100B is the class that everybody fears and going into it I was terrified. But really, people overdramatize it. There's no doubt about it; it's a lot of work. There's a reason why it's 6 units and because of that you really want to concentrate your efforts into this course because it WILL definitely affect your GPA! If you somehow have made it this far with a poor work ethic or you do things last minute, you won't have a very good time in this class. But it's very doable. I would say I got very lucky with my TA and with my group which made the class so much better.

Exams were certainly tricky, but I thought most questions were fair (although they were extremely annoying.) Few book questions to make you read the book. Other than that the material came from lecture mostly. You really have to be good at taking exams and you HAVE to be good at reading the scenarios. Reading the book over and over again will do nothing for you. Focus on the quizzes and the practice exam. Be honest with your self and understand the entirety of the practice exam. Test your self over and over. Take the practice exam once, review what you got wrong, then wait a day or two. Take it again. You'll be surprised when you see you likely got some of the same ones wrong again even after seeing the right answer. Really understand why you got it wrong. And if you got lucky on one of the questions, then make sure you understand the correct answer!!! Nobody cares if you got a bad score on the practice exam! What matters is the real one!

Like everybody says, Iris is a fantastic lecturer. The fact that I'm always awake and paying attention during an 8am class speaks for itself. She's funny and she brings in real world stuff to help you understand the material. Take good notes cause she doesn't have slides.

As long as you are at or above the mean, you will be fine. Go into the class with a positive attitude. It starts out slow but ramps up significantly later on. Do things overtime!! Use the amount of time you have to do assignments wisely! Extra credit is also offered. The one thing I will say is that throughout the course I had no idea what my grade was. All I had to go off of was my scores and how it compared to the average.

Grade breakdown:
Exam 1: 36/40
Exam 2: 34/40
First Submission: 79/100
Final Submission: 91/100
Poster: 4.5/5
Proposal: 85/100
Quizzes: 14/15

Everyone loves talking about how Iris is an amazing professor. Don't listen to them, she's not. While her lectures aren't super boring, they can be dry. AND while she's not the one who grades our labs (it is your TA) they are grading us on the super difficult rubric given to them by Iris. My TA kept saying that the professor doesn't give them the rubric until the papers are submitted. If you get a TA who has never been a TA for this class (like me), this means that they cannot accurately help students on the paper because they too do not know the errors to look out for. TRUTH BE TOLD, a professor who is so 'amazing' shouldn't have her TA's dock students for stupid reasons. The day I realized the class is set up for people to fail is when my TA docked me a point when I mentioned we needed a stopwatch for one of the experiments, but my TA felt like I should have mentioned we needed a stopwatch two lines ABOVE where I mentioned it (everything was in the same paragraph). Imagine following the APA manual to a t but still getting docked for stupid things like this. And you may say, "oh, it's just a point." These points add up and my paper was riddled with "-1" for such minuscule reasons.

ALSO, start studying well in advance for the midterm and final. Understand that her tests are designed to trick you, so to do well, you reallllllyyyyy need to know the material. That was my problem, I studied how I usually study for my other classes, but got a 72 on both the midterm and the final. Thank God I ended up with an A in the lab portion, or I would have not passed this class. If you are smart, you will take this class either over the summer here or at UC Irvine over the summer where it is super easy and won't ruin your GPA. You're welcome.

GOOD LECTURER! But trust me, you are either going to do very well in this class, or very poorly. Class is designed to trick you it is after all, a weeder class. I say, take this course with Firstenberg if you ABSOLUTELY have to, but keep in mind that EVERY single question on the midterms and quizzes will be tricky. Just try your best to pass the class, do not set high standards for yourself because 40% of students are expected to receive a C of any form (c-,c,c+) anyways, That's almost half!....On the bright side, I PROMISE THAT AFTER HER CLASS EVERY PSYCHOLOGY CLASS THAT YOU EVER TAKE WILL BE CAKE!...ps, take Geiselman if you want a more pleasurable 100B experience.

