Pike is one of the only reasonable people in the poli sci department at UCLA. Lectures are easy to follow, he is a relaxed professor, and overall nice person. I went to discuss m midterm with him and he actually regraded the test and gave me a significant number of points back. I was not a fan of the TA but that is not his issue. If you just read and pay attention to specific terms that he emphasizes, you will pass with a good grade.

This class was interesting and I appreciated how straightforward it was. It was a good introduction to US Foreign Policy. Grade breakdown was 30% midterm, 40% final, and 30% weekly discussion posts. Discussion posts were a free 30% of your grade, as they were pretty much based on completion. Midterm and final format was the same: short ID terms (choose 8 out of 11 options), one short essay, and one long essay. Pike was against giving out study guides and didn’t provide a potential list of terms or questions like other professors do, however I thought this was reasonable and the exams were not difficult. He would also hint at what concepts might be on exams during lecture, and it was pretty easy to discern which concepts were important. Pike assigned 4 readings per week, though they were not necessary for the exams. However because his lectures are essentially summaries of the readings, I found it helpful to skim through some of them to clarify anything from the lectures. If you study for the exams you will do well. Though there is a lot of information, none of the concepts are complex. For the final he allowed us the full 3 hours despite it being the same format as the 1 hour 15 minute midterm, and also let us have a cheat sheet for the final. If you put in some effort to study for the midterm and final, it’s an easy A.

Honestly really glad I took this course. Professor Pike is a really fun guy with a good sense of humor and solid lectures. As of last quarter, he completely changed the course around making it waaay easier. The only assignments now are discussion posts (participation) and then a midterm and final which are mostly multiple choice. Both tests were super easy imo, I ended up getting -1 on both which was the bets Ive ever done on any test lol. Pike is also always there at office hours and is down to give extensions or other accommodations. I would definitely recommend this class as a super easy upper div A for other poli sci majors!