BR10H is the best class I have ever taken and I truly cannot recommend it enough. I went into this class kind of intimidated because I didn't have any prior research experience, but I came out feeling amazed at how much I had learned and how many skills I'd acquired in such a short time. Dr. Spratford is the most supportive, helpful instructor ever and will go above and beyond to make sure you understand the material if you go to her outside of class. You'll also find a great community with your classmates due to the smaller class size and it was just a really great experience between everyone: my classmates, the LAs, TA, and the professor. The midterm and final projects are extremely hard and time-consuming, so do not procrastinate unless you want to not sleep! Go to lab as often as you can, as early as you can, and you will end up learning skills like fine tissue dissection at a much quicker pace and this will help you immensely with your data collection. Even though this class was a lot of work and definitely caused me to lose some sleep, I enjoyed it so much and would take it again if I had the opportunity. (Dr. Spratford you're the GOAT!)

Amazing class. It's a big time commitment, but Dr. Spratford is an amazing scientist, professor, and person.

Make sure you'll be able to devote time outside of the scheduled class times to come into the lab to collect data and practice, but ultimately (with good planning) the class was manageable.

Week 5 and Weeks 9 - 10 were the most hellish because that's when the midterm and final proposals are due, so plan to be pretty busy during those weeks.

Highly recommend if you are at all interested in biomedical research.

To echo the other reviews, yeah this class will have you pretty busy. Completing the big projects (grant proposal, manuscript, PowerPoint presentation, and producing data) is extremely time consuming and I found myself worrying about completing the assignments for this class the most. Including lectures and lab times (which on its own is 10 hours per week) I found myself spending at most an additional 10-12 hours per week outside of class to complete all assignments and collecting data (which involves some time-consuming dissections). The weeks around the midterm (grant proposal) and final (manuscript and presentation) is when the time commitment is the greatest.

That being said, the teaching team and Dr. Spratford are the most supportive instructors I've had as a student. They consistently worked late into the night providing helpful feedback on drafts. Dr. Spratford created an infectiously friendly and supportive class environment. She's enthusiastic about supporting her students (ie writing letters of rec, being a reference for job applications) and lectured on skills like resume building, grad school, med school, and becoming proficient in PowerPoint.

Can't recommend this class enough if you're looking to get involved in biomedical research (regardless of major and prior experience!) and your down for the time commitment required.

Dr. Spratford has to be one of the best professors at UCLA! This class definitely is not like your usual science class, as you actually get to participate in some pretty cool research and do lab techniques that I can't imagine you would do in any other context. The lectures are very well done, and Dr. Spratford helps keep you engaged, even when lectures can be quite long.

When I took this class, I was going through a lot of personal issues and things happening unexpectedly, and Dr. Spratford was really amazing and understanding, helping with deadlines and extensions, and offering her empathy and own personal stories of struggle. She really acts as more of a friend to her students and a mutual colleague, rather than an academic superior.

TL;DR: Great class, even greater professor!