Professor
Efren Perez
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - To start off, here’s how the class is graded. Your final grade is based on several components: 10% for participation in lecture and section (mainly attendance for section), 10% for your teammates’ evaluation of your collaboration, 10% for participating in the REPS study, 10% for a memo analyzing experimental data on your own, 20% for a brief team research proposal, 20% for the full team proposal and response memo, and 20% for the final draft of a JEPS-style paper. I took this class because all the other lab courses in the psychology department were either full or had questionable reviews. Although this professor didn’t have any reviews, the grade distribution looked promising, which was one of the main reasons I chose it. Looking back, I think this class was a great choice, especially if you're aiming to get an A without overwhelming yourself during a busy quarter. The biggest part of your grade is a group research paper that ends up being around 14 to 15 pages. That sounds intimidating at first, but the work is divided among your group members, so you’re only responsible for your assigned sections. As long as your group is decent and you stay organized, it’s very manageable. My group met regularly and followed a structured schedule so that we didn’t end up rushing anything last minute. Most of the work in this class made the course feel pretty flexible. To be honest, after the first few classes, I stopped going to lecture. There are no exams, and you don’t need to engage with the lecture content to succeed. The professor spends most of the time discussing different studies (some of which he conducted himself) and using them to explain how to do research. While that might be helpful if you want to take a similar approach in your paper, it’s not necessary for completing the assignments. The most technical part of the course happens around week 7 or 8 (I forgot which week it was) because of RStudio. I recommend attending that week’s sessions because they walk you through what you need to know for your data analysis assignment and for the final paper. The coding wasn’t hard or time-consuming (discussion sections run you through RStudio and the coding process so don't sweat it), but it’s helpful to get that explanation in person. Overall, this class is a great option if you want something manageable and less stressful, especially in a quarter where you’ve got other demanding courses. It’s definitely possible to secure an A if you put in the work, start early, and communicate well with your group. Shoutout to Professor Perez, he kept things reasonable and made the course a solid experience.
Spring 2025 - To start off, here’s how the class is graded. Your final grade is based on several components: 10% for participation in lecture and section (mainly attendance for section), 10% for your teammates’ evaluation of your collaboration, 10% for participating in the REPS study, 10% for a memo analyzing experimental data on your own, 20% for a brief team research proposal, 20% for the full team proposal and response memo, and 20% for the final draft of a JEPS-style paper. I took this class because all the other lab courses in the psychology department were either full or had questionable reviews. Although this professor didn’t have any reviews, the grade distribution looked promising, which was one of the main reasons I chose it. Looking back, I think this class was a great choice, especially if you're aiming to get an A without overwhelming yourself during a busy quarter. The biggest part of your grade is a group research paper that ends up being around 14 to 15 pages. That sounds intimidating at first, but the work is divided among your group members, so you’re only responsible for your assigned sections. As long as your group is decent and you stay organized, it’s very manageable. My group met regularly and followed a structured schedule so that we didn’t end up rushing anything last minute. Most of the work in this class made the course feel pretty flexible. To be honest, after the first few classes, I stopped going to lecture. There are no exams, and you don’t need to engage with the lecture content to succeed. The professor spends most of the time discussing different studies (some of which he conducted himself) and using them to explain how to do research. While that might be helpful if you want to take a similar approach in your paper, it’s not necessary for completing the assignments. The most technical part of the course happens around week 7 or 8 (I forgot which week it was) because of RStudio. I recommend attending that week’s sessions because they walk you through what you need to know for your data analysis assignment and for the final paper. The coding wasn’t hard or time-consuming (discussion sections run you through RStudio and the coding process so don't sweat it), but it’s helpful to get that explanation in person. Overall, this class is a great option if you want something manageable and less stressful, especially in a quarter where you’ve got other demanding courses. It’s definitely possible to secure an A if you put in the work, start early, and communicate well with your group. Shoutout to Professor Perez, he kept things reasonable and made the course a solid experience.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - Perez was an alright professor, maybe psychology just isn’t my thing. I got an A, there was two papers and a few quizzes during discussion. If you complete the readings before discussion, the quizzes are very easy. The papers are based on movies he assigns you to watch, in our case it was Wag the Dog and Hotel Rwanda. I didn’t mind watching the movies, they were both good. The TA I had graded generously on the papers. Lectures were pretty boring and the professor explicitly told us to speak to the TA’s first as he had a busy quarter, doing research and his son being in baseball. He had no office hours, although the TA’s were very helpful whenever you had questions. Don’t get me wrong, Perez is a cool guy but don’t count on him being able to get to know you and write a letter. There is lot of extra credit opportunities like participating in studies and getting others to participate. You will get an A in this class if you read, go to class, and do some easy studies for extra credit to strengthen your grade
Spring 2025 - Perez was an alright professor, maybe psychology just isn’t my thing. I got an A, there was two papers and a few quizzes during discussion. If you complete the readings before discussion, the quizzes are very easy. The papers are based on movies he assigns you to watch, in our case it was Wag the Dog and Hotel Rwanda. I didn’t mind watching the movies, they were both good. The TA I had graded generously on the papers. Lectures were pretty boring and the professor explicitly told us to speak to the TA’s first as he had a busy quarter, doing research and his son being in baseball. He had no office hours, although the TA’s were very helpful whenever you had questions. Don’t get me wrong, Perez is a cool guy but don’t count on him being able to get to know you and write a letter. There is lot of extra credit opportunities like participating in studies and getting others to participate. You will get an A in this class if you read, go to class, and do some easy studies for extra credit to strengthen your grade
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - I really enjoyed this course and it was really great first-hand experience on conducting group research. In the first half of the course, you're working with your group to write a research proposal. Once the class votes on which proposal to use for their papers, the professor sends it to the IRB and they find people to take the survey. During the second half of the course, once the survey results come in, the professor and TAs taught everyone how to use R Studio (which can be difficult, but don't worry, the TAs are really helpful and smart!) so we could use that data for our group paper. Applying the data to our paper was really fun and we were able to draw a ton of conclusions from it since there was so much! Like any group project, there's a risk of being put into a bad group and having to do more work than others, but you get to grade your other group members at the end of the course and your feedback is factored into their grades so just make sure the assignments are done well and you'll do fine. Overall, I enjoyed this course and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in research on racial and ethnic politics.
Fall 2019 - I really enjoyed this course and it was really great first-hand experience on conducting group research. In the first half of the course, you're working with your group to write a research proposal. Once the class votes on which proposal to use for their papers, the professor sends it to the IRB and they find people to take the survey. During the second half of the course, once the survey results come in, the professor and TAs taught everyone how to use R Studio (which can be difficult, but don't worry, the TAs are really helpful and smart!) so we could use that data for our group paper. Applying the data to our paper was really fun and we were able to draw a ton of conclusions from it since there was so much! Like any group project, there's a risk of being put into a bad group and having to do more work than others, but you get to grade your other group members at the end of the course and your feedback is factored into their grades so just make sure the assignments are done well and you'll do fine. Overall, I enjoyed this course and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in research on racial and ethnic politics.
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