Dr. Ma is interested in his student's successful learning. He will challenge you and force you to learn in ways you may never have been exposed to in a lecture setting, but if you put in the mental effort to follow the material, it is manageable. Go to lecture, and pay attention to the types of questions he focuses on.

Professor Ma was one of the best biology professors I have had at UCSB. He cares about his students and wants them to succeed. He emphasizes correlating similar concepts vs memorization which is nice. Go to every lecture! No iclicker but very important because he emphasizes the important topics. Exams were tough and requires you to apply concepts

Prof. Ma really engages you to the material and encouraged us to apply and connect concepts during the lectures and into the exams instead of purely memorizing. That said, the latter is still very important and hence makes 103 a very challenging class. The drawback is that your entire grade essentially rests on only a single midterm and the final.

Professor Ma is an amazing lecturer, and his teaching style is honestly a game changer. I got more out of his class than out of any other class I've taken since being in college. Grade is based almost entirely on midterm and final. Midterm was easy, but the final ruined my life. I would still recommend his class, teachers like this are rare.

Horrible, please avoid his class at all cost. He is a poor lecturer

Dr. Ma is a charming guy, and obviously loves what he is doing. MCDB 103 is just an incredibly difficult class, and will require a lot of your time and discipline if you plan to do well. I never showed up to lecture and let myself get behind in lecture watching, and I regret that. However, someone with more discipline than me could def succeed.

You need to understand each process in great detail because the midterm and ESPECIALLY the final are filled with material applying questions. This is a class you need to dedicate hours of your week studying for and study groups will help your grade. Midterm was easy imo, final was very difficult.

Dr. Ma is an extremely difficult professor-- there is no way to sugarcoat it. This course requires deep understandings of many different concepts in order to do somewhat well. Class average for the final was a 40% to put it into perspective. The "good" news is that if you are willingly to REALLY put in the work for an A, you have a decent shot.

Not a chill class whatsoever. The lectures cover the big picture of concepts while the midterm and final test on applying extremely small details to concepts not ever directly discussed. Almost no resources as far as practice problems. Exams are nothing like anything discussed in class. Take this class if you like being frustrated

Everyone saying this class is dense isnt lying. It was one and half hours reading off the slides with very little extra commentary. Class is comprised of one midterm and a final that tests how well you can memorize small details instead of knowledge of concepts. Class average was a 60, theres no winning, would definitely avoid.

Prof. Ma is a very caring professor. He wants you to succeed and is always trying to get you to think about the material in a deeper way. My problem was that the tests were always so much more difficult than the homework he assigned. This class ruined my straight A's lol. Never really used the textbook unless it was for clarification.

Dense class. Some people who took biochem before did well without even using textbook because of overlapping topics. I hadnt so it was a loooooot harder. Key to class is being able to understand how every detail works in a connected system. Memorizing basic definitions is useless for exams. Average on midterm was highish so he made final impossible