She is very nice and generous.

Good class over, just a bit tedious. Definitely will teach you about biochemical methods that are useful and ACTUALLY used in labs at UCLA.

Bad parts:
1. Lab practical. Worth 30 points, everyone I know got 10/30 or 15/30. Don't really know how that was graded, be prepared to lose points.
2. Lab reports. A majority was just copying from lab manual and was tedious. Start early, and check with your TA if anything is missing before you submit so you don't lose points here.

Good parts:
1. Midterm/Final exam was very fair.
2. Class is actually curved. Someone I know got 90.5 in the class raw, but still ended with an A.
3. Highly recommend TA Binsen Li. He makes sure everyone knows what they're doing. Bonus if you can make him like you. He'll make the lab section way more fun.

Dr. Hong really cares about her students. She is very approachable and is willing to take time to explain concepts to you well. Her accent and interesting ways of saying things made the lectures interesting.

In terms of work, it is often tedious. Lab reports are a bit of pain, but it is doable. You will find yourself confused what to say sometimes due to a lack of clear directions. But that, I believe, is part of learning how to write scientifically about your results and experiments.

I think you will get the most values out of this class by thinking about why your experiments failed and talking to the prof about it. Also, the lectures are podcasted and she posts detailed notes with her slides, so read them to prepare for the exams. Exams are fair, but it requires a bit of applying what you learned in a new setting or troubleshooting experiments, which is fun.

The hardest part of the class comes after the midterm. After the midterm there are 2 reports/worksheets due every week. Granted one is a draft and one is a final, it still makes it really hard to keep up with the amount of material in lecture and in the laboratory. The in lab quizzes ask some pretty specific stuff, especially about the toxicity of the chemicals or the reaction that is going on during the lab. Personally, I really liked my TA, ERIC LEE! He was really awesome in answering questions during lab and gives great feedback to writing lab reports. Even though I did not do well in the practical or either exam, my lab reports really saved my grade. I really wish that the lab reports were worth more for the class as this is a lab class. Hong is very easy to reach out to as well, she normally has 3 office hour sessions a week and takes appointments. She also has really awesome notes on her lecture slides that she posts about a week or two after the lecture was completed. I do recommend going to the review sessions for the midterm and final, but only if you like working in groups as you . will be working in groups to complete the review packet and Hong and other LAs will be there to assist/answer questions/demonstrate. Yeah this class is a lot of work, so be prepared for it after that midterm! Read your lab manual and the data sheets Hong posts on the ccle!

Amazing professor !

I compared my lab reports with my friends who have took this class with Dr. Hong in the 2019 spring quarter and 2019 winter quarter. It was very clear that I wrote superior lab reports compared to both my friends as I had access to their lab reports. They both received A's on all their lab reports, while with the TA that I had, received D's on all my lab reports. 0_0... That literally makes no sense. I tried going to her office hours and said I deserve that grade without explaining why. Sure I am not a an expert in formulating a hypothesis, but there is a standard form in which all hypotheses are formed. My TA acted as if he did not know how to form a hypothesis as if it was mysterious and difficult to form one. Nah, I do not believe in that at all. There is a way to standardize hypotheses whether it be QUANTITATIVELY or QUALITATIVELY. (Please be sure to form your hypothesis QUANTITATIVELY for all your lab reports!) Also, the grading of lab reports is so SUBJECTIVE. Which is BS. I'd rather they grade based on the requirements that are needed for each lab report as that is more OBJECTIVE. Clearly, this class definitely needs a standardized way of grading across all TA sections on how to grade lab reports! As others have stated, the lab practical was judged based on accuracy rather than understanding of the material (which I did poorly on). Lastly, to be fair, I did not really study for my midterm and final, in which to my surprise I scored just about average for both. I also do not like the way she words questions for her tests as I am a very simple person =)

Super nice prof who's very organized and has very fair tests (tests on things she's covered in class only). She's very accessible and visits lab sections and even helps out sometimes with late night lab sections by finishing experiments so students can go early. She covers a lot of material at a pretty much perfect level of detail and will go over the more confusing stuff over and over until it sticks.

