2 midterms: 100 points/each
Final cumulative : 200 points
online quizzes: 2.5 points/each
weekly discussion quizzes: 5 points/each

Professor Pham are very nice and helpful. The way to do well in the class is to go to office hour, WORK on his practice exams EARLY. Reading the book is not important as doing practice problems on his passed exams. Think of every exam like running a marathon, in order to do well, you HAVE to practice. Although the workload is somewhat demanding, it is reasonable for the nature of the 5-units-class. I fall in love with genetics after I take the class and I am sure you will too. LS4 could be challenging but it is fun, like solving puzzles!!!

People give Pham a hard time but I don't think he deserves it. Yes, he has an accent but it's not super thick. He is really friendly and can make some good jokes once in a while.

LS4 with Pham is one of the easiest LS classes you can take. The workload isn't light but it's easy to do well in this class if you try. A quiz before every lecture and one during discussion feels like a huge chore but it does help your grade a ton because the quizzes are easy. The textbook is not really necessary because the homework that comes from it is not for a grade but the discussion quiz questions come straight from the homework/book.

The midterms are really easy because Pham gives you all of his old tests. Just do those and you will be very well prepared for the midterms. If you can score 90 or above on every midterm you are golden. The final is difficult compared to how easy the midterms were. Just study a lot for the final and you will be fine.

Enjoy the class while it lasts. I hated/sucked at genetics in high school but I did really well in this class and liked this class the most out of all of the LS lower divs.

Dr. Pham is an amazing professor. The class layout is a little different since it a "flipped classroom". This means that before lectures, you are to watch videos (about an hour long for each lecture) that teaches you the material, and then in class Dr Pham will go over key points and do practice problems. I happen to like this since it gave me more time to try my hand at the practice problems and see the correct way of thinking about them. Dr. Pham also gives all his past exams on the class website. If you spend the time to do them all (which you will need a lot of time to do them), I feel it basically guarantees good grades. I don't understand why people don't do them when it is offered. An A is very doable in this class but you HAVE to put in the time to practice. Highly recommend Dr Pham, he is amazing

I took this class in Spring 2017-- It was definitely very manageable. I wasn't and still am not very interested in genetics, but the structure of the class made it an easy A. It was taught in a flipped classroom style, which meant that every week we would have to watch two 90-minute videos (looked like they were from Bruincast in the early 2000s) and take a 10-question quiz on ccle after each video, which was very time consuming. The quizzes aren't worth very much-- Pham drops the lowest five scores.
There are also quizzes during discussion each week, that test material taught during the previous week. The quiz question is pulled directly from the assigned homework questions, and is graded all or nothing (really not a big deal, as long as you do the problems or look at the solutions before hand). Pham also drops the lowest or 2 lowest discussion quiz scores.
The midterms and final were very very doable-- Pham uploads a BUNCH of his old exams onto ccle. The most effective way I studied for the exams was just by doing all of his old tests-- the same type of questions appear on his actual exams pretty much word for word.

tl;dr: very doable class, long videos, drops lowest quiz grades, do the practice exams.

Dr. Pham is a pretty good teacher and this class was more than fair. Do some of his practice tests and you're set for the tests. The discussion quizzes were easy. They do depend on your TA, but mine were very easy and most people's sounded easy as well. The videos you have to watch can be long, but if you keep up with them and go to class you'll learn everything you need to. That being said, this class isn't easy, but if you put in the work (and the amount of work you need to put in isn't really that much compared to other science classes), you'll be fine. In my opinion, this is the best LS out of 1-4.

hitting the key points of this class...
WORKLOAD: pretty light. the class is reverse lecture style (learn the material at home, take quiz on CCLE, and do practice problems in class). this is my first time encountering this style of learning, and i was a huge fan. problem solving is really the only skill you need to get a good grade in this class, so tackling problems during lecture was extremely helpful.

LECTURES: attending lecture is necessary not only to get your clicker points (although he drops five lowest scores) but also to learn his problem solving methods to do well on his exams! honestly, most of the leg work is done in class, and the rest is done by doing practice exams before midterm and the final. go to class- you'll thank yourself.

