He cares about you learning, but there is a disconnect between the lectures and the actual midterm. All you need to do to get an A in this class is practice the problems from the past midterms and finals that he makes available to everyone in the class. It was a very interesting class and made me very interesting in the field of genetics.

Because LS4 is phasing out, I'll use this review to talk more about Professor Pham than the class. As you probably read in other reviews, he does have a thick accent, but you can still understand what he is saying. It's a challenge but it's not impossible. If you really have trouble though, remember that TAs are there to help you as well. Overall, he tries really hard to help students and cares about his students succeeding. This past quarter, I've been to his office hours where he solves problems specifically requested by students until they understand the content. However, when it gets closer to exam time and he is running out of time to deliver all of the material, he can get a little frantic and jump around all over the place instead of fixating on a single topic. This can be frustrating especially when you need clear guidance, but again, turn to your other resources: TAs, friends, notes, etc.

LS 4 is phasing out, but from the description of LS 107, they should be very, very similar. Here's some of my background and a guide to doing well, as someone who got an A+.

Preface: not really having had a bio background before starting the LS 1-4 series, I have to say that LS 2 and 3 were difficult for me, unlike most students here. Breezed through LS 1, did decently in LS 2, got pretty wrecked by LS 3 (mainly because of how questions were asked).

I got to LS 4 and I FINALLY felt super comfortable -- and anyone should be able to do well by remaining calm and thinking things through. This class is so, so methodical, with a lot of simple statistics / probability and basic math. There are definitely nuances, but do not let them get to you!

Pham posts old exams and makes his new ones very similar to his old ones. But you can't go completely off rote memorization of answers to certain types of problems - unless you can also back it up with memorizing the set-up/wording of the question. That is actually about half of what I did, though I also ended up connecting it back to my theoretical knowledge. I'll definitely say that's probably the quickest way to learn IF you're someone who can learn by looking at answers, understanding what happened, and working backwards.

Even if you aren't, I suggest doing this to guide your studying, because with how many old exams he has, you won't be losing out too much by giving up the experience of working through a couple problems. I imagine how he teaches LS 107 shouldn't change too much. So once again, pay careful attention to wording, connect that back to theoretical concepts, and then view answers. If his answer keys are too vague which admittedly they often are, go directly to where he problem-solves in class and listen to his explanation.

When test days start rolling around, be able to balance between going straight through a full exam, and then narrowing your focus to very specific types of problems. If you're shaky on certain things, you do not want to keep just "hoping" you'll get better at it based off the experience of just one practice exam, or hoping you get one specific version of a problem because that's not true mastery.

This is what I mean by going through different exams and reading the different set-ups of the same basic problem and how they lead to different answers. You'll learn a lot and be able to build up a lot of speed/efficiency by practicing the same type of problem. It helps with the psychological aspect of test-taking as well, realizing that focusing on one thing at a time will very concretely produce results. Again, you'll need to balance between breadth and depth to maximize efficiency; unless you start super early in terms of studying you should NOT just do one or the other.

As for me, I only ever started reviewing/studying 2-4 days before the exam because I always had physics and chem exams during the same day/week. But hey, here was my grade breakdown:

Clicker attendance: 30/30
Online quizzes (drop 4 out of 16): 30/30
Discussion quizzes (drop 2 out of 10): 40/40
Midterm 1: 99/100
Midterm 2: 100/100
Final: 187/200 (93.5%)
Total: 486/500 (97.2%) = A+

It's genuinely not that hard to become an expert at each type of problem, especially if you work with friends who are often better at one type of thing or another. I was good at only 60-80% of the exam content for midterm 1, 2, and post midterm 2 material, but was able to become competent at basically everything by sharing/exchanging knowledge among friends.

The tools are essentially all there for you in this class! There are definitely some rare caveats that will take some sleuthing to figure out sometimes, unfortunately, but that's what TAs and LAs are for. One example that I can think of is choosing the most number of exconjugant in circle problems; there are special cases for these.

