class lectures too dense and fast to accurately take notes, watching recordings is necessary. 1.15 hour lectures became 4-6 hours straight of recorded lecture note-taking twice a week due to 25+ slides of block text and figures that you must know. Exams have horrible point distributions per question and are poorly worded. Quizzes are a coinflip.

lectures covered difficult material very well, and prof low explained concepts several times to make sure the points got across. two midterms and a final which all included short answer portions, but study and they shouldn't be too bad. didn't use the textbook too much, prof covers most material in lecture.

Her lectures are extremely long and dense. The lecture slides are all over the place and you have to pay close attention on what she is saying because they will appear on the midterms/ final. Her teaching style is like "if this does that, then that does this." For the midterms and final, she does not give you a lot of time and harsh grader. 0/10

Worst Professor Ive had yet. If it werent for Wilton in the second portion of the class, I would have definitely failed. Her lectures are very unorganized and she tests you on obscure facts. She cares more about making sure she weeds a bunch of people out of the biology major rather than actually helping us learn and succeed. Avoid at all costs!

taken F2020 One of the worst professors ever. Does not care about students at all and shows no effort into teaching, she didn't even review her lectures before posting them when they were recorded precovid. Lectures were way too long. Contradicts herself in lectures and tests. Both midterms and final were ridiculously hard

Low's lectures are hard to follow and the slides are poorly organized. If you want an A, you will have to write down EVERYTHING she says. Also, the test questions were vague at times to the point where you can't even understand what it's asking you. If Low just organized her slides and put more effort into making the exams she would be much better

Just... don't. Unreasonably hard midterms and final, and they're worth almost all of your grade. She put little to no effort into the class and it was clear that her goal was to make the class as hard as possible, not to have her students learn. She expects you to know more than she teaches, so I recommend self studying from day 1.

Half the class was accused of cheating on the last day of the quarter so no one could do anything about it. She didnt respond to the emails. Left us in the dark. Some got letters saying it was a mistake on their end. All exams had multiple mistakes they refused to fix. Waited to very last minute to submit final grades so we could not protest.

Low is one of the worst professors I've faced at SB so far. I ended up getting an A just from watching + notetaking the lectures. You should write down every part of the slides and what she's saying out loud too. I took the class remotely bc of COVID, so open-notes were helpful during exams, but without that the class would've been 100x harder.

She was a terrible professor and person. she completely disregarded the entire pandemic and didnt not care for students at all. this class was 95% based on test scores which didnt even match with the lectures. her exams were so specific yet her teaching was so vague since she was lazy enough to use previously recorded lectures. DO NOT TAKE LOW.

Gotta work really hard for it and had to self study almost all of it. On my part I hear she is good during office hours and her TAs were helpful. Her tests were very specific which made self studying the textbook a requirement to get an A. Her lectures and structure is confusing and largely unhelpful. Focus on textbook and OH if u wanna do well.

Online lectures are prerecorded from last year in class so they are very difficult to learn from. Lots of background noise and lecture doesn't match up with the slides she gives us. Tests are difficult and super specific. May be different in person, but it seems as though she put no effort into the class. Had to teach myself everything before exam.

Truthfully, just dont.

During OH, she's really chill and answers questions, but her tests really take you out. They demand an incredible amount of detail with little to no leniency for grading, and definitely not enough time to take it. Tiny things from lecture end up covering huge portions on the exams, so if you miss it, you're screwed. Nice person, not nice professor.

Took her for online fall quarter. She uses pre-recorded lectures that are of bad sound quality and she moves away from the recorder sometimes which makes her thick accent harder to understand. Seemed to be no communication b/t her and TAs for material covered. Pulled review pdfs from many years prior that had info that was not in main slides. 1/10