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
Lows exams are literally impossible. I reviewed the lectures several times and even read the textbook thoroughly. She included content on the exam that she explicitly said we wouldnt be tested on! Had to drop this class and will take it in the summer with hopefully a better and more fair teacher
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.
I loved Dr. Low's class! I took her in summer session B. I enjoyed it when she became passionate when covering something she has a special interest in and when she ate snacks in the pre-recorded lectures. She's a quirky professor (which I love) and her exams inspired me to double my effort. Take her and you'll never regret!
Professor Low clearly does not know how to write proper and fair exams that encourage critical thinking in biology students. Her lectures are all over the place and she tests you on things that she will mention only in passing during a lecture video, so if you miss anything she says you will fail the exam. It's amazing how UCSB hires these people.
Dr. Low is not as scary as people described. I took her MCDB 1B over the summer and her lectures are kind of long but funny. Memorize her slides and do practice exams and then you will be fine. Make sure that you do the quizzes - that's a great boost of your grade!
why does UCSB hire these people? seriously? worst professor ever. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. so disorganized, all over the place, convoluted, lectures make 0 sense. turns simple concepts into a complicated mess because she has no idea how to coherently teach a concept. PLEASE ORGANIZE YOUR LECTURES DR. LOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PLEASE HAVE SOME STRUCTURE.
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!
Not good at her job. Has made multiple mistakes such as telling people incorrect grade cut offs and accusing people of cheating and later admitting it was her mistake. Makes you feel like a number. Weeder class
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
I personally didn't mind Seng Low and really liked her enthusiasm for the course. Her lectures were engaging and taught concepts in an understandable way but she moves through topics quickly (lots to cover in 1B). Her tests were fair if you knew the material well. This class is definitely a weeder class though, so join a bio mentor group or CLAS!
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
she doesn't answer all your questions thru email when you need help. she's super lazy and tests on things that she went over for 1 second. seng babe if u reading this, either make the tests make sense or dont teach at all, we don't mind :)
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.