HOMEWORK: as mentioned, there's an online quiz based on the online lectures that's due before every class meeting. super easy and simple as long as you watch the lecture (definitely recommend adjusting the speed to 1.5x). the professor who teaches the online lectures is also great! pham also assigns homework problems and reading from the textbook. personally, i read the textbook to supplement my learning, but most of my classmates did not read it and still did well in the class. so, is it necessary? not at all. however, it is necessary that you at least attempt to do the homework problems. note that these problem sets are neither submitted nor graded BUT these are what the discussion quizzes are based on, which i will go into in the next topic...

DISCUSSIONS: as mentioned, there are discussion quizzes based on the textbook problems that pham assigns. these quizzes are all or nothing, and the difficulty of the problem(s) depend on your TA. i sorta found these quizzes to be annoying because some of the problems that we were assigned didn't exactly correlate to what we were learning in class... nonetheless, you should take the time to attempt these textbook problems, and DEFINITELY go through the solutions for each answer. another note: he drops your two lowest quiz scores, and weeks 1 and 10 are basically freebies since they're diagnostic exams.

EXAMS: if i could give a single piece of advice for this class, it's to do the practice exams. honestly, pham does an amazing job of providing all the resources to succeed in this class because he has plenty of office hours AND he has soooo many past exams available on CCLE. it's sorta ridiculous. he does not deviate much from previous exams, so you already know the types of problems to expect.

FINAL THOUGHTS: not much is required of you to get a good grade in LS 4. all the resources are available to you, and it's really just a matter of doing practice exams, staying on top of online quizzes, and showing up to class. i had such a good experience taking LS 4 with Pham, and highly recommend him to anyone who is taking this class.

I loved LS4. I never thought much of genetics, but after this class I have a better appreciation of it. Pham is a really sweet professor and I really enjoyed having him. Lectures were engaging, and although he did have an accent, he wasn't too difficult to understand.

For me, there was definitely a learning curve I had to get over for this class. A week before the first midterm, I panicked and cried because I didn't understand anything at all and thought I was going to bomb the test. By the time the second midterm rolled around, I did three of his practice tests the day before and managed a perfect. It's a little tough at first, but once you learn how to think with a "genetics mindset" you'll find that Pham's class is actually quite easy.

Pham really wants to help you do well. He encourages you to ask questions and is very, very transparent about his exams. He posts a TON of past exams and as long as you do and understand them (I suggest that you focus on the more recent ones) you should be fine. The second midterm is the easiest if you stay caught up. The final is probably just a tad more difficult than the first midterm. I'm not sure if he curves because his averages seem pretty high.

Flipped classroom format is helpful, albeit a bit tedious. You get quizzed on the videos but he lets you drop a lot. Discussion quizzes are meant to be easy points, and so are clickers. Pham also assigns textbook questions that aren't graded, and I mean you can do those if you want... but I didn't touch them even once throughout the entire quarter. My main study tool was the practice exams.

Overall LS4 with Pham was a great class. Didn't stress me out too much. Enjoyable. Loved it.

