I loved learning from Professor Adhikari. His lectures were engaging, he was passionate about the topics that were discussed, he was super understanding, and overall an amazing professor. You definitely have to put in time to understand the material to do well in the class but the lecture slides were very clear and his explanations were very helpful. This was my favorite class I have taken at UCLA. Definitely recommend!!!!

He has the best slides that has everything on them. I can't find a second class that has so informative but also readable slides. Most people did pretty well if you look at the distribution of scores on bruin learn. There were easy weekly quizzes and exams. Exams are slightly harder than quizzes, but still not hard.

This class is an easy A if you have the blessing of online lectures. All material on exams is on the slides, and in the readings. CTRL + F the class/transcript of the videos uploaded, and you are golden. Average of both midterm and final were A's.

Midterm = 35 points (50 qs)
Final = 35 points (50 qs)
Weekly Quizzes = 30 points (2 lowest dropped)

If you don't have a decent biology background, this class could be hard. Quiz and exam questions were very straightforward, open note. Avi wears bow ties a lot, so theres that.

Grading: You are graded on weekly quizzes (lowest 2/7 are dropped) 30% of your grade, your midterm 35% and your final 35%. Each quiz is 6 questions so there is not a lot of room to miss questions and you are only given 15 minutes. The quizzes were a hit or miss on difficulty level because sometimes the answer would be on one of the slides and sometimes the answers were specific to what he said in lecture or required more critical thinking that it felt like we did not have enough time for. Everything was open notes & open internet. The thing I disliked the most was you are not allowed to see your quiz results so you have no idea what questions you missed. The midterm (avg: 44.5/50) & final (48.2/50) were much easier.
Attendance: not mandatory for lecture or discussion. Everything was online, including quizzes & exams.
Overall, I highly recommend this class with this professor. Just go to class or watch the lectures online and pay attention. Take clear notes that you can refer back to for quizzes & exams.

Disclaimer: I took this class online
Psych 115 is known for being a very dense and challenging class, regardless of the professor, but I really enjoyed taking this class with professor Adhikari, despite the difficulty of the material. He explained his slides very clearly and I was able to follow along easily. My advice would be to take detailed notes on pretty much everything he says, which can be tedious but pays off in the end! Another disclaimer, I find the topic to be very interesting overall which partially accounts for me being able to follow along during lecture, but I think this is also in part due to his ability to explain everything so well! I also appreciate that he would try to lighten the mode with some corny jokes lol.

I took this class during Summer session C for 6 weeks. The professor is not bad and I had a pretty good TA. The professor was very accommodating, and both he and the TA responded quickly to emails. I am a psychology major who does not like science/biology/chemistry-like classes so naturally, this class was not easy for me. There was SO much material that was covered each week that I felt like I had no time to retain anything. THANKFULLY the tests and quizzes were all open note/book/internet because I probably would have failed if they weren't. I ended up getting a B which I am very happy with because I was fully preparing myself to receive a C in this class (I am a student who usually gets all A's). My biggest advice, if you are planning on taking this course, would be to take verbatim notes from the slides and lectures so you can command+F them while taking the tests. I think it is probably very possible to get an A if you spend a lot of time studying and really trying to grasp the material, but beware because there were like 90ish powerpoint slides per week and this was a 6 week course during Summer. It would probably be much better to take this class during the school year when there is more time to retain information. Take at your own risk!

I never check Bruinwalk before enrolling in classes. Maybe I should, but I'm so glad I didn't when I was enrolling in Psych 115. After taking 115, I made a Bruinwalk account just to rate Prof. Adhikari, and I was shocked to see the scathing reviews. I think that the class was structured very differently when he was teaching with Prof. Izquierdo, because I only had Adhikari and had a very different experience than those who took it with both professors.

Prof. Avi is a very encouraging and kind teacher. Whenever people posted questions on the discussion forum, he answered very thoroughly and never put anyone down. In fact, he praised curiosity. He was also accommodating when necessary. His lectures are dense, but he still managed to make them engaging and structured. The quizzes and exams cover a LOT of extremely involved material, but everything was open notes, which made it much more manageable. Adhikari did not make us use Respondus, and participation didn't factor into the grade at all. Like somebody else said, discussion sections were useless to me personally.

The takeaway: Adhikari is GREAT. If you enjoy psychobiology and pay attention to the lectures, you will do just fine.

Psych 115 is a lot of material to study, but very interesting. I loved how Stan teaches the lecture as he is very fair and knowledgeable about the subjects. If you are interested in the pdf copy of Behavioral Neuroscience 8th edition for cheap, text me at **********.

*This class was asynchronous*
Despite his previous harsh reviews, I thought Adhikari was great. This course requires a lot of memorization, so if you plan on taking this class in-person be prepared to study hard, but I felt that Adhikari is a pretty engaging lecturer. Although the lectures were very dense, I was never really bored and I actually found that material to be quite interesting. However, I will admit that this class would be much harder with in-person exams because there's so much to know. This is probably what frustrated students who took this class pre-covid, but Adhikari was very helpful and understanding the past 6 weeks so hopefully he won't change once things are back to normal. Ultimately, I would definitely recommend that you take Psych 115 with Adhikari!