People complaining about this man's accent are really trying to cover up the fact they didn't do as well as they wanted to purely due to their own incompetence. Pham's lectures are fast-paced, but he goes over the clicker questions very well, which are all that really matter. I never attended his office hours but every time I asked him something after class, he was nothing but kind and extremely helpful. The LS Core Curriculum have a specific way of explaining problems and he does a great job of explaining what type of knowledge is expected of us. I would go to his lectures to figure out what type of material will be tested and go to your TA's office hours instead because they offer much more personal help.

Dr Pham is an angel given to us by UCLA. Never have I ever had a professor who cared about students this much as well as ensured that each lecture is very engaging and fun for the students.
You can tell that he is very passionate about teaching and always wants to make sure that the students' mental health and circumstances are considered during grading and tests. The tests are not that difficult and the content is not that heavy. However, you still need to do the past papers and understand the material well in order to do well in the tests.
There is no reason for anybody to not get an A in this class as long as you put in the effort and attention to the class. He is beyond fair in grading and is very understanding if you have any personal issues which may impede your ability to take the test.
100% would reccomend taking him for LS107. If I had a choice, I would take him for any other class he teaches as well.

Grading scheme for *****LS 4*****:
Midterm - 125 points
Final - 250 points
Class participation - 37.5 points (5 lowest scores dropped)
Discussion quizzes - 35 points (2 lowest scores dropped)
Online quizzes - 37.5 points (3 lowest scored dropped)

Professor Pham:
This class was done in a "flipped classroom" way. We had to watch lecture videos (which did not feature Professor Pham, but another guy) that were previous podcasts. Then before each lecture we had to complete a three question multiple choice quiz on CCLE. And then in lecture we mostly went over clicker questions along with some more review of content. My lecture was MWF, but the other one was TR and they had two midterms for some reason while we only had one. Professor Pham was in my opinion a really great professor. He's actually really hilarious and really cares about his students. His accent is not even that bad to be honest. May be jarring at first but it's really easy to overcome. In lecture he is pretty entertaining and is really understanding. I really liked having him as a professor.

TA Ashot Papikian:
We had discussion sections once a week for like a little over an hour. They were structured differently between each TA, but we did a discussion quiz for the first 10-15 minutes of class and then went over a series of questions from the textbook. My TA was a little bit dry, and no one was very participatory, but he was generally pretty helpful. He's a little monotone but you can tell he tried to help us as much as he could.

PLF Juliana Smith:
If you're in AAP and Juliana is a PLF, I highly recommend having her. She really helped hone in on the concepts of the course and gave a lot of great examples with extensive explanations for the answers. She is very nice. A little bit awkward, but a really great educator. I feel like I owe a lot of my success in this class to her.

Midterm grade: 113/125
So I went into this midterm really really confident. I understood all of the concepts and went over a handful of past midterms (Pham provides literally all his past midterms on CCLE) and then went over the answer keys for the rest of his past midterms because I got tired of doing them. Pham does a lot of the same or similar questions, so it's pretty essential to go over his past midterms. I fucked up with the instructions for one of the questions, which is why I got a lower grade than I expected.

Final grade: 231.5/250
The final was a little bit more difficult, but not by much, because it covered a lot of the material from after the midterm and a little bit of material before the midterm. It was still manageable if you studied his past second midterms and practice final questions. Again, the questions are to be expected based on what he gives you. So study the past questions and you should do well.

Class participation grade: 37.5/37.5
The clicker questions during lecture were not graded on whether you get the answer right. It was just counted as credit if you answered at least 50% of the clicker questions from that lecture. The number of questions varied from a few to a lot. The lecture slides were posted before each lecture, so I just retyped them. It also included the clicker questions, so I completed those before class as well. I think it's a good idea to really try on clickers as much as you can, because they're good practice.

Discussion quizzes grade: 35/35
Each TA made their own quizzes for their discussion. I heard that some TAs gave really hard quizzes, but Ashot made really easy ones, so it was pretty simple to get full credit on them. The quizzes consisted of one question from the book. If you want, you can do all of the assigned problems in the textbook, but it's not graded or required. Since my TA's quizzes were easy, I didn't need to do the book problems beforehand to do well on the quizzes.

Online quizzes grade: 37.5/37.5
Each pre-lecture quiz was three-multiple choice questions on CCLE. Sometimes the third question was just an opinion-based one and not graded. But you could try on the questions as much as you want, but you will be graded accordingly based on how many tries it took you to get the right answer. These were pretty simple if you watched the lecture videos carefully and took good notes on them.

Overall grade: A
Overall, I'm a big fan of the flipped classroom method. I thought it was really helpful for me to watch the lecture videos at my own pace where I could rewind as necessary, And going over a lot of practice problems in lecture were also really helpful. I find it much more efficient and effective than trying to squeeze all the content in 50-minute intervals.

