Professor O'neill is scatterbrained. He is very understanding and knowledgable of the material but he is simply all over the place. His midterm and final were both entirely multiple choice, and personally that is not my strong point. overall 80 percent of the class got As or Bs.

I took this course fall quarter 2009 and was one of my first classes since transferring to UCLA. What a bad first impression I had of UCLA. Like people have said this class was extraordinarily disorganized and there were far too many people. However, based on what I've seen from the fall 2010 schedule the class is much smaller which would make this class much more enjoyable.

I got an A- in this course, and to be frank I have no idea how managed that. I straight failed the midterm, like below 50% because I didnt study or go to lecture because its crowded, disorganized structure and class made me say hell no. After that massive bomb I attended lecture every time and actually realized that the information was interesting. The final was very easy and was probably the reason I got an A. He even said that if you straight up failed the midterm you shouldn't worry because things would probably balance out after the curve and they did.

I skimmed the readings, as many of them were very boring and did well on most of the quizzes which are very much like taking a shot in the dark as sometimes the questions are very broad and other times very detailed. O'Neill is a nice, funny, mad scientist looking guy but at least from what I've seen a very unorganized man. I got my A- and then tooted and booted this class.

O'Neill's Arms Control course is the most DISORGANIZED class I've taken. He reminds me of a scatterbrained-genius. For the majority of the quarter, I was unsure how I was doing in the class (he simply said "40% of the class was going to get As" - reassuring, but doesn't tell me jack). There are reading quizzes (it's not too bad; he lets you retake them if you do poorly on the first try), a midterm, a final, and some papers (pretty much grade-buffers). Just do the readings and glance over the powerpoints/lectures and you'll be fine. I honestly learned more from the readings (he does pick out really good articles) than I did from the lectures. Easy A though.

I really enjoyed this class. I think the makeup of the class is 15& midterm, 30% final, 30% reading quizzes and 25% writing assignments.

The class is definitely disorganized, but I feel like it was in a good way. O'neill wants everything to be fair, so we'd spend like a third of each class going over the reading quizzes and debating the fairness of the questions. We never knew our concrete grades, but again, I feel like this was a positive. O'neill gives people percentile grade distributions (ie: If you got a 54 on this exam, you're in the top 20% of the class). This is because he grades on a huge curve (which is just a regular bell curve distribution, except he wants to make 40% of the class have a's or a-'s). So long as you're in the top 20%, you should get an A.

Getting in the top 20% wasn't too difficult. All of the exams were fair (reading the online lecture notes were helpful for the final exam).

In regards for the actual content, I got a lot out of the readings. They were interesting, and if they were too long, you could just skim and be fine. The lectures were scattered and I didn't feel like I learned much (my notes were a mess), but when the final came around, I realized why they were important.

Overall, I took a lot from this class. O'neill isn't a conventional professor by any means, but the fact that he really cared about us learning made the "disorganization" alright.

This class is a lot harder than you probably think. I liked it; the topics were interesting but I did fairly good on everything (top 20% of the class) but ended up with an A-

This class is a total mess. I am in the fall 2009 course, its composed of 5 reading quizzes, 3 short papers, midterm and a final. The professor is extremely nice but hes attempting a whole new teaching style mimicking Zaller. He is all over the place , his lectures are extremely random. He offers make up quizzes but the quizzes are really specific and they are worth a total of 30% of your grade. No one had a clue where they stand in terms of a grade because he just says he thinks that 40% of the class will roughly get an A or A-. He has multiple distributions for each test because of all the different graders and difficulty. Basically this class is a mess without discussion i highly highly recommend not taking it. Although he is nice it doesn't make up for how unorganized the class is. It's 10th week and we haven't learned much in lecture, its basically the reading.

I am in this class now and I think the person below is completely downplaying how ridiculous this class is. Yes, O'Neill is a cool guy and very smart. However, the quizzes are way too hard for how complex the readings are. Even though he gives a study guide, the questions are always so specific. For the midterm we did not have a study guide or an review session--he answered some questions in class---not the same thing. Also, he is very unclear about where people stand grade-wise and without TA's the material is very difficult. Overall, I think this class is going to end up being way more work than the grade and I will leave with very little actual understanding of nuclear arms control. Moral of the story: Just because O'Neill is cool, doesn't mean you should take his 400 person TA-less class.

I'm in his 125 class right now, which is about nuclear weapons and politics. The course is interesting, but it is all over the place. O'neill is really, really educated and is very nice and really wants his students to do well. The class consists of a midterm, 5 reading quizzes (which are pretty hard to study for, but he gives study guides), 3 short assignments, and a final. Although the class is a little disorganized (because there are 400 people and no TA's), O'neill tries really hard to make it work.