Professor Pires is amazing! She tells various stories and jokes during lectures, so class is always interesting. Her midterms and finals are very fair--there aren't any trick questions, although some of the grading for the short answer questions may be strict (but there is partial credit). As long as you read the book and study, the tests should be okay. (Also, make sure to go over the practice midterms and study guides she provides! They are VERY similar to the actual test.) The way the class is structured also gives a lot of points from areas other than exams. Participation is a huge chunk, so just show up to class (reading the book before coming to class helps answer her participation questions). A lot of the points are from the demo homework and reading/demo quizzes (which are a breeze if you read the book/demo handout). Professor Pires is also an incredibly sweet lady. She holds review sessions or office hours before every test, and is incredibly helpful in answering questions. If you do the work, you should earn a decent grade in this class.

She is an amazing lecturer and presents the material very well. I found myself excited to learn and attend her class. Sometimes she can be a little intimidating or seem annoyed after a long day of weird questions from students, but by all means: approach her, ask her questions, discuss things with her. One of her mottoes is that she'll answer anything. Her tests are kind of difficult but very very fair. Everything she tests on are answerable; you just have to do the work regularly. I didn't take AP bio; this was the first time i saw 95% of the material and i was able to get an A in the class. How to do it:
- be extremely attentive and learn DURING class. Don't wait for after. Take mad notes, even of specific examples that you may think are unimportant. If you miss something, relisten to lecture. Dear God relisten to lecture.
- Take every online quiz seriously. Some of the questions that are on there are on the midterm and finals. Prepare for the online quizzes by...
- ...Read your book! (it's a pretty good book anyway and doesn't seem precocious) Do not waste time retyping the book though. UNDERSTAND and MEMORIZE the material as you read and be able to apply. Again, pay attention to specific examples (and the figures) in the book too! The online book companion is extremely helpful. Know that she is a part of the people who edit the book, so she really likes the questions and examples.
- Every point counts and she gives you a lot of opportunities to get them. Take them!
- Lastly and most importantly, do REAL work EVERYDAY! even if you thoroughly read like 7 pages of the book or intensely re-read your notes on a lecture for some days. NEVER put things off.
I know that looks like a lot, but it's darn worth it seeing that A on a 5 unit LS class. :]

Despite being an interesting lecturer, she is impossible. LS1 consumed my life for the entire quarter, which not only made it so I could barely go out, but really affected my performance in other classes as well. It is really a shame because she is very smart and has so many interesting things to say, and with a few simple changes to make her less insane she could really spark an interest in biology in a lot of her students. When I say she is insane, she expects students to have enough time to relisten to every lecture, go through all of her slides outside of class, re-read the textbook, do all the exercises and questions in the textbook, come to every class and answer clicker questions, do lab reports every week, do all of her online multiple choice questions, along with lab quizzes and reading quizzes every single week in order to do well. The material isn't impossible, but who has time for that? Also, she assigned a cumulative demo project AFTER the final, so i had to change my flight home so I had enough time to get it done. If you have all the time in the world, you should do fine in the class. If not, take another professor.

Workload: 2 online quizzes and a lab assignment per week - also, attending lectures is mandatory as you will receive participation credit that is a part of your grade
Lectures: She is a really good lecturer - or a bad lecturer in some people's opinion, depending on what you prefer as your lecturing style. I personally really like the way she lectured, which was mostly by giving you a bunch of examples. She'll raise a topic in class, and then give you a lot of examples that back them up. Sometimes, she will go on semi-related tangents - sidestories, if you will, of examples for things that relate to the topic discussed. If you go to each lecture and really pay attention (and well, you have to anyways for participation), you will probably do well on the exams because a lot of what she tests you on is covered in the lectures.
Exams: Her exams are definitely fair. Her philosophy is that LS1 should be conceptual and theoretical - that is, you learn some concept, and you should be able to apply this concept to a hypothetical situation that you presents you with in a multiple choice question (ex: If a population of birds is experiencing -something-, then what will the consequences be based on the possibilities discussed in lecture?). That means that she tries to minimize the amount of raw memorization you will have to do, as opposed to some of the other LS classes you will have to take. Most of the exam is conceptual in the way I described above, however, there are still some questions which require memorizing. Nonetheless, this means you can probably put away the flash cards because you won't need them as much for this class. There is no curve for her class until the very end, but don't worry if you think you've bombed an exam, she gives out a lot of extra credit for her class so you can make up for it by doing the extra credit assignments.
Overall: As far as LS professors go, she will probably be one of the better ones to take - she really knows her stuff. It won't be a cakewalk getting an A (or even a B depending on how good you are at biology) but if you do all the stuff she assigns and do all the reading, then you will probably end up with a decent grade at the very least. I would definitely recommend her.

