Even though I got a good grade in this class, I wouldn't recommend taking it with her unless you had to. The homework was a lot each week, and most of the time didn't really relate to what she was lecturing in. In addition, the quizzes were worded really bad. During the weeks that we had quizzes, she'd cover material that wasn't going to be on it the day before, which sucked because I never wanted to listen since it would only confuse me, and thus would put me behind. I did okay on the quizzes but studied a lot for the final and ended up doing really well on it, which is why I got an A in the class. If you go to her office hours she can be helpful, but her explanations of things is always a lot more complicated than it needs to be. This being said, this was only her second quarter teaching this class, and I'm sure she'll get a lot better as time goes on!

100A is pretty doable. Basically you needed to understand and apply the concepts from the textbook (free, canvas) for the assessments. There is extra credit on quizzes/tests & also you could do the SONA experiment and get an extra 1%. Two mark schemes, so if you don't want to go to class and get the participation points as long as you do well on the exams/quizzes you'll be fine. Professor Montoya is super nice, she started to give more extra credit on the quizzes and made it so we could skip two questions and generally seems to really care about her students and their grades. I would totally take her if you're good at learning on your own from reading and practice problems. I personally find that listening to her lectures just makes me super confused about the material and I do much better when I just learn from Canvas and glance through the slides she uploads to see what to focus on.

Professor Montoya is not a bad professor, she shows she cares and accommodates with the student's needs. Her classes were very boring and the fact that it was an 8 a.m. did not help it. The workload of this class is crazy, for the amount of time you put for the material in this class, it would easily get you 7-8 hours to finish the homework with understanding the subject. The homework is not graded for correctness, but if you want to learn the material I recommend do the homework right to understand the material. Her grading scale is really good and it does the maximum to not hurt the student. The midterm was very hard and I failed it, but I ended up with a B in the class because of the quizzes, homework, attendance, and Final grades. But you have to study really hard and a lot for the final and the midterm in order to receive an A in the class.

I took this class in fall quarter 2019 with Professor Montoya. Besides the fact that it was dreadful to wake up and get to campus for an 8am 2 times a week, it was a pretty good class. She uses poll-everywhere in lectures for participation so you don't have to purchase an iClicker or reef subscription. The textbook for this class is also provided for free on Canvas. She starts off the quarter with a pretty heavy workload, for week 1, we had to work through the homework for Chapters 1-4 which is due by the Monday of week 2 and the schedule goes on but the load does get lighter, maybe about 1-2 chapters for the rest of the quarter. She has 4 quizzes throughout the quarter, one midterm and one final. The wording was a little tricky but nothing you couldn't get used to. She does open up all past quizzes towards the end of the quarter and if you do those and just get used to her wording or question style, everything is pretty bearable.

She was also very accommodating to the class as a lot of people were complaining that her quizzes were too hard, in the end she included 2 skips that we could use if we didn't want to answer that question. The class was also a little hostile towards the 2 poor TA's during lab section when they've tried explaining countless times.

Overall tips would be to work ahead of the homework, redo the practice quizzes for each chapter and then take down things that you get wrong and turn that into your cheatsheet which you are allowed for your quiz. Get well versed with R too, the tests aren't too R heavy but it comes in handy when she asks for the input for extra credit questions!!

This class was entirely in-person and required attendance through iClicker. The first week was a slog to get through since we had to do four chapters of homework in a week (one chapter can take hours). There's no midterm or final. but weekly quizzes and a group final project. All in all, I didn't pay much attention and was able to get an A. There's a lot of leeway here since assignments get dropped/homeworked curved/extra credit.

Please do not take 100A with this professor. You will struggle unnecessary and you will cry your eyes out. I took this in my first quarter as a transfer, and it was so horrible. She assigned HOURS of homework and her quizzes were meant to trick (although she said otherwise). Psych 100A is not supposed to be difficult but she made it very difficult. The other professors for Psych 100A are supposedly good professors so you should take it with them. I neglected it my other classes for this class and I didn't even get a decent grade. DO NOT TAKE IT WITH HER PLEASE! You will at least do 8 hours of reading every week and you will teach yourself every concept. She barely goes over anything in class. She only offers 1% of extra credit so don't depend on that too much. Additionally, SHE DOES NOT ROUND UP GRADES. You could be at a 79.87 and she will not round. She does not provide any study guides and does not emphasize what's on the quizzes, she basically says "Study everything." Imagine that, 30 hours of reading all onto a 25 question quiz and she does not even tell you what to focus on. She places a huge emphasis on programming and we learn so much R programming that it's very very difficult to tell what's important and what's not. Of course, she doesn't tell you what to focus on because she wants you to know everything. For your sanity, take it with another professor. She made my first quarter at UCLA unbearable.

Easy A if you're a good self-studier. After I found that lecture didn't really do much for me, I stopped going to class and only studied the textbook (Canvas material) and got good grades on both the quizzes and tests. Montoya's extremely kind and accommodating. If you nee help though, go to her directly and not the TAs, they're more unsure of what they're doing. Her grading scale is super fair as well. Participation doesn't count if you score high enough on the quizzes and tests and she offers extra credit. Just study the canvas material well, pay attention to the practice tests, and you'll be solid.

