Professor Waldinger is very passionate about immigration - I have learned after taking two courses with him! However, he is very reasonable and caring when it comes to his students. The workload was not too heavy nor too light, but extremely manageable. He also offered a decent amount extra credit to make up for any points lost. Clicker was required for this course

The TA is what will get you through this class. The memos are not very hard they are just frequent. The midterm and final are just tedious and take a while but they are very doable. He is a very bland lecturer and just talks but you have to go to get the iclicker question points which doesn't have to be right.

I really disliked this class, but that's because I have no interest in the immigration side of sociology. Dr. Waldinger really knows his stuff and is incredibly smart. However, as a lecturer, he was not very engaging. He tried to be, but the lectures were a full 1hr and 50 min (he let us out early 1 or 2 times), and jampacked with dense info. I just came for the clicker questions honestly. I never did the readings (except when I was working on the take-home midterm and final and the memos) and I never ever paid attention in class. I know that's terrible, but I still got an A+. The important thing is to know how to apply the readings for the memos and exams. It's not a hard class per se, there's just a lot of work. 6 memos (but one is extra credit. I suggest doing it anyway), 1 take home midterm, 1 take home final, 10 UNHCR articles which are 2-3 sentence reactions per article (easy), a library assignment (no writing involved), and a citizenship essay (4 pages, easy, just talk about your family's immigration process to the US). Overall, it's not hard to do well in this class

Not finished with the final yet but am on track to get an A. The class is mostly just a lot of busy work with a take home midterm and final. Don't get too behind on the readings, turn in all of your assignments, and show up to lecture and you should be fine. The reading questions he posts are really helpful so look at those while doing the readings. Lectures can get boring but he mixes it up with videos and iclicker questions. It seems intimidating at first, and we cover a lot of material, but its not too bad of a class.

Professor Waldinger rarely ever had my attention during lectures. It may be because I was not really interested in the topic to begin with, but I've taken other classes that I was not interested in yet always gave the professor my undivided attention. I found myself dosing off after only 30 minutes even though I sat in the front. I think that it was because all the walking he does was distracting. He takes attendance through i-clicker questions. He will usually have 2 or 3 throughout the hour and 15 minutes of the lecture. (he never took up the full hour and 50 minutes). At the beginning of the quarter, he would ask us to discuss our answers with our neighbors and then he would randomly pick on someone to share their answer. However, that stopped by like week 4 or 5. This class has a BUNCH of readings. They were boring in my opinion. Because of that, I hardly did the readings. To make up for that, I always attended lecture and my discussion section where I got a good explanation / recap of the readings. My TA was Pei. He knows what he's talking about but wont give you the answer straight up. So you'll have to guess it right before he tells you. Back to Waldinger, we had bi-weekly short responses 300-500 words which were graded on a check minus, check, check plus basis. A midterm (3: 300-500word short response, 1 essay: 3-5 pages) and a final (2: 1.5-2 page short response and 1 essay: 4-5 pages), a library assignment where you take a selfie with a book and attach it to the first page of a scholarly article (to show him you know how to find books and articles lol), a naturalization report in which you interview someone who has attempted or succeeded in becoming a citizen 3-4 pages, and last but not least, weekly 3 sentence responses to short articles. These were actually interesting. So yes, it's a lot of work but it's not difficult or impossible. Only time-consuming. As long as you attend discussion, you'll know what to write for your papers.

Waldinger is very knowledgable in the material that he teaches. He is very organized and provides the powerpoint notes he brings to class. However, I think i did well in this class by taking notes on what he says and not just relying on what is his guideline on the powerpoint. Taking notes is important becuase he discusses the reading material that really help you when taking the midterm and final. The exams are made up of short answer and one essay. But the short answer is like 600 words each (2 of those) and one essay of 1200 words. the midterm was similar however you had 3 short answers with lesser words and an essay that was a little shorter. The exams were not difficult, they were take home exams and he gave you one week to prepare for the midterm and two weeks to prepare for the final. My TA sara morando was real sweet and very available for help, she also helped us understand the reading materials in discussion however we often ran out of time too quickly. I would recommend this class for sure. Also, during discussion, there were weekly assignments called Memos, that basically were about a page long, answering a certain question about one of the readings. It wasnt too bad, plus the teacher would discuss it during the previous week, you could use those notes and answer the memo question that was due the following week. so you basically got it answered for you in class by the time you had to turn it in.

The fact that so many people ranked this man as difficult tells you why our future is bleak (or at least that Sociology majors are really stupid).

I went to every class. I did every reading. I went to every discussion. I did every homework assignment, even though I almost always started them the night before they were due and finished them the next morning.

I haven't even got my grade yet, we just turned in our (take home) final today. But I had 63 out of the possible 62 points. For just doing what I am supposed to do as a student with the privilege to attend a university (could have been a bit more on top of my homework game, but oh well).

Everything is so incredibly well presented and straightforward in this class, it's really refreshing. This is the only sociology class at UCLA I can say I learned a lot of paradigm-shifting material (at least for myself).

Great class if you aren't a slacker who drinks 5 days a week then complains because you have a weekly 300-500 word essay.

PS: If you take those weekly essays seriously, not only will you get free points, but you will prepare very well for the take home midterm and final, which are basically just extending your answers from the weekly essays.

Did on the review before mine. It sums it up really well. The class really isn't that difficult. Waldinger is an engaging lecturer and he's VERY intelligent, but the class is structured as such where he only lectures and students don't really get to talk. But it's not a bad class. It's relatively easy. Grade is based mainly on weekly memos, take-home midterm and take-home final, and questions are pretty straight forward.

Pros:
His lectures were really organized,
he puts his lecture slides on the course webpage,
his lectures go over all the readings so its not absolutely necessary to do them (even though he warns you that it will be "deadly" not to do the reading...he actually used that word on the syllabus lol),
the readings are not that dense or time-consuming,
the little assignments due at section are graded easy so they help bump up your grade,
his midterm and final paper topics ask almost the same question as the little assignments, so the papers are basically just your copied and pasted memos, but with a little bit of tweaking of course.

Cons:
you have a mandatory memo due every week at section based on the reading,
he is a bit monotone,
he doesn't let students engage/ask questions in class (it's just basically him talking for 1hr and 30mins),
don't be fooled by the 5 point extra credit assignment. its NOT going to actually help you in the end,because they give an A+ to anyone who gets 100-105% in the class, which throws the grading scale a little off.

Overall:
I would recommend it. The subject was actually interesting and the class is do-able for majors and non-majors!

Don't listen to those comments, you guys.
Waldinger is not that hard!!! I am not a Soc major but I got an A at the end.
I am telling you, I didn't even read all of the materials but I still could get an A.
Just come to the lectures (he takes attendance) and do the homework, then you will be fine
He will post the lectures notes at his course website so you don't have to pay attention at class, isn't that great?
His classes are boring but getting an A is not really hard, so why don't you take him?