Firstenberg is an amazing lecturer, and the content isn't difficult to understand. Overall as a whole, this class is definitely one of the more difficult classes I have taken, but overall pretty manageable. If you come into the class knowing you'll have to put hours in (for both lecture and discussion), you'll turn out okay. Be ready to revise your paper 2-3x (check in with your TA regarding APA) before actually submitting it and you should be fine. Best way to study for the exams is to literally make your own questions based on the practice midterm and final that they give you, and switch up certain parameters and see how well you know the concepts. Come prepared to put hours in and the class will be fine.

Selling electronic textbook+APA manual + lecture notes+ notes for the paper+practice exams+ chapter notes+physical copy of APA manual
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The class is not easy, and the thing that makes this class particularly hard is that you may not know where to start with the paper. APA manual si helpful when you know what mistakes to be aware of. Try to ask your TA about everything that you are not 100% sure of in your paper; they will help you and navigate you in the APA manual.
Exam material is very straight-forward; however, questions are rather tricky. Start preparing for those as early as you can! Re-read your lecture notes, take time processing everything professor Firstenberg says.

Please be aware that this class is basically like two independent courses (lab & lecture). I felt like I was taking 4 classes when I signed up for only 3. Lecture wise, the professor is very good. She's very clear and explains very well. You walk out thinking you fully understood the material without having to go to office hours. The only problem ? NONE of what she teaches is on the exams because the TAs write the exams and they try to trick as much as they can. They grade really really hard and then curve it at the end which made no sense to me at all. NOTHING of what she taught so clear was on the exam, the TAs would take the general concept of the professors teaching and twist it into another expecting us to understand without teaching it to us. Thats basically how they grade all your papers in lab too. I would literally ask my TA and email her every second to confirm what she wanted and yet she would mark it off on the paper. I really did not understand, and don't even try to get them to change your grade because its literally impossible unless they completely made a mistake. Or else, they'll just be like that's not how you should've written it or you should've included this (when they never told us too or taught us !!) This was one of the most unnecessarily difficult classes I have ever taken. It is a requirement to declare the major, so there is no way out of it. But I hope you are forewarned now and expect a very hard quarter ahead just because of this course.

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I found this class very enjoyable. Granted, I may have gotten lucky with a very good TA and an awesome group to work with for the group experiment.
Lab grade (40%):
Your lab grade is completely up to your TA. I still don't understand how the curve works, but I've heard from numerous TAs that 20% of students get an A- or higher for their lab grade. Here's one thing to abide by to get an A: on your writing assignments, put more information than necessary. Your TA doesn't tell you to connect your research articles to your actual study? Do it anyways. Also, be explicit in your writing. No ambiguity. For example, if you're writing about your distractor task for your experiment... Let's say it's counting backwards... Be explicit and say that it is the distractor task! Always have everything clearly defined. Write as if your audience knows absolutely nothing about your experiment.
Exams (60%):
Honestly, I just studied my lecture notes two days before the exam and then did the practice exam one day before and got above standard deviation on both exams. I thought the practice exam was fairly representative of the actual exam. These exams are not hard!! You just have to read carefully and take your time. There are just a few terms you need to know. Once you get all the terms down, you just need to be able to apply them to an actual experimental passage. Read the textbook too because there are about 2-4 questions from the textbook on each exam that you won't get unless you read!

Ok, let me start of by saying I loved Firstenberg as a professor and as a person. But holy crap, this class will make your life a living hell. I hated it. I literally hated every minute of it. The lectures are only once a week, so they are the least of your worries. Even though the tests are extremely difficult, they are also the least of your worries. Your biggest worry will be the grading system. The whole class is graded on a curve, and each TA is told to grade as hard as they possibly can on each paper you turn in. I got a 56% on my final paper, which I knew was absolutely ridiculous since I covered absolutely everything the paper called for and then some. Also, you never know how you're doing in the class until you get your grade on ccle. It's honestly extremely sadistic and borderline abusive. Granted I got a C, but I never worked so hard for a class in my life. All I can say is take care of yourself, and prey you get a good group for your experiment, otherwise you will hate yourself. I can't tell you how many mental breakdowns I witnessed this quarter (mine included). Someone even fainted.

Selling one the textbooks for this course! Publication Manual 6th Edition. Please message me at ********** if interested.

Professor Firstenberg was great. Her lectures aren't podcaster and she doesn't use slides so you just have to take notes from what she says but it's not bad at all. What she teaches is pretty easy material. However, the tests are hard. I got a 70 on both the midterm and final and I studied a LOT for them. People do relatively well on the tests so I would rely on those a lot more if you want to do well in the class because the labs are a pain.

Psych 100B COMPLETELY depends on the TA you have. I had Erin Sparck who was amazing and extremely helpful because she's been a TA for the class for a couple of years. Get a TA that has done it before if you can. Even though they're all helpful, they are told to grade harshly for the papers. I got a 68 on the first submission and the average was a 67. They're harsh on grading so you have to ensure that you do EVERYTHING correctly. Ask your TA about anything you think could be wrong because they will mark you down for it! Then lastly, I got a 75 on the final project proposal. I worked on that proposal more than I studied for my other tests and I didn't do nearly as well as I thought I would. I would suggest going to your TA's office hours and make sure everything is right. Then also go over the APA manual to make sure you included everything you needed to for the paper. My TA barely counted anything wrong on my paper but those things that were wrong were weighted heavily which made me get a C.