I was initially super scared to take this course because of the past bruinwalk reviews and since it was my first quarter as a transfer (and it was an 8am).
However, I am really glad I decided to take it with Dr. Montoya. I really think she has improved whatever was going on with the past reviews because I did not experience that at all and neither did anyone else I talked to in the class.
The class was made up of weekly homework on the free bruinlearn integrated course textbook. You would have to read and do R coding exercises directly onto the textbook and it was only graded on completion.
There were also weekly quizzes based on the homework chapters. The quizzes were based on correctness, but you could retake it one time and earn a max of 50% of the points you missed. You could also work with the TAs and classmates on the quiz redo. Lowest 2 quizzes are dropped. I really didn't like how you don't get to see what you got wrong ever even when the quiz is closed (maybe you could ask the TAs during office hours idk I didn't try that).
Every week during discussion, you worked with your group on a coding notebook project (not too hard and lowest is dropped). The only annoying thing about the groups is that it's inside a lecture hall with that kind of seating, so it's kind of hard to work together when you are so spread out.
Attendance is graded through Iclicker. It was an 8am so that was kinda hard, and I didn't really stay focused during lectures. Might be the timeslot or the lectures themselves, probably both. I was able to get an A+ pretty easily through the quiz/hw/projects but I felt like I didn't actually learn much about stats so I really recommended actually learning from the lectures and hw even if you can get points from them anyway.
The course is really R coding focused which I think is not the norm for 100A, but as someone who was really interested in learning about CS I actually really appreciated the slight intro to coding part of the class. There's no exams at all unlike other 100A classes so that's also something to think about.
Also there was extra credit through SONA and course evaluations. The course also used campuswire for questions which helps a ton since you can see your classmates questions so you usually can find your questions already answered through that instead of asking yourself and waiting. (No EC for campuswire participation).
Now onto the only confusing part of the class (not bad tho). Dr. Montoya has this really complicated grading scheme for HW and attendance. Basically, if your overall HW score is 85% it will be rounded up to 100% (if you get like 79% I'm pretty sure it still gets rounded up to like 99%). For attendance, its the same but the cutoff is only 80%.
This caused a TON of tension and issues between students and Prof/TAs because at the start of the course the HW wasn't syncing with the gradebook very well so people who did all the HW were getting like 90-99% instead. This made everyone freak out because they were afraid that they could do a bunch of work and it might not count (UCLA moment lol). The TAs and prof basically told everyone to chill out and if its above 80 itll get rounded up anyway so it didn't matter. Some students posted campuswire stuff literally longer than this review (believe it or not) arguing that they should have had a better response to the situation. It all worked out in the end.
Sorry for the giant review, this class's reviews made me dread my life for only being able to get into this 100A class so I wanted to reassure anyone else stuck with this class that its not a super bad thing.

Prof. Montoya is very clear and if not, she is always open to answer your questions after lectures or at the office hours. She is very friendly and hears you out. She is understanding and sometimes extends the deadline for homework if needed. (she did it twice in my class because the students asked her to)
The lectures are engaging and participation MATTERS. However, when it came to the exams, I never read the slides she went over in the lecture. I'd only master the textbook, which is online and you need to read it thoroughly for the homework anyway! If you read the textbook while doing the homework and review it a few days before each exam you'll be out of this class with an A/A+.
The homework is heavy. You need to read at least 1 chapter every week and do every single question embedded in the chapter. (you won't understand a single question if you don't read the chapter first).
There are quizzes every other week, but the lowest quiz will be dropped (5 quizzes in total). One midterm and a final.
Overall, the workload of this class is heavy, but if you actually read the book, do the homework and understand the material, you will be more than fine!
MY ADVICE: understand the first 4 chapters well, because that's the base you'll need for the rest of the course.

I have mixed opinions about this class and about the professor. On the one hand, the professor is very nice and friendly and is somewhat helpful but on the other hand, the quizzes and tests were very difficult and would contain tons of trick questions and things that she didn't even go over. This class heavily relies on R-coding even though other 100A classes do no R-coding. Also, the TA's were garbage when I took the class they had no idea what was going on and could never answer anyone's questions about the material I stopped going to the discussion section because it was so unhelpful.

I will say though that the way the grading scheme works in her class is very helpful for students because she makes the homework grade worth so much and drops your lowest quiz which is important because after about the 2nd or 3rd quiz the quizzes become more difficult. Now the midterm and final are just pure bullshit she amps the difficulty by like 10 for some reason so you will be sitting there wondering why the problems are so difficult even though you have studied and felt like you understood the material. It's like what you study is basic statistic problems but then she tests you on advanced statistic problems.

Overall I would say if math is your thing, you understand statistics, and you know some coding this will be an easy class for you, however, if you struggle with math, stats, and have no experience coding this may be a difficult class for you but is definitely passable due to the grading scheme.