The class itself is a lot of work, ESPECIALLY LAB REPORTS. Don't fuck around with lab reports. Do not skimp on anything because you will get docked for all kinds of minor shit and when you get the report back you won't even be able to tell where you lost points because grading is so vague. FOLLOWING THE LAB REPORT GUIDELINES IS MORE IMPORTANT IN YOUR FINAL GRADE THAN GETTING GOOD DATA OR THE CORRECT ANSWER. Read the labreport guidelines several times and start ahead of time so that you can get the TA to help you out when you inevitably realized you fucked up somewhere. You need to be very exact with how you word things and when in doubt be VERY conservative with what you say. Average scores for lab reports were maybe around 60-70% or so? I got around a raw 90% for all of the lab reports so I know what I'm talking about. I messed up the 3rd lab report's experiment and had to use data provided by the TA but even so I still got a high score because, I repeat, RIGHT DATA <<< LAB REPORT GUIDELINES.

Pros:
Dr. Hong is a super nice lecturer; she really cares about her students and tries to get to know us even on Zoom (I took this class during the COVID pandemic). You can tell that Dr. Hong is also pretty responsive to student feedback - she asked us throughout the quarter if she can improve and actually read through the reflections that we had to fill out. She's also very available to her students and responds really fast to emails (like I think I've gotten responses within a few hours).
The class materials were overall solid, and I really liked how the whole course centered around one main topic (production of a biofuel called isobutanol).
I also had a really nice TA who genuinely pushed us to learn - I really appreciated how much he invested into the class and tried to stir up conversations in breakout rooms, and he too was also very responsive via email.
Also, I'm not sure if this is the case always, but I believe my grade was curved/scaled because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten the grade I received were it not for some sort of scaling.

Cons:
I honestly felt that grading on the lab reports was surprisingly rough. Like some reviewers have mentioned before, there are guidelines that are given that are pretty helpful, but I felt like I lost points for things that were kind of tedious/small. It seemed like I put in a lot of effort into the class and didn't get out what I put in. Likewise, the grading on the midterm (exam 1) seemed pretty picky and points were deducted for saying wrong/misleading statements when other parts of the question were answered correctly.

Words of advice/overall impression:
Overall, while this class was pretty time-consuming (especially after the first few weeks) and the grading felt rather harsh, it was pretty doable, especially with the help of Dr. Hong and my TA. For future students, I'd suggest trying to get as much help on your lab reports as you can - go to your TA's office hours, work with other classmates to see how to best structure each section, etc. For the exams, really try to understand how different concepts in class connect together and talk through the study guide that Dr. Hong provides - a lot of the questions don't ask you to memorize things, but rather ask you to think critically and connect multiple concepts together. And lastly, try to understand the big picture of the concepts in the class. It's easy to get lost in the details of each experiment and caught up in trying to earn every point, but honestly if you try to just learn the material and see the grand scheme of things, you'll be okay.

Dr. Hong is a really nice professor and was always willing to stay behind after lecture and answer student questions. Throughout the quarter, she was also very receptive to student feedback and changed how she taught based on what the students thought was best. While she is a good professor, most of the grading is based on your TA. I hated my TA because she wasn’t very good at explaining things and graded lab reports very harshly, often marking off points for minor details or things that straight up weren’t on Dr. Hong’s rubric.

With respect to workload, this class is quite intense. You get lulled into a false sense of security in the the first three weeks and then the lab reports and midterm exam hit you like a train, so don’t slack off just because the class seems easy early on. The class was interesting in that the whole quarter was spent on one concept (making biofuels) and regardless of whether you like the topic or not, you learn a lot of practical skills that are incredibly useful if you work in a research lab or plan to go into research as a career.

The grading breakdown is already in one of these reviews so check them if you’re interested. Their midterm and final were fair even though they were entirely free-response, but some of the questions were pretty vague. To do well in this course, you shouldn’t memorize every detail of a procedure but instead understand the underlying concept and why the experiment works (and how you could explain data if you get an unexpected result). My other recommendation is to go over your lab reports WITH YOUR OWN TA (I went to another TA for clarification once and he told me information that, while not totally wrong, made me lose points on a lab report). Dr. Hong was nice enough to include 12 points of extra credit which bumped me from an A- to an A, but she also normalized lab report grades so that people with a harder TA wouldn’t be screwed over. Solid course overall, but I wouldn’t take it if you have the option.

PNP this class if you can. Professor has no sympathy since she doesn’t curve at all during the pandemic. Good luck.