Pham is really sweet and caring but his exams are hard and relate very little to lectures. Don't waste time practicing the clicker questions, just figure out how to do his past exams because he essentially just repeats them every time. Also your discussion quizzes will not necessarily be from the book like he promises, every TA does it differently. Recommend getting Chegg study for solutions to problems in this class.

Selling the Textbook and solutions manual for $60. Text me if interested 831-915-2932

Sellinf PDF of From Genes to Genomes pdf (4th edition) AND the Solutions manual. Also selling past midterms in pdf form (I have about 20). Email me at pandabruin54@gmail.com.

He cares about you learning, but there is a disconnect between the lectures and the actual midterm. All you need to do to get an A in this class is practice the problems from the past midterms and finals that he makes available to everyone in the class. It was a very interesting class and made me very interesting in the field of genetics.

Because LS4 is phasing out, I'll use this review to talk more about Professor Pham than the class. As you probably read in other reviews, he does have a thick accent, but you can still understand what he is saying. It's a challenge but it's not impossible. If you really have trouble though, remember that TAs are there to help you as well. Overall, he tries really hard to help students and cares about his students succeeding. This past quarter, I've been to his office hours where he solves problems specifically requested by students until they understand the content. However, when it gets closer to exam time and he is running out of time to deliver all of the material, he can get a little frantic and jump around all over the place instead of fixating on a single topic. This can be frustrating especially when you need clear guidance, but again, turn to your other resources: TAs, friends, notes, etc.

LS 4 is phasing out, but from the description of LS 107, they should be very, very similar. Here's some of my background and a guide to doing well, as someone who got an A+.

Preface: not really having had a bio background before starting the LS 1-4 series, I have to say that LS 2 and 3 were difficult for me, unlike most students here. Breezed through LS 1, did decently in LS 2, got pretty wrecked by LS 3 (mainly because of how questions were asked).

I got to LS 4 and I FINALLY felt super comfortable -- and anyone should be able to do well by remaining calm and thinking things through. This class is so, so methodical, with a lot of simple statistics / probability and basic math. There are definitely nuances, but do not let them get to you!

Pham posts old exams and makes his new ones very similar to his old ones. But you can't go completely off rote memorization of answers to certain types of problems - unless you can also back it up with memorizing the set-up/wording of the question. That is actually about half of what I did, though I also ended up connecting it back to my theoretical knowledge. I'll definitely say that's probably the quickest way to learn IF you're someone who can learn by looking at answers, understanding what happened, and working backwards.

Even if you aren't, I suggest doing this to guide your studying, because with how many old exams he has, you won't be losing out too much by giving up the experience of working through a couple problems. I imagine how he teaches LS 107 shouldn't change too much. So once again, pay careful attention to wording, connect that back to theoretical concepts, and then view answers. If his answer keys are too vague which admittedly they often are, go directly to where he problem-solves in class and listen to his explanation.

When test days start rolling around, be able to balance between going straight through a full exam, and then narrowing your focus to very specific types of problems. If you're shaky on certain things, you do not want to keep just "hoping" you'll get better at it based off the experience of just one practice exam, or hoping you get one specific version of a problem because that's not true mastery.

This is what I mean by going through different exams and reading the different set-ups of the same basic problem and how they lead to different answers. You'll learn a lot and be able to build up a lot of speed/efficiency by practicing the same type of problem. It helps with the psychological aspect of test-taking as well, realizing that focusing on one thing at a time will very concretely produce results. Again, you'll need to balance between breadth and depth to maximize efficiency; unless you start super early in terms of studying you should NOT just do one or the other.

As for me, I only ever started reviewing/studying 2-4 days before the exam because I always had physics and chem exams during the same day/week. But hey, here was my grade breakdown:

Clicker attendance: 30/30
Online quizzes (drop 4 out of 16): 30/30
Discussion quizzes (drop 2 out of 10): 40/40
Midterm 1: 99/100
Midterm 2: 100/100
Final: 187/200 (93.5%)
Total: 486/500 (97.2%) = A+

It's genuinely not that hard to become an expert at each type of problem, especially if you work with friends who are often better at one type of thing or another. I was good at only 60-80% of the exam content for midterm 1, 2, and post midterm 2 material, but was able to become competent at basically everything by sharing/exchanging knowledge among friends.

The tools are essentially all there for you in this class! There are definitely some rare caveats that will take some sleuthing to figure out sometimes, unfortunately, but that's what TAs and LAs are for. One example that I can think of is choosing the most number of exconjugant in circle problems; there are special cases for these.

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Selling Genetics: From Genes to Genomes (5th ed) in PDF for $20. Text me at 626-598-2598 if interested :)

So I took this class with 14 other units, this is LS 107 BTW. I didn't put much effort into studying so I got a C. But basically its a flip classroom, where you watch videos at home and do online quizzes and you go into lecture and do clicker questions. His exams are based on old exams which he provides you with. They are the same exact questions as old exams so just study old exams and you will get an A.

This professor definitely tries to help students, but he's just a bad professor. In the class portion, he takes forever to go over a single problem, and when people ask him legitimate questions he doesn't quite answer them. The tests are not really like anything in class, either. In the end, what you learn from this class is how to understand his questions and memorize his tricks, and you just have to compromise and be okay with not understanding the actual genetics behind it. This class was just one giant frustrating experience. If you just do his previous practice tests and study clicker Q's if he emphasizes a new concept (for us it was cloning and cancer, wasn't on any of the previous tests), you'll be fine.