I can’t even begin to explain how horrible this class was. I worked my ass off the entire quarter only to end up with a C+. The material is not difficult, but the class setup is horrible. 60% for two exams which have extremely tricky questions. It’s like the exam is testing your test taking skills and not the actual material. Now let’s talk about lab, I had pretty high grades in comparison to everyone in the class averaging about B+/A- range. The TA Jenna Felkey was a strict grader. She’s a great person and she’s really helpful, but in the end she really doesn’t give a shit about you. I got a 71% for participation even though I showed up every single day. The class mean for participation was 74%. I just can’t explain how horrible this class is. The people who got A’s are either extremely smart or extremely lucky because those exams are basically guessing games based on luck. Everything they say about this class is true, but 10 times worse. Too bad it’s required. Firstenberg is trash

Yes, the class is labor-intensive. There are a good deal of writing assignments due throughout the quarter, all culminating in a final research paper write-up. Do NOT fall behind and think these papers can be sat on until the last minute. Easily the best approach is to start early and write a section at a time. Details are extremely important and it is critical to make sure you aren't omitting anything.

The material is not nearly as conceptually difficult as the amount of work would indicate. Coming into the class with a general idea of the scientific method and how experiments are conducted will carry you through a bulk of the content. Tests - 50% of your grade - are all conceptually based, meaning that a hypothetical experiment/scenario is presented and you will answer questions about it. Plenty of review material is given to help studying before the exams (midterm and final). The rest of the lecture grade is based off 6 quizzes throughout the quarter.

The other half of the grade is in discussion section, where participation matters. Ask questions, clarify concepts, offer answers, and you will be fine. I cannot speak to any TA except my own, but he was friendly, helpful, and fair in his critiques of my papers. The rubrics for all the papers are specific enough where you can check your work against them pretty faithfully.

Lectures are all prerecorded and posted by the weekend.

Lecture: 60%
Midterm: 30%
Final: 30%
Lab: 40%
Quizzes: 15%
Participation: 20%
Assignments: 65%

The class wasn't too bad, especially considering how awful I thought it would be. The textbook can be found on librarygenesis.com and the workbook (which you do need) is only $12. Professor Firstenberg is a nice lady. She seemed scary at first, but she's really nice and also adds some humor to her lectures. She seems like a really likeable person although I never talked to her personally. There are no slides for the class, so she basically speaks most of the time and usually writes things on the board. I think this is good because it makes you go to class for good notes and also doesn't rush you since she also has to write things down just as you do. My TA was Danielle Currin and I really liked her. She's an easy grader and really nice. I had a friend who took a different TA who said he was pretty bad. Rough grader and made them turn in a lot of different assignments (something Danielle didn't ask for). Would recommend her for sure if at all possible.

Like another reviewer has said, the first couple of weeks of Lab are really easy and laid back, but picks up as soon as groups are formed (randomly). I really liked my group, so I got lucky. It's important to communicate as that's really important. Don't wait to get the assignments done, try to finish early so that everything can be looked over and approved by everyone. Communication is key. Create a group chat right away and get comfortable with each other. There are also quizzes every non-exam week which are fairly easy. Make sure to do your best on them because they are basically free points. Lab isn't too bad, but it is more time consuming especially since you meet up twice a week for 2 hours compared to lecture (once a week for 2 hours).

The lecture exams are fairly tricky but doable. She gives a practice exam (~40 questions) and practice questions (~140) to prepare for each exam. Th wording is tricky so just try to figure out what exactly the question is asking for. There are a lot of "A and B, but not C" type answers so process of elimination is really helpful here.

If you're on Reddit and ever need help, go on there and ask. I'll be there and I'm sure there are others there too who are willing to help with anything.

Writing this review after having completed the class almost 4 months ago, which should make this review pretty objective.

PROS
- You will learn a ton!
You will literally study your ass off to even pass this class, with that amount of dedication comes a deep understanding of the concepts.

- You will probably become a better writer
Writing papers for this class is like walking on egg shells. These papers- or rather the way the are graded will challenge you to question your writing, and push you to become a better writer.

