LS7B was an interesting course, but I have to say, I truly had an extremely bad and difficult experience not with the course itself, but the structure. The structure is not the best. The organization of what we needed to learn was not the most clear, and I truly have to say that if not for my peers helping me organize study guides and sessions to apply our learning, I would not have done as well in this class as I would have liked. It was HARD. Then again, one main issue I have with a lot of these stem courses is the failure of these professors to realize that this is not the ONLY course students are taking. When they are assigning assignments and homework, they fail to take into consideration that some students have jobs, families, and OTHER extremely difficult courses that we have to worry about. Not all students can sit there for hours reading 30 pages of readings, doing PAGES of assignments and expect them to somehow magically memorize it all in time for the exams. There HAS to be a better way of structuring these courses in a way that makes students continue to be passionate about the subject and not overwhelmed.

It is so unfortunate to hear how these classes are "weeders" in that they make it intentionally so difficult to discourage people from going into stem related careers. There has to be a better way of going about this. Limit the assignments, assign MORE THAN ONE TA per discussion course/problem solving session. Hire more help!! I can even begin to explain how frustrating it was having to forcibly fit a limited number of resource sections into my already PACKED schedule only for them not to be as helpful as I would have appreciated. Then it feels like I wasted my time, then I stop going, and the loop continues. If you did not have ANY experience in AP Biology, 7A and 7B are courses that are nearly impossible for you to get an A in. It is possible, but I'm telling you, you need to sacrifice a lot of your time or seek other means. There has to be a better way.

I did really appreciate the discussion sections. They were helpful for a small portion of the exam. I remember when the LA gave us an acronym for helping to remember the mechanisms/rules of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and how much that really helped for the exam. Though 7B was hard in terms of the immense amount of work we needed to do, the discussion was fundamental to really understanding some topics in detail. If the workload for some of the assignments (especially the ones with ten pages) could have been modified down, then the discussion really wouldn't be that overwhelming. Also, the fact that discussions and lectures were mandatory, had DEVASTATING consequences for me winter quarter. Winter Quarter already is so very overwhelming because you might be dealing with sickness, or even mental health issues from the horrible weather and just life in general, so mandatory attendance sucked. If there's anything I could say, it would be to please consider making attendance optional and allowing for people to manage their time better and independently. We are college students, we are capable of doing so. Not every single lecture and discussion section was helpful for preparing for exams and conceptual understanding. Sometimes I wish I could skip a discussion or lecture to catch up on the CRAZY AMOUNT OF READINGS! Had I been given that option, I probably would have been less stressed.

Overall, if you are a stem kid, you don't have a choice and must take this class. My most beneficial advice would be to buddy up and find a solid, non-toxic study group. These groups you form will carry you throughout the entirety of the ridiculous series.

Poor Pham. He is so sweet and tries to help everyone so much, but people kinda just disregard him and talk over him during lectures because his accent makes it a bit hard to concentrate/follow. If you take this class please don't talk over him. That aside, this class is just another one of the LS 7 hellhole series. What else is there to say. The material is literally middle school level stuff, and the only reason I got an A- is because I didn't study for the final and bombed it. The only way to study really is to look at past tests because nothing they give in class is useful

7B is just a really boring class. Pham tries a lot to make this class engaging or trying his best to explain all the clicker question. But every class just feels like a load of clicker questions and no real lecturing. My TA also tries her best to engage us and explains the concept to us. It's just the structure of the 7 series that make this class boring to go to.

I was really unmotivated during winter quarter, so my experience in this class reflects that. The only reason that I showed up to lectures was because of the iClicker points. Otherwise, I definitely would not have gone. However, Dr. Pham is incredibly nice and encouraging and you can really tell that he cares about student learning. He does have an accent which some people might find hard to understand (I understood him perfectly fine though), but it does help to sit closer to the front if that’s the case for you. The assignments (Achieve, PEQs, lab worksheets) were really easy and basically free points as long as you did them. The first midterm was the easiest for me and tested the content that was the most interesting (genetics, Punnett squares, pedigrees). You could do pretty well with a very basic understanding of the topics and a good sense of logic. The second midterm was a bit more difficult in my opinion since you actually had to know the definitions to answer the questions which were mostly T/F. The final was roughly the same difficulty as the second midterm. There were a couple extra credit points throughout the quarter. You can definitely get an A in this class with minimal effort, but the content is pretty boring so it is a bit of a struggle to stay engaged.

