I thought coming into LS7A that it would be a breeze since I took AP Bio but it wasn't quite a breeze, though I definitely had an advantage. All of the professors, TAs, and LAs definitely want you to succeed and that is evident through the accessible help on Campuswire (which I highly recommend having open throughout the quarter). Also, the class is structured to set students up for success. There is work to be done before the class (reading guides + review questions), during the class (iClicker), after the class (pod assignments), and it really helps ensure that you never fall behind. Of course there are also weekly quizzes (PALs), reflection assignments, and more, all of which contributed to a very easy time studying. Which brings me to my final compliment about the tests themselves: every exam (AoL) has a group phase and individual phase, and we were the first year where they had us take the group phase on the Monday before the individual phase (Thursday). We received our grades back for the group phase before taking the individual phase, and they were essentially identical so if you knew how to solve the group phase and understood any mistakes you made, you were basically guaranteed 100% on the individual phase.

My main criticism regarding the class and Dr. Pham is simply that sometimes lectures moved too quickly in hopes of playing catch up so that our reading guides would still be aligned with the in-class content, but this made it hard sometimes to take notes. I don't agree that Dr. Pham's accent is a problem but I do think when he speaks fast it can sometimes be difficult to decipher what is going on.

Still, I really enjoyed this class and Dr. Pham is definitely one of the best professors to take the class with. He really cares about us and is a funny guy.

P.S. Side note for people who got a 5 on AP bio in high school...apparently you can petition for it to count towards ls7a and thus skip this course. I wish I knew this before taking the class but still I met really awesome people so do with that as you will!

He was a lovely teacher!! Easy to understand and was very considerate when it came to student's difficulty in understanding the content. One time, I made a mistake on my AOL 1 of not saving my answers and my grade was really bad because of it, and he offered me a proposition that if my grade, by the end of the quarter looked really bad, he'd drop it. Very considerate teacher, I miss him lots. The coursework itself is pretty hard though, so I recommend not skipping lecture (if you can) and really pay attention and ask questions in lecture.

I LOVE PHAM

Dr. Pham is an incredibly kind and understanding professor. The concepts in class are relatively easy to follow as long as you watch the pre-class videos, which help to explain the various question types. Even if you do not watch the videos and cram them the week of the exam (I did), you can still grasp the concepts. His grading scheme is generous, since he gives you the opportunity to earn back 5% on each exam via an extra credit quiz. His exam questions are solely based on the online practice exams and previous quarter's exams, which he provides. As long as you are able to complete and understand all of these questions, you should be well prepared to get an A in the course. I did find the bacteriophage genetics to be somewhat harder to understand, but I was able to comprehend it well enough by the time the final came. However, I would say that having a strong foundation in algebra and probability definitely benefited me in terms of understanding course content, since there is a lot of room for error when completing the problems. Overall, if you get the chance, I would take this class with Dr. Pham.

Very sweet professor, I found him quite wholesome. He does have a slight accent but it's not too hard to understand him. Overall class was easy to me, might be somewhat dependent on how lucky you are with groups, since the tests are group. I did find the tests relatively accurate to the material (make sure you study your clicker questions!) Workload is meh, there's quite a few things you have to do but definitely very manageable.

This class was pretty easy, and Dr Pham is really sweet, helpful, and definitely cares about his students' learning. It is a flipped classroom (content videos done before lecture, and then lecture is spent doing practice problems), which I personally don't like, but as long as you keep track of what assignments you have to do, it's fine. The videos are good at explaining the content, and Dr Pham does a good job clarifying and expanding on them. The tests were basically the same questions (but with different specifics) as the practice tests, lecture iClickers, and discussion worksheets, so as long as you actually show up and do your work, you'll 100% be fine in this class

The class structure has completely changed. This is the most up to date review you’ll read if you’re planning to take LS107. Obviously everyone knows it was an easy A in the past because it was online. Thus, all of the grade distributions and his rating seem stellar. However, now that it’s flipped, the class is phenomenally harder and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a downtrend in rating with Pham. Fall 2024, he had a policy where with test corrections you’d get half points back of whatever you missed. So say you got a 60/100, that would bump to an 80/100 after corrections. No wonder everyone got an A. However, now this policy has changed. You can only be awarded 5 points out of 100 on the midterm for test corrections via a quiz, and 10 points on the final worth 200 points total. Does it help? Yes, by 2.5% of your total grade after all other assignments are tsken into account. But does it help as much as receiving 1/2 points back on every question like in the past? Heck no. Thus, I wouldn’t be surprised if the grading distribution becomes a lot more scattered outside of the A range in future quarters. My friends and I are typically 4.0 ish students (3.9-4.0), yet were trauma bonded and humbled by how we went into this class thinking easy A and were not at all met with an easy A class. The average j midterm 1 (the easiest of all midterms) was an 87%, followed by midterm 2 73%, followed by the final a 71%. It’s not horrible, but be prepared for this class to be the most workload on your class schedule. I’d compare this class difficulty to Lannan for 153A, except no recycled exams. Eat sleep and breathe genetics. I got a 93% on the final but took endless nights of no sleep and losing myself mentally. So glad to be done..

This was a flipped class. As long you watched the lecture videos before class, you should be able to follow along easily. I found the exams super easy. They were all multiple choice, which might be a downside for some people since you can't show your work and earn partial credit, but you get a lot of time to finish. He let you earn back half the points you missed on exams by turning in an assignment with a few questions similar to the exam. He required attendance and used iclicker questions occasionally. It is also important to go to discussion because they go over a lot of questions that would be hard to figure out on your own (attendance wasn't mandatory though). In my opinion, the class is an easy A. The material was easy to understand and he taught it with great clarity.

I could not recommend a better Life Science elective than 107 with Dr. Pham. He is truly a gift to this Earth; you can tell he fully cares about the wellbeing of his students and has an honest mastery over the material. He never hesitates to answer as many questions as are had during lecture (even some of the not-so-bright questions). His discussion worksheets are challenging at times, but fully reflect the difficulty of exam questions (exam questions are sometimes easier than the discussion worksheets). The grade breakdown is relatively simple, with points allotted for four missed class sessions, two missed discussion sections, a few missed quizzes, etc. The midterms were fair and honestly quite fun (I seamlessly received near-perfect grades on both), and the final was fairly simple as well.

The only trick to this class is that it gets SIGNIFICANTLY harder at the end. The content up to the first midterm is almost all 7B, with some new content being introduced for the second midterm. The final adds in bacteriophage genetics, a concept entirely new to me, and one that was somewhat difficult to get down. After watching Dr. Pham's recorded lectures a couple of times, though, I managed okay for the final.

Overall, I strongly recommend taking this class with this professor! If anything, I believe you'll have a good time and take many things away from it!

I’m not gonna lie… this class freaked me out for half of the quarter. I felt totally lost and bombarded by material. The two first exams were rough, but the final was super easy which was a relief for a lot of people because it was worth the most points. He basically tells you what is going to be on the final. The hardest part about learning in this class is that he will give you practice problems, show you how to do them, and then give you another problem that is related but you still have to do it differently (and he doesn’t show you how to do it). I feel like the class is a lot of guessing and asking questions rather than actual teaching. You really really have to understand everything he shows you, the TAs show you and the practice tests too. I didn’t love this class, but I also didn’t hate it.