Honestly, take this class with any other professor. My grade ended up okay due to the sole grace of additional assignments; I did terrible on most of the exams compared to my past STEM classes.

I feel like the class content overall isn't that bad, and while the rubrics are frustrating, the worst part was probably Professor Tseng's structure and attitude...

For reference, the first five weeks of our class had discussions and LA workshops where the TAs/LAs WERE LITERALLY NOT ALLOWED TO HELP US. We were pushed into breakout rooms and sat there for at least 30 minutes until LAs came in. Apparently this was part of the professor's structure to encourage collaboration, but none of us knew anything at all. We expressed these concerns repeatedly to the professor early on, but nothing was done until some of the LAs advocated for us after the first midterm.

Homeworks are worth like 30% of your grade. There's one individual assignment (completion based) and three group homeworks based on your discussion breakout rooms. Be prepared for literally everything to be pushed back: we ended up having our final homework due AFTER the final because the professor uploaded them so late. Two of the group homeworks are Pymol based, so be sure to go to office hours for help to work them out if you're not familiar with it after discussion.

For peer review, GO TO TA OFFICE HOURS. They're not allowed to look over your answers, but you can talk about general theory and reasoning behind some of the questions, which helps a lot given NONE of the rubrics are given out.

For discussion worksheets, be warned that they're not actually completion. She expects accuracy to a certain extent. For example, if a graph asks for three labels and you put two, you'll lose points even though you filled the entire worksheet out.

Kudu is pretty bad too: stay on top of how many points you have and I'd also take screenshots of the finished assignments and save them somewhere if you need proof of completion. It glitches a lot and assignments are uploaded irregularly, so make sure to check the night before class just in case.

Finally, the rubrics for both the peer review and the exams is a little indescribable...it really is as bad as everyone says. You'll have a question that asks something very directly, but even if you have the right answer, you could end up getting none of the points if you didn't say something really specific that often is outside of the scope of the question. It's really weird how you can literally write an exam correctly, and still completely fail it. The two midterms have exam wrappers worth three points, which is really nice.

If you end up getting around 100% on every other portion (peer review, Kudu completion, discussion worksheets), you can average around 50% on the exams and get an A- using the grading scheme. There is an additional 3% extra credit added, so it's entirely possible to get an A using this distribution. For extra credit itself, it's a little strange because it's maxed out at 3%, so you almost want less extra credit opportunities since the totality, regardless of how many assignments, is 3%.

Would not recommend at all, if possible please take this class with another professor.

Selling 59 total past Midterm I, Midterm II, and Final exams for 30 dollars. The exams start from Spring 2012 and end at Winter 2016. Some exams have multiple forms. I got an A in this class just by doing all of these exams and Tienson's study questions. Tienson tends to have patterns in the types of questions she asks quarter to quarter. Contact me at ************* if interested.

Tienson is not a bad teacher but at the same time she is not a good one. The class is pretty straight forward but you will need to put a good amount of studying into it on your own. This definitely will not be your favorite class but if you're like me you're taking it because its required. In other news I still have the book for 153A. It's one of those where you have to stick it into a three ring binder. Its still in the plastic and I didn't end up using it because I was using a friend's. If you are interested email me at ************* .

Great Professor. She really cares about her students' success in her class. I would recommend her for chem 153a compare to any other professor. I'm selling the book with the folder for only $65. This book is only for chem 153A, so if you are planning to take the other biochem series, u should get the complete edition. message me if interested: *************

TLDR: Tienson isn't the best but the grading scheme is generous. If you need the material for future classes / applications then I would not take her.

Preface: I have written this review under the pretense of being as realistic as possible and waited until everything was complete before posting. (In other words, I wanted to take the time and separate myself from the emotions of finals, etc. to help future students if Tienson is still teaching.) For me personally, I find professor reviews at times to not be entirely accurate; doubly so in a class like biochemistry where it is mostly pre health students. (Note: I am a pre health student myself and am writing from my experience in undergrad.)

I ended up doing well in this class but I don’t think my understanding of the material was as good as it could’ve been. I also think it was more difficult than it needed to be (relative to other like courses) not because of the material but because of Tienson’s teaching.

Teaching: I found the pre-recorded lectures to be very lackluster and Tienson doesn’t really connect concepts to each other that well. (E.g. she will teach but won’t revisit / reiterate things that well for students to “seep” in the material.) Another reviewer described learning in this class to be something along the lines of “death by shoving problem sets down your throat” and I would agree as I’d be screwed otherwise. Unfortunately her teaching poses to be a massive issue in this case since you’ll likely find things in the problem sets that she hasn’t taught but still expects you to know. For example, some of the data sets for Michaelis Menten would be in different units - which you would think should be converted to like units - but Tienson never taught us that and tons of confusion ensured in the problem sets (all examples in lecture were for the same units). In hindsight, I feel like my understanding of biochemistry is like a lego structure that has a good 40% of the blocks missing because I sort of understand everything but don’t have all of the detail (concept-wise) to say so in confidence.

Learning Materials: The one gripe I have with Tienson is that she doesn’t provide answer keys at all for the study worksheets which IMO would’ve helped A LOT given the subpar lectures. I would’ve understood if it wasn’t released before a certain time in the week (for students to actually watch the lectures) but not at all was a bit of a huge stretch for me. I did not end up doing them and focused mainly on the problem sets since IMO it wasn’t worth my time to do them if I wasn’t able to check my work. The Achieve assignments were a mix of relevant and non-relevant.