CONS
- If you have a job your gonna have to quit!
Let me just be super clear on this.... you are not going to be able to get an A in this class if you are working more than say, 8 hrs a week, and a full time student. The more responsibilities you have, family and etc- the tougher this class is going to be.

- This class is uninspiring
To me, this is the biggest con. I'm a transfer student and had already taken research methods at Pasadena City College (yes despite this prior experience I still only managed a C+ in this class!) My experience in research methods at PCC was inspiring, here at UCLA with Firstenberg it was rather uninspiring, difficult, and boring. Which is super disappointing because I know that this material is interesting and important, its just Firstenberg makes it kind of dull.

NOW that I've attempted being super objective I will rattle off a couple random opinions. Feel free to stop reading at this point.
- Professor can be kind of rude.
- Ive heard its better to take during the summer.
- Your asked to rate your 2 group members near the end of the qtr, kind of a crazy idea given that the class is curved!
Let me explain- there is three to a group. You could potentially go to each member individually and say, "hey I think (other group member) kinda sucks, how about we both rate each other super high on the evals and other group member super low?" If you are cunning enough to do this you'd end up getting more group participation points then either of your group members! LOL! Which due to the curve could be the difference of an A and B. CAUSE THIS CLASS IS COMPETITIVE AF. The worse others score, the better your grade is! How FUN. :( Makes me sad that this class even inspired such a thought in my head- and no I didn't do this to my group mates.

I liked Professor Firstenberg. I think she's brings a lot of charisma(?) to her teaching so it's not monotone and she's always open to people asking questions. Definitely, depending on your TA, go to lab. You don't have to go to lecture because it's recorded, but go to lab. I think some TAs grade easier than others. I was graded harshly on my assignments because of a few errors, but because the rubric isn't very flexible, your grade is affected a lot. When I asked my TA about it, they said that I had a good understanding of the material, but the rubric wasn't lenient toward the errors I was making. Maybe if I attended lab I would have had a better grasp of what was expected on the assignments. That's my bad. The two exams also took up a major chunk of your grade so just try to be proactive about your learning in this class. To be fair, I took 18 credits this quarter and since I'm in research I thought I didn't need to spend a lot of time on this class. Boy was I wrong and regret it. Take this class seriously. The work isn't hard but you need hard work.

I never write reviews but seeing other comments I felt that I should write something about this class. This is by far the best class I have taken at UCLA (transfer). I was so stressed out after reading previous reviews but after my first exam I knew I am going to get A (if not A+) in this class no matter what. Materials get stressful at times but I enjoyed going to every single labs and doing the poster at the end. My lab TA (Xizi) made sure to tell us what exactly she wants and if you follow rules, you will get perfect score. I promise, Dr. Firstenberg wants you to do well so do the practices questions ( I solved those twice) and know the rationale for why your chose that option. Please, don’t get scared seeing other comments.
I made a mistake by buying the textbook though. I wish I could return it. $86 on waste. Listen to the recording. You’ll be fine. I don’t wanna brag but I have finished this class with over 99% and this is only because of the Dr. Firstenberg and her team’s organization skills. Also, my TA is the best!

This class is honestly one of the easiest classes I have taken at this school (and not in a bad way!). Although the midterm and final can have a few tricky questions, the test is entirely open note and there is absolutely nothing on the exams that has not been taught in lecture (looking at you CS 35L). Some people have said that the exam difficulty is way different from the practice ones but honestly the formatting and question type are similar even if slightly more difficult.

Lab assignments are very strict and they're quick to mark you off, but make sure you read the rubric carefully and address every single portion of it and a full score is assured. Also, I recommend attending lab sections even though its not required since your TA will be grading your assignments. My TA (shoutout to Manco Funes) told me exactly what he wanted so that we could guarantee a full score. I did not attend lecture a single time after the midterm since it was recorded and I just ended up watching them remotely. Make sure you have all your lecture notes open for exams and you'll be fine.