BE100 is a rite of passage for bioengineering majors at this school, and that makes sense. The first 2? weeks of this class is like a mildly uncomfortable trainride. "Hmm, this is very bumpy, I'm a little nauseous." Problem set 1 is a fat amalgam of trivia. Can't remember much about pset 2.

If I recall, problem set 3 is when all hell breaks loose. The class is like a carcrash from there. Lots of blurry vision and text. So much text.

Kamei covers a lot of stuff in lecture. Don't be like me and take notes on the printed slides on a blank piece of paper. That's dumb. Print the slides out, and then fill in the blank spots with Prof. Kamei's examples. (Or better yet, if you have the money, buy a tablet, edit the slide pdf's on there..)

Don't do the problem sets the night before. If I could tell my naive, dumb*ss sophomore self something, it would be "READ AND THINK ABOUT THE PROBLEM SETS WHEN THEY ARE RELEASED" That isn't necessarily doing them, but get your subconscious pondering the problems before you dig into them. Start writing your solutions to these psets 3 days before they're due (or even earlier).

The problem sets are the best way to learn, so don't just go through the master folder and copy down the solutions. Think about the insight of the problem, what it means in the context of the class and lectures, and wtf the answer means. Do every single problem. Attempt them all.

Best of luck. I remember, after midterm 1, a mysterious amount of people had disappeared from lecture and I found out they became CS majors.

man writes his own positive reviews. just notice how all the dates are close together in march at times. he's been caught trying to bolster his own image. he even sends his own lab minions to defend him in public settings. it's wild. he can't handle any criticism. if this review gets downvoted, you know exactly the reason why now.
you gotta take him to survive in BE at UCLA. My advice to you is: prepare yourself mentally for the assf*cking of your life. but be tough, and don't let him be the reason you leave BE. take as few classes simultaneously as possible to get through 100 and 110, spend several hours a week on the problem sets (but not too many as to hurt your sanity), survive both classes, and then say goodbye to him forever. you'll get through this. i'm not gonna lie: it will suck. but you will get through this. the other upperdivs in BE can be very fun and engaging and incredible. it's just a shame he's gotta be the gatekeeper.

This class is definintely challenging but people only mention the difficulty in the review, so here are some notes & tips to give you a better idea of the class:

-he posts his slides so if you have an iPad it's super easy to annotate them
-this year he changed the class so there is less of a thermodynamics focus and more of a computer and MATLAB coding focus (Numerical Methods to find pI, Jacobi vs. Gaussian Iteration Methods, Protein Data Bank stuff, etc) which makes the tests less derivation heavy & gives you more freebies on exams.
-Kamei posts a practice midterm ("Additional Problems before the Exam"). There are like 40 questions and if you do all of them & understand the solutions, you'll be able to do well enough on the test. Some of the exam questions are almost exactly the same as these questions.
-Kamei will be explicit with what you need to know vs. what you don't need to know, so take note of the things he makes note of and ignore the stuff he says to ignore. In this way, he gives you hints of what to expect on the test.
-Dr. Kamei will post videos called "Office Hours Problems to help with Problem Set ___" where he goes step by step through challenging problems similar to the ones on your problem set so that you have a guide to solve your problem set problems. The discussion problems are also great resources to help guide you through your PS as these are also very similar to your Problem Sets.

Kamei gives you a lot of resources to succeed in his class and has been changing the format of the class to help his students. So if you take advantage of the resources he is giving you, it becomes a lot easier to succeed.

Dr. Kamei is out of touch with the body of students he is meant to educate, and with his presence in class brings along many insecurities which find way into making this class absolutely treacherous for any student group with particular emphasis on student minority groups.His teaching aside, as awful as it may be, it makes of no sense to me how classes can continually grow worse under his teaching. He has mentioned that classes have done worse in recent years, to put such disappointments on the weight of the students shoulder's, as he infamously does, shows nothing but his lack to connect with and understand students, and that he is out of touch. And, seeing how he has been teaching here in the last 20+ years leads me to believe that he is particularly out of touch with minority students, which leads me to believe that he needs to take on some serious minority students training, or reconsider another role not at the expense of the student-facing population.