Rubrics: The rubrics were definitely a bit questionable at times but it was still possible to do well in-spite of them. Were they as bad as some people stated? In my opinion, I don’t really think it was that bad (although it was definitely pretty ass compared to every other professor I've had in undergrad) as I wouldn’t consider myself to be very precise and still scored a lot of partial credit. With that being said, a lot of how I feel about this topic is in part to the generous grading scheme (i.e. you can still do well if you bomb the exams) and so I would’ve felt differently if that wasn’t the case.

Regrades: The policy of capped regrades is still true and there was a limit of 5 regrade requests total for session C6. I did not think this was much of an issue given the point cushions (e.g. only 100 of 120 points is counted) so I don’t have much comment. With that being said, the TA’s for this quarters class were horrible and would frequently make mistakes to the tune of many people complaining (a first in my undergraduate career) as correct answers would be marked incorrect (e.g. I had multiple answers marked wrong in one HW assignment when they were within the accepted numerical range) but this is a YMMV situation.

Exams: I mean eh? I scored 71.5% and 78% on my exams and did not think they were that bad overall. They were definitely a tad difficult but that is to be expected with a 24 hour window open-book exam. I personally did not think that most of the questions were bad (in fact most were pretty clear), however, there were definitely vague questions at times. How vague? I worked with a biochemistry doctorate (and former biochemistry TA) this summer to study and even he’d be confused at said vague questions when we’d review.

Grading Scale: The homework and other assignments made up 60% of the grade with 40% for the midterm + final exam. The non-exam assignments had buffers and allowed an OK amount of lee-way. With my score of 71.5% on the midterm (and four extra points), I only needed a 75% on the final to scrape by with an A-.

Overall Workload: I think the overall workload for this course was pretty fair or rather, it was to be expected for an upper-division STEM pre health course. Again, my approach mainly focused on lectures and reviewing the problem set answer keys + breezing through the filler so YMMV. (I.e. if you worked smart and noted what was important then I did not think it was an issue; no condescension intended.) I do not think one would have enough time to do the problem sets in full and so that is why I swapped to reviewing the answer keys only.

Would I do this again? I don’t really know since it was an easier A than expected given the reputation of biochemistry but my baseline understanding is the most subpar it's been in any pre health STEM course. (I graduated with a sGPA of ~ 3.8 and I strive to learn the concepts rather than fully memorize so I'd consider myself an OK baseline here.) Namely, I feel that I am missing key details to some concepts to truly understand and feel confident in what I have learned. This class also “burnt me out” after I experienced a second wind from my last in-person class of undergrad in a previous session. (I was a visiting student from Berkeley and started 153A during the finals week of my last summer session there.) That being said, I have no need for this material in the DAT and I would definitely take another professor if you’re a premed and need biochemistry for the MCAT.

What I would recommend:

I noted that some people said to rewatch the lectures and well… in this iteration of the class I wouldn’t recommend it. Namely, I ended up just taking more thorough notes post MT1 and focused more on 1) old grade scope exams (super important to note the rubric and how Tienson wants you to answer in-depth) and 2) the problem sets since the lectures left a lot to desire. However, I am more of a learn by doing type of person so perhaps this approach may not work for everyone.

For the homework, definitely join the GroupMe (if present) to make your life easier and check the homework with a massive group to maximize points. The achieve assignments are pretty much irrelevant filler and ditto with the small quizzes so I wouldn’t give them much thought.

i don't even know where to begin. with an ungodly amount of work for a summer class, bad teaching that never connected any topics together, and insane exams, it's difficult to know where to start! i don't understand why she likes to make her students miserable. i feel like she should take a hint if all these reviews are saying the same thing and there's no improvement. just don't take her is all i have to say.

Professor Tienson Tsneg is the worst professor I have had at UCLA. I am taking her summer course right now and the course is not even done, but I am warning you to drop when you have the chance. First off, she explains concepts horribly and does not mention specific details that are necessary in order to understand the concept itself. Also, her homeworks and exams are awful and she expects you to have telepathy and read her mind as to what she wants you to answer. The questions are worded horribly and do not make any sense. Seriously, most of the time you do not know what she is even asking. Additionally, the grading is awful and unfair in my opinion. She requires very, very specific answers and you have to be exact with what she wants. Even if you answer the question and it is technically correct, you will still get a 0 because it was not worded how she would answer the question. HONESTLY I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN A BRUINWALK REVIEW BUT SHE IS SO BAD THAT I TOOK THE TIME TO DO SO. AVOID AT ALL COSTS

She is the worst professor and lecturer I've ever had at ucla. I've done well in every chem/bio course, and i've always liked chemistry. She has done the impossible and made the subject insufferable. A 3.0 is a generous rating for her. She is the worst of the worst. the day she stops teaching, students will have a better understanding of biochem.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. This professor is so terrible! Her lecture videos make no sense, she assigns an ungodly amount of work, and you will not come out of this class understanding biochemistry. She grades so hard expecting us to know every little detail about what she teaches. She even expects details in our answers that we never even learned?! How are we suppose to know? I have to teach myself biochemistry despite taking this class for the MCAT now. I wish I had taken it with another professor.