To succeed in this class, I would suggest relying on the tests for a good grade in the class. The proposals are really hard to do well on so if you do poorly at least you did well on the tests. Go to your TA's office hours to work on the paper. Think of an easy experiment to do with your group and work hard on your first submission with your group. Not a bad class, just hard to do well.

Grading Scheme:
60% Lecture Grade
-- 30% Exam 1
-- 30% Exam 2
40% Laboratory Grade
-- 15% Quizzes
-- 10% Participation
-- 75% Assignments
---- 5% Experiment 1 Method Section
---- 10% Team Project Proposal
---- 60% Project Report
------ 35% First Submission
------ 65% Final Submission
(quite complicated, as you can see)

Professor Firstenberg:
She is honestly one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. She doesn't expect you to remember everything you learned from 100A and actually lectures on the assumption that you're completely new to psychological statistics. So that means that she really makes an effort to break concepts down. She uses a lot of different examples to explain different topics. She doesn't use slides or podcasts, so she just verbally gives a lecture while occasionally writing some things on the board. I usually recorded lectures on my laptop while I typed up notes and then went back later that week, relistened to the lecture while filling in the notes with what I missed. She's pretty funny and she makes lecture as interesting and engaging as she can, given how long lectures were (2 hours once a week) and how dry the content seemed sometimes. I highly recommend taking Firstenberg for this course. She is genuinely a great professor who really knows what she's talking about and cares for her students.

TA Natasha Fourquet:
Natasha was a great TA. I feel like she's notorious for being a hard grader and for being a real stickler for APA format, but I think it made me work a lot harder and be more meticulous with writing for this class. Take that as a positive or negative thing as you will. Labs happened twice a week (2 hours each) and mostly consisted of going over worksheets and exercises to practice material learned in class. The course reader is pretty much mandatory because you use papers in it for different assignments. It's pretty much a staple in labs. But Natasha is a lovely TA. Really pay attention to APA formatting and what she wants from you in your writing, and you should do well in this course. But basically don't expect to get an A on any of your writing assignments, because it's kind of impossible with Natasha.

Exam 1 Grade: 37/40
The exam is 40 multiple choice questions. The first exam happened during 5th week, so it covered basically material up to that point. The questions can be somewhat tricky. But if you take good notes then doing well shouldn't be a problem. Using my method of taking notes, I just had to read/skim over my notes before the exam to really get the concepts down. The questions are mostly scenario-based, so you have to apply concepts you learned. You have to read every question carefully and each of the answers carefully too, because the wording may try to trick you. Firstenberg also includes a few questions from the textbook that you wouldn't be able to get right unless you read it. So what I recommend is skimming through the chapters and taking quick notes on the sections not discussed in class. Those areas are where she'll definitely pull questions from. Overall, the exams are not that bad. The practice exam they give is not that indicative of what it will be, but it's still good practice.

Exam 2 Grade: 38/40
Ditto with this exam. Formatted exactly the same way. Taken during 10th week.

Quizzes Grade: 15/15
Almost each week in lab we had 3-question multiple choice quizzes. These were made by the Master TAs, so they were significantly easier than exam questions. But these were pretty straightforward and easy, so getting all 3 points for each of the 5 quizzes wasn't hard. Just skim over the last lecture before lab and you'll do fine.

Participation Grade: probably 100%
So participation in lab was kind of just based on engaging during labs and stuff. The usual.

Experiment 1 Method Section Grade: 77%
So following an experiment done in lab with the rest of your classmates, you had to write a method section that is equivalent to one that you would see in a research report. In Natasha's case, really stick to APA format to get a good grade. I was like in between the average and the highest grade on this assignment.

Team Project Proposal Grade: 80%
So in this class you have to create a novel experiment based on a seed article you get in class. You're assigned in groups of 3 randomly to work on this for the last half of the quarter. The whole thing is kind of a lot of work, but if you manage your time, you should do fine. In the end, the actual experiment you do with your classmates as subjects is kind of underwhelming to be honest. You put in a lot of work to plan your experiment and it's over pretty quickly. Anyway, the proposal consisted of two pages from the lab workbook, a short little proposal, and a mock results section of your experiment. My group had the highest grade on our proposal in our class, so again, just stick to APA format.

First Submission Grade: 82%
The first submission included a title page, introduction, method, and references sections. My paper was 12 pages long. I had the highest grade in my class with the average being around 65% or something. Honestly, everyone in my lab stayed up really late the night before finishing it up, including me. So really try to start early. APA FORMAT!

Final Submission Grade: 79%
So the final submission included everything in the first submission along with an abstract, results, discussion, and figure sections. My paper was 24 pages long and in total probably took a long time to write. I recommend revising sections from the first submission based on comments from your TA early so that you give yourself enough time after conducting your experiment to write the remaining sections, which may take some time. You do your experiments in lab during weeks 8 or 9, so it would be wise to really plan out when you'll write each section of your paper in order to minimize stress before finals. The final paper was due Monday of Finals Week for us. APA FORMAT!

Final Grade: A
I included the last blurbs of "APA FORMAT" in the last two sections because it really is important, especially if you have Natasha, who will knock off points everywhere on such inconsistencies. So always consult the APA Manual to get formatting right. This class wasn't as intimidating as everyone made it out to be honestly. As long as you study right and manage your time, because it does pile up when you're planning for your experiment, you'll do well in this course.

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