In all honesty, He is an enthusiastic lecturer but not necessarily a good one. He mostly just reads off his slides and takes turns using the board as well ( which isn't recorded since he only does audio recordings and doesn't provide written notes on slides either just kinda leaves it blank). You get the best version of him during lectures and meeting him one-on-one you see the worst sides. It's like the more the people around the nicer he is. As long as u worship his class and aren't an inconvenience to him (don't be absent, request for extensions, etc) you will be golden. This is a time-consuming course and can't be taken with other hard classes and he designs the course with a similar expectation. He gave us the answers to problem sets which helped decrease the workload but if you don't struggle through the problem sets you will not score well on the tests (the average for midterms was around 60 and 40's and the final was 50's). He also had a total of 5 projects in discussion that were scattered around, these only counted for 3% of your total grade and anything relevant from it for the test he would mention in class. This is one of those classes you just have to struggle and get through. He is quite similar to Barr but Worse in his demeanor and the course is a lot harder. Again it's more about how much you can commit to it, it's not fair but as long as you stay on top of it and go beyond what he asks of you will be fine. {When I say above and beyond I mean - go over his posted slides before the lecture, be completely attentive during his 2-hour lecture and annotate on a copy of his slides (TAKE notes), ask questions during the lecture even if you think they are really dumb, go to his office hours right after the lecture and listen to other students talk to him or talk to him urself (this could be a chance to go over lecture content/HW and letting pattern recognition do its thing later during tests), go over content after the lecture, divide the HW to do some each day on your own and then check ur answers with his, start studying for exams a minimum of 10 days ahead, do all HW's again until you can understand and solve it completely, do the past tests, go to him and ask for more past papers or variations of questions you can practice (ask a week before so u can keep asking him and maybe get insight into what he might end up putting in the exam), bonus tip- find ways to feed and boost his ego)
GOOD LUCK, YOU GOT THIS AND THIS CLASS DOESN'T DEFINE YOU (at least not how smart you are but how much time and effort ur willing to commit to a class that won't make a difference to your career but still has interesting content to learn about, his tests just make u dread learning it by putting an unnecessary amount of difficulty.)

This review is written from the perspective of a first-quarter transfer student (from a community college).

Logistics: The class had audio recording, 2 midterms, and a final, he uses Powerpoints, HW with the answer key uploaded, and some discussions had mini projects. This quarter our exam averages were extremely low (I assume some of the lowest ever) and for that reason, he mentioned from now on HW will most likely not be graded anymore.

Professor Kamei is an AMAZING professor (probably one of the best I have ever had and I have had lots of amazing professors), he is super caring and helpful during office hours and doesn't make you feel stupid. When he speaks you can FEEL just how experienced and knowledgeable he is. He gives you everything that you need to succeed in his class (tons and tons of practice problems). However, it is very important that you don't just memorize how to do these problems but rather actually understand them. Even though the answer key for everything is given you should try the problems first yourself and really spend time on them. I also recommend to them gradually (do a couple of problems every day and don't leave it all for the last minute). Lastly, I recommend summarizing your notes the same night right after the lecture. Even though the class had audio recordings I recommend to always go in person. Lastly, although he is very useful in office hours, if you don't have any specific questions I recommend not wasting your time on office hours and instead getting a head start on reviewing and doing the HW.

This class was easily the hardest class I had ever taken and I definitely recommend to only take it with 2 other easy classes however, I really enjoyed the challenge. Although the exams were tough they were really fair. It always felt very hard during the exam but after looking at the answer key you realized it was very simple. My biggest mistakes on exams were stupid mistakes (making a mistake while taking the derivative, forgetting negative signs, etc). Therefore it is really important to read the questions carefully and not to forget to answer any questions (because he has long texts with multiple back-to-back questions so make sure to answer them all). It's also important to keep track of time as you probably won't have too much extra time.

Overall this was definitely a hard class but it was never unfair. At the end of the day, I learned ALOT and I feel like I am a better and more effective student because of it. Scared but looking forward to taking BE 110 with Professor Kamie.