Dr.Pham is SUCH A GOOD PROFESSOR. You will be teaching a lot of the material to yourself so make sure to make use of the preclass worksheets and reading guides. These will help you focus on the important material since launchpad has soooo much to take in. Pham is a fast lecturer, but if you ask him to slow down or go over something again, he is always more than happy to do it. He also encourages questions like no other! He clearly (and I'm talking crystal clear) cares about his students :') Cellular biology can be complicated, but he will make sure you know he is there as a welcoming resource.

LS4: Pham is good, but his accent is really hard to understand, so when you're first learning the material from him, it's hard to understand what he's saying, but his slides make up for it, so the next time he talks about it, you'll understand given that you study.

LS4

I thought Pham was a really great professor. Yea, his accent's a little thick, but pay attention and you'll be able to understand what he's staying. Also, he's EXTREMELY nice. People would always ask him questions while he was lecturing and he would answer every single one of them. Even if it was a question to repeat what he said. I went up to him after lecture once to ask him how to do a problem and he walked through it with me and made sure I completely understood at the end. I've never had a professor so nice.

Regarding his tests. Yea they can be tricky, but he gives you ALL of his past tests. So do them! If you have questions, go to his office hours and ask him. He'll show you the tricks and the shortcuts that make the problems so much easier.

In short, I loved taking LS4 with Pham. I got an A just by doing as many of his past tests that I could, all the homework, and asking questions when I had them. And honestly, that was the first A I had ever gotten in a science class.

Also, taking LS4 with Pham over summer is significantly easier than the regular school year. But just as doable during the regular school year if you do the homework and past tests.

Pham is an extremely nice guy and knowledgeable. Very accommodating and always answers people's questions. However, classes were sometimes a bit slow or he stops to answer too many people's questions. We fell behind and had to watch extra recorded lectures.

General course comments:
Lab worksheets are boring, long, and don't really help that much. Exams were hard to understand, wording is so vague sometimes. Launchpad's aren't very useful in terms of exams and spending extra time on them is a waste of time.

Professor Pham is a stellar professor, the class itself... not so much. Supposedly this class is the "easiest" of the LS7 series but the tests didn't feel like it was. Even one of the LA's during lab stated that they had no idea why the tests were hard compared to previous years; the wording was often very vague and tedious to comprehend. They (the instructional team) did give back points for questions they deemed unfair however. There was a fair bit of extra credit in the form of reflections and mini-midterms. I would take this class again with Pham (and any other classes he may teach) and highly recommend him. DO NOT underestimate this class just because it's called the "easiest".

Professor Pham is GREAT! Throughout the quarter, he was extremely helpful and did a good job explaining clicker questions, concepts etc. He’s an extremely passionate professor and if you have to take this class, I would definitely suggest taking it with him!

My main critique isn’t about Professor Pham, but just the class as a whole. The material (barring genetics) is absolutely uninteresting and launchpad is not helpful and will put you straight to sleep. I stopped reading launchpad about midway through the quarter and didn’t feel like I was missing out whatsoever. Labs are not helpful either, although TA Jalyssa made them a lot more enjoyable (BIG shoutout to her!!). They consist of filling out tedious worksheets that, in some cases, are legitimately at a 7th grade level. The exams were alright in terms of difficulty, but the wording (particularly on the 2nd midterm) was unclear for many questions and made it difficult to demonstrate my understanding of class material.

If you have to take this class, I’d highly suggest taking it with Professor Pham, as his enthusiasm makes this class more bearable.

This was a great class that I really enjoyed. It was challenging at times and pushed me and kept me on my toes. The class had 2 midterms and a final, along with pre-class quizzes and weekly quizzes as well. The first midterm was incredibly easy, but the second one was definitely harder and a lot of students ran out of time/scored significantly lower than the first. At times, it felt like the material was rushed but I can definitely understand why Dr. Pham wanted to get all of the material to us so we'd be prepared for the final. I loved how he required attendance by having iClicker Reef points, but also recorded the lecture so we can go back and re-do/review the clicker questions in our own time when we were studying for the exams. Like most LS classes, this was also a flipped classroom where most of the pre-class videos introduce/teach you what will be in class and we mainly do clicker questions in class. The questions for the pre-class quizzes are pretty easy and you can have multiple attempts at each question, but each wrong attempt for that question costs you 1/3 of the points. The weekly quizzes only allow 1 attempt and are just once a week, mostly during Friday and due at the end of the weekend.

Midterms are open for the entire day, but you only have a 2 hour window and the clock starts once you open the exam on CCLE. So get comfy and block out 2 hours at the best time that works for you to take it. The final is structured the same time window, but you're allowed 3 hours instead of 2. The TA videos are awesome for reviewing for the exams as well.

Dr. Pham is an incredibly passionate professor who really cares about his students and made this a great learning experience despite the external events going on. Definitely take this course with him! :)

The final was really fair