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So I took this class with 14 other units, this is LS 107 BTW. I didn't put much effort into studying so I got a C. But basically its a flip classroom, where you watch videos at home and do online quizzes and you go into lecture and do clicker questions. His exams are based on old exams which he provides you with. They are the same exact questions as old exams so just study old exams and you will get an A.

This professor definitely tries to help students, but he's just a bad professor. In the class portion, he takes forever to go over a single problem, and when people ask him legitimate questions he doesn't quite answer them. The tests are not really like anything in class, either. In the end, what you learn from this class is how to understand his questions and memorize his tricks, and you just have to compromise and be okay with not understanding the actual genetics behind it. This class was just one giant frustrating experience. If you just do his previous practice tests and study clicker Q's if he emphasizes a new concept (for us it was cloning and cancer, wasn't on any of the previous tests), you'll be fine.

Pham is a nice guy, he really is. But, he has an accent that's extremely hard to understand and during class he goes back and fourth between slides a lot so it's really difficult to get his point. And, the workload is so much with Launchpad activities, and those aren't even on any of the midterms/finals. The questions on the tests I feel were very unfair because they were ALL true/false and the ones that weren't were worded super confusingly.

I took LS3 with Pham over the summer during session C. I thought he was a very fair teacher. His accent is a little hard to understand at times, but he basically just reads straight off the power point. His tests are straight from the slides so you really don't have to read the book. It can be tricky, but the class definitely wasn't as hard as it could have been. He gets 1 or 2 short answer questions from the practice midterm he posts. His short answer is where most of the points are taken from- he looks for key words so make sure you memorize the names. This class is more vocab than anything and is really doable.

I took Dr. Pham for LS3 instead of Dr. Pires and I regretted it once I was in week 5. This guy doesn't teach very well. The first five weeks, he was very slow and no one paid attention. The last five weeks, he was very fast and no one could follow him. His class is heavy on exams which are heavily based off of previous exams. If you memorize the questions and answers to previous exams, you have 70% or more of the upcoming of the exam done.
Dr. Pham makes biology more rote memorization than anything. Better to take Dr. Pires. Her tests are fair and take a bit more thinking. Preps you up for LS4 much better.

LS 4
Grade: A

Listen to the reviews. You do NOT need the textbook and the solutions manual for this class. You do NOT need to do a single book problem that he has listed in the first page of his slides.

Do ALL of the practice exams, understand them, and you should be fine. At some point, you will have to ask Dr. Pham or your TA, so go to their office hours. Even though he was not my assigned TA, I went to Vincent's office hours before the midterms and asked him questions on the CCLE forum before the final. Although his sense of humor isn't for me (kind of sarcastic, just letting you know), he is one of the most helpful TAs I have had! If you ask him a question, he should answer it in a clear manner. I am glad that he was a TA for a class this quarter, as he made LS 4 more bearable. Vincent, if you are somehow reading this, thank you! You will go on to great things, and I sincerely hope that you plan on being a professor. Thank you for your help this quarter.

Now, on to Dr. Pham. He seems to be a fairly nice person, although I never went to his office hours. I emailed him once, and he responded fairly promptly. You should attend lecture because you have to do clicker questions. Fortunately, he does not grade on accuracy, so as long as you do all of the questions for a given lecture, you should get all the points. You can miss up to three lectures and still get full credit. Class was at 8 am, so just be prepared to get to class on time. Don't memorize his slides like you would do for LS2 and LS3. I reviewed them after each lecture, but I made it my priority to get each and every one of the practice exams done. There are 15 for MT 1, 15 for MT 2, and for the final, he gives you previous final questions, which take less time than all of the practice midterms, but still take them seriously. Also, one exception for the slides: Be sure to especially look over the molecular genetics slides-more specifically, the questions on the plants and whether or not there is an RFLP mutation or something like that. Again, just be sure to do all the exams Dr. Pham gives you and you should do well in the class. Avoid making stupid math mistakes (averages are high for the exams), and a good thing about Pham is that he doesn't curve down. Good luck!