She is a great lecturer and seems very friendly when you first start the class, make no doubt about it. However, that doesn't mean that she is a great teacher. Her assignments and exams are ridiculously difficult and despite spending ridiculous amounts of time studying, I still feel like I did poorly on her exams. LS1 is inherently difficult and she lectures vary well, but beware that her exams are murder.

Pires is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. However, if you're just trying to get an A, I would not recommend her. Her tests are very difficult (although the same is said for any life science class. These are not the classes to take if you have no genuine interest in the life sciences). Despite her difficult tests, she is an excellent lecturer and you learn a lot from her. Only take her if you are interested in actually learning something

I read almost all reviews before taking this class and tried to take other lecutres
However, her class was about half empty while the other lecture was full. I decided to take it anyway because I felt I could manage to get an A-, if I worked really hard.
BUT believe me and other reviews, most people (unless exceptionally smart) would not be able to get a good grade in this class.
what can I say next? do NOT take this class with her

I never take the time to evaluate professors so lets just say Deb is worth the time. She was BY FAR the best LS professor I have had at UCLA. I've heard numerous complaints about how Deb has an "attitude" but I regularly attended office hours and found her extremely helpful and motivating. She loves teaching (a rare trait among UCLA professors) and enjoys her research. If you are genuinely interested in the material and want to learn she's on board with helping you understand. Don't be afraid of her! She has a unique character thats for sure, but she loves to help and cares about her students :)

She seemed really awesome the first two lectures. She made it seem like the class was going to be relatively easy too. She said we have online reading and demo quizzes but they should be easy since they are open notes!!!! She even gave us all perfects on the first quiz...uhmm however...the quizzes are terrible. Most of the time I couldn't even find the answers in the text, or she would word the question like she was foreign or something and it didn't make any sense. In the demo quizzes, she asked things like, "what is the null hypothesis in this demo?" when there were never any references to anything that had to do with a hypothesis. Some of her questions weren't even in the assigned reading! And her midterms are terrible and don't reflect how much or how hard you studied. I could have taken the midterm on my first day of class and still done just as poorly. The average in my class was something around a D (and she said that's pretty good). I did slightly better on my second midterm but the average was still terrible. The thing that worries me (since I'm still in her class right now) is that she says she doesn't curve anything. If this is true...then most of her class is failing. It's okay if you have some people doing poorly in the class and others better, but if no one in the class (except for like one person) does even slightly exceptional there must be something wrong with the teacher. I feel so terrible writing this because I don't like to talk bad about anybody, but I feel like she really needs to hear this. It is not okay for her class to fail especially since all of them are obviously interested in the subject and are eager to learn about it. I have seen how hard people study for her class but they all do terrible anyway. What kind of reward is it when you get a D on a test which you studied for for days? She actually told us in class that the reason we all did so poorly is because we didnt follow HER study method. Personally, I dont think I need HER study method if my study method is the reason that I got into this school, and got a 3.8 as my first quarter GPA taking some of the hardest classes on campus. But when i tried her study method, I admit, i got a slightly higher score, but I still got like a C- on the second midterm.
Her explanation for why the tests are so difficult and specific is that she wants us to be able to tell our kids things if they ask. But, honestly, if my child asks me why two pine cones are different i'm not going to tell them about gametes and allele frequencies.
Overall, as interesting as this class is, I do not recommend taking this class with this professor. You will get an A with the other one...so dont go through the stress and failure of taking Pires. Her class is really the worst quality class I have taken here at UCLA. Even worse than Pang's Chem 14BL class. It was honestly a waste of my time and money.

WORST PROFESSOR!!!! AVOID COMPLETELY!
I've only been here for two quarters, and she has made my first year experience the worst!
I agree with everyone here except the first person who commented.
COMPLETELY unapproachable! She tries to act like she is cares about her students, but when you try to approach her after lecture she gives you an attitude with a look of annoyance. Her test are extremely difficult with so much information. What makes things worse is that the questions she gives on her test are nothing like the practice study guides she provides; which btw are so stupid. She provides study guides, but reminds you that thats probably only going to be about 50% of what are on the test.
The labs are stupid... bunch of busy work. And she takes questions from the Demos, the ones with the minor details and expects you to know every singly detail about examples from the DEMO and form the book. TA's can be helpful. My TA was Tom, he was awesome, I wish he would've taught the class. But regardless DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR!!!