Pham is great. I don't have much else to say because I found the actual class content to be boring but easy to understand. The labs were kind of annoying but otherwise this class was pretty good overall. I think Pham is one of the nicest and most knowledgeable professors I've ever had. He definitely cares about student learning.

Professor Pham is an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful professor. For both LS 7A and LS 7B, he made sure that all student questions were answered and offered various opportunities after class including office hours for students to ask questions and discuss the content. He knows the content extremely well, and is overall just a very nice and funny guy. 10/10 recommend Professor Pham for any class in the LS7 series.
As for the LS 7B class itself, it was quite similar in structure to LS 7A. Two midterms and one final. A lot of pre-class activities, labs, practice exam questions, and other easy assignments that were grade boosters and made it very easy to get an A in this class. There was also a few extra credit opportunities offered throughout the quarter. The class was overall quite easy to get an A in, although each midterm did have a few questions that were worded extremely trickily/difficult to understand. There's nothing to stress about in the end because of all the other free points on the table, though.
LS 7B covers genetics, evolution, and ecology. Personally, ecology and evolution are not the most interesting of topics within biology, so some of the topics covered in this class was definitely not as interesting as LS 7A was. Other than that, LS 7B was a very similar experience to LS 7A with Pham.
For those who are required to take the LS 7 series for their major, Pham is definitely the way to go!

Dr. Pham gives dad-vibes, not sure how else to explain it LOL!

Overall, he's a great lecturer, and he is very accomodating in terms of office hours, and he's super approachable with questions and happy to help. My TA Nikhil was the best too so that made discussions pretty engaging.

Overall, the discussion worksheets were kind of useless in terms of studying, and RGs were optional, but it's structured very similar to 7A and it was also a lot easier than 7A. (For context, I missed one question on the first midterm and got a 100 in the second.) Content can be a little boring because the second half of the course is just ecology etc.

Writing reviews for the 7 series is difficult because the professors are often great, while the class itself kind of sucks. I think this is really the case here as Dr. Pham was really a fantastic professor, but he could not get me to care about the class even though I really enjoyed his lectures. Dr. Pham is funny, engaging, explains concepts well, and he is one of those teachers that cares about students and feels like he's on our side. I never went to office hours, so I cannot speak for that, but whenever I asked questions in class he did a really good job of explaining the material. Participation really matters and I recommend engaging with him during lecture by asking and answering questions because it helps a lot with facilitating learning. The lectures themselves were clear, interesting, but kind of slow. As a bio major, none of the stuff we covered in this class was new to me, and I know we have to go over it because not everyone took ap bio and apes in high school, but if you have, it can be slow going sometimes. The labs are usually completely irrelevant to what we are covering and altogether not very helpful. They very much have the "busy work" vibe. If you ask people who took the series, they say that 7b is the easiest. I disagree. I think 7a is actually easier, but the transition to college makes it more difficult. The exam questions are still very strange and the amount of effort you put in studying does not reflect in your score. It's definitely doable to have an A, but this class is very frustrating on the exam front. I highly recommend getting your hands on a previous year's exam because that's really the only way to fully prepare yourself for the strange and vague questions.

TL;DR: If you don't have to take this class, don't (unless you really love genetics but even then). If you do have to take this class, Dr. Pham is fantastic, and I highly recommend him as an instructor.

Took for my major and so far this has been the easiest of the 7 series, I wasn't all that interested in the topics but with studying the iclicker questions and slides I was able to do pretty well overall. Expected to get an A- but somehow they gave me an A (better for me!). The main problem with this class is that they would change the answers to tests after the scores have been given, so if you thought you got an A- on the exam, like me, and then after two days they regrade it so you get a B+, which is frustrating to say the least. I would definitely recommend they improve on making sure all answers are accurate BEFORE telling students what they got. Still, if you have to take it, don't stress, you'll do fine.

I absolutely loved this class and Dr. Pham. The class was flipped (watched lectures at home and did problems in class) which was perfect for this type of class. The subject material was sometimes challenging but Dr. Pham explained it so well and it was nice having the video lectures to reference too. The class was great and really, really interesting. I would definitely recommend taking it!