Hello anxious pre-meds/health students, I'm here to give a very honest and straightforward review of this class, the professor, and how to succeed.
Class: This class is not very conceptual. There are conceptual things that you should know but majority of this class tests your aptitude in math, probability, and applying simple genetic concepts (i.e probabilities of passing certain genes/diseases on a pedigree) into a mathematical equation to find the answer. With that said, I would highly recommend actually understanding why you use certain numbers and equations rather than just memorizing "how to do them" because then you will be able to apply it broadly to any exam question. As for lectures...I never took notes because 1) he rarely (basically never) tests you on vocab or concepts/facts 2) I couldn't understand his accent.
Professor: He's a cute guy and very nice. He likes phrases like "very good" "thank you for asking that question". His accent though. It takes a while to get used to it but it's not unbearable.
Discussion: So this class has quizzes based off textbook problems. Your best bet is to do those problems because the quiz will typically be verbatim from your textbook so you should always get a 100. If you're lazy like me, you can gamble and eliminate long problems because no TA is going to want to grade 20 quizzes of a question that was extremely long/difficult and tedious. TAs are just as lazy so it'a win-win for both
Exams: Okay so a lot of these reviews say "do all the exams!!!". No. you really only need to do about ~3 years worth of exams. For example, I took this class in 2017 therefore I did all the exams that were labeled with 2017,2016,2015...maybe some 2014 just for extra practice. This was suffice to get solid As on all the midterm/final exams as the questions were literally exactly the same just different wording/numbers. His exams are very fair and he literally gives you practice exams and answers. Just do the work, figure out how he gets the answers, and you're solid. It's extremely straightforward, no trick questions. Word of warning: His exams are "easy" but also unforgiving. Make a few careless mistakes here and there and you'll see your grade tank off stupid mistakes. Triple check your work please! I've seen many of my friends who said the exam was easy only to find they made a handful of careless mistakes which tanked their grade from a potential 95/100 to 80/100

I would say stray away from just memorizing patterns and how to answer his questions as you're severely limiting your knowledge in genetics as well as the understanding of why you are doing certain things to get to the correct answer. With that said, don't make this class harder than it is. All the material is right there, work smart, focus on the practice exams not the lecture slides or every word he says. There are many classes where you can pack in tons of hours and still do bad. This class is not one of those. If you work hard and practice, there's no reason to fail. Good luck bruins

Pham was such a cute, straightforward, honest professor. He made learning genetics really fun, and I didn't lose my attention as much during his lectures. This class was more like a stats/probability math class than a Life Science course (i.e. LS1/2/3). I would say memorization helps, but you need to know how to apply the "formulas" to the different genetic math problems. In short, just consider this class to be another math class than another biology class.

Compared to the other LS classes, this class was definitely easier and thus more enjoyable for me. Pham assigns you problems from each chapter, and I would say that they are worth solving because 1) it gives you more practice for the exams and 2) the TAs use these problems for the discussions section quizzes (literally word-to-word from the text).

The best source for this class is the past midterms, which Professor Pham provides himself on CCLE. Solve those problems, know what you don't know, and attend office hours a few days before the exams because other students are probably having trouble with the same exam questions as you and will ask them during his office hours. Understand the questions you got wrong on the practice tests and review some more, and you will be fine for his midterms and final.

Pham is such a sweet, approachable professor. I would definitely recommend this class for anyone who is taking LS4.

This man cares alot. For the first midterm I thought he was really clear since it was all math. The second midterm I could not for the love of my life understand him during lecture. For the final he was a bit more clear. Basically, most of my learning were straight from his past exams he loaded up on ccle. He loads up about 20 or so of his tests but you really only need to do about the past 7 because those are the ones that are most similar to the test he will give. If there is a certain concept you realize you don't understand as well as you go through his midterms, then go through every test and look for that specific question until you find a pattern. That reminds me, before I took this class someone told me you can kind of bs your way through it. And that is true, you can definitely do that easily by finding patterns and not really needing to necessarily know the details of the concepts as well as say LS 2 or 3. There isn't nearly as much memorization in his class compared to the other LS classes. The in lab discussion quizzes were easy just go through all his problems he assign and the TAs PROBABLY will take a question verbatim from it. The pre lab quizzes weren't too bad just take it with a friend because everyone has the exact same 4 questions. So what I did to study for the midterm was his past midterms->understand HIS clicker questions from his lectures because he pull some of them verbatim or nearly verbatim on his tests->skim the rest of HIS slides->go through the pre lecture clickers and pre lecture quizzes (they weren't the most helpful but they help to solidify some concepts so it's better than nothing)->go through the past midterms again. It's not really necessary to study the rest of his pre lecture slides for his tests but it doesn't hurt to go through it once or twice. In fact, I didn't even bother watching the videos. But it doesn't hurt to watch them. For the final, everyone gets so terrified that he only uploads the past 2 finals but honestly if you study with other people and understand EVERY single question on those two finals and his 3 practice set of questions his final is arguably more or less difficult as his midterms.