This class was one of the most challenging classes I've ever taken. I think what made it the most challenging for me was the other classes I was taking alongside it. My workload this quarter was this class alongside Chem 30A and Math 32B, both very extensive courses.

I can give advice and mistakes I made that I recommend you all don't make, and I think if that advice is followed, you'll definitely have a better time in this course than I did. However, what professors and other reviews fail to account for is that you're human. This course is designed to be one in which you dedicate all your time and attention, which just isn't feasible for most students. Looking back, I beat myself up for " not doing more" than I should have done for this class, but I would have stretched myself far thinner than I was already stretched.

With that said, I'll describe my experience with the class.

The lectures are very long, and I found it hard to be attentive for the whole two hours. The professor also moves through the slides very fast; however, he does leave a lot of room for students to ask questions which is nice. The questions are VERY content-heavy, we cover 10-15 concepts a week. He does cover examples during the lectures as well, but the examples in class are a lot easier than the problem sets. I wished he would spend more time going over harder examples in class.

The tests were difficult, very difficult. They follow the exact format of prior tests (which he provided), in terms of content and wording of questions.

It is very important that you don't fall behind in this course. Review the lectures you covered right after class and begin the problem sets the next day in order to keep the material fresh. I recommend going to office hours starting week 0 (he starts lecturing material then). I had a hard time processing information in class, so I would review the slides alongside the audio recording at 2x speed and make further annotations to help me understand. I just wish I did this RIGHT after the lectures rather than a couple of weeks later.

Our year was also different though because we were provided problem set solutions. The problem sets are very long, WAY too long, in my opinion, so it was nice having the solutions to fall back on. However, that was my downfall. The problem sets were so much more difficult than in class, that I didn't have time to sit there and struggle with the material because I had other classes to deal with. He said he would not be providing solutions for further classes, which I think will help because it will encourage you to go to office hours to complete them. Just be smart with your time.

In terms of grading, he added a bigger curve because of the fact that test scores were lower and he thinks it was because of the solutions going up with the problem sets.

This class is a rite of passage and you can definitely do it, you just got to pass!

Dr Kamei is widely regarded as the best BE professor for a good reason. Genuinely, anyone who says he is mean or unhelpful or anything like that probably didn't go to class and didn't work hard. This class is very much you get what you put in.

Definitely a tough class, but doable if you work hard and really focus on practicing problems and asking questions. Dr. Kamei is a great professor-- personable, funny, and cares about students, and lectures are enjoyable and interesting. Keep looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, and you might find you enjoy getting Hulk-slammed by problem set questions about Italian salad dressing.

Other than 110, probably the most difficult class you will take at UCLA. Coming from someone who is not interested in these topics (100's/110's, especially after taking these classes), getting through and staying motivated was the most challenging things. I would say that a good chunk of the information you learn here will never be applied again after you graduate and move on to industry, should you choose to pursue industry. A lot of the material you learn is mostly applicational with respect to heavy R&D bench work that a lot of bioengineering undergraduates end up not pursuing. Thus, the challenge to stay motivated.

Midterm avgs: ~60-70%'s (definitely offset by some of the pre-med majors so take averages with a grain of salt)

Do the problem sets (with or without the master folder), study the old exams religiously, and learn the patterns of the answers. Start the problem sets early so you don't pull all nighters. At least 1 or 2 problems a day. Highlight and underline variables given, note down any important concepts he mentions in a problem, and highlight the questions he asks in a problem. He can give multiple questions in a single problem.

Kamei as a person is a cool individual. As a professor, he can teach, but the material itself is just so dense and fast-paced that it lowers the value of the course as a whole. Learning can often times become a chore with this class (and 110. 110 is similar format to 100, just a heavier math focus).

For those who find this course unrelated to what they want to pursue in the future, do not let this professor/class steer you away from this major. As long as you pass to be able to take the next course and graduate (2.0 gpa avg for the quarter, and no less than a D- as of this review date), props to you. You made it out and you are going to do great. No one cares about what grades you get in industry or after college. It sucks that 100 and 110 are mandatory, but if you keep your head down and grind, you will be okay.