//Professor//
- Bower is clearly passionate about mind-body research and it shows with how she presents the materials.
- She talks at a decent pace but does not BruinCast so I recommend you record her lectures.

//Course Material//
- I'll agree with the general sentiments of other reviewers, the course material can seem rather disjointed. Really, the underlying theme is your mind might(???) influence your physical health.
- That said, I generally liked the set-up of the course; the material was delivered on slides which were easy to understand (and provided most info needed for the exams) and was based on different research papers and meta-analyses Dr Bower selected to present. Yes, there were lots of details and information but we were only expected to know the gist of the meta-analysis and to understand broad ideas, which made the disjointed structure of the course much more bearable.
- the course definitely contained some biology (rudimentary immunology and endocrine system), but it was basic, easy to understand information.

//Textbook://
- The "textbook" is really just a book by a famous researcher in the field. Didn't read it because I crammed for the exams but it's not really necessary to get a good grade in the class. If you're really paranoid, you can find a copy online for free and skim it before the exams.

//Grading://
75% - exam 1 is 30% of grade, exam 2 is 35% of grade. Exams are pretty fair and Dr. Bower does not aim to trick you. If you understand the gist of each lecture and results from the major studies she expects you to know, you should do fine. When studying for exams, I'd recommend that you create a simple table, with each topic on the left side and the results of the corresponding meta-analysis/research of right side. She cares only about the general idea of how each condition is affected by the psychological factors. The average was 90% for the first midterm, so it's very doable.
5% - iClicker so mandatory attendance. Points based on participation/ completion and not correctness.
20% - 5 reading responses, which consist of a few multiple choice questions and a free-response that's limited to a few sentences. If you provide a coherent argument in the free response section and have skimmed the paper, you should get full points, it's fairly easy.

//Overall:// interesting albeit disjointed material and fair exams make this a good option for a psychobio elective.

EASY tests with mean/median around 92. Her TAs gave everyone 100% on the responses, as long as you wrote something relevant. did NOT need to read the book because it's just very simple sympathetic/parasympathetic/HPA questions that are already covered in the lecture. And even if u really want to read because u have nothing better to do (LOLLL), don't buy it; it's free online! Would definitely recommend taking this professor. It's a VERY chill way to satisfy one of the Psychobio electives. And it's a useful class that's relevant -- most importantly.
(***i usually don't write reviews, but i hope this helps someone out studying for the midterm that ya'll supposedly have this week lol*** Remember -- stress kills so don't stress. just get your rest in)

As previous reviews have mentioned, this course mainly consists of slideshow lectures on multiple research studies with each lecture centered around a particular topic (i.e. effects of stress on cardiovascular disease/cancer/HIV, positive psychology interventions). I agree with the student who mentioned that there seems to be no unifying logic to the studies/concepts covered. This was especially true during the second half of the course—the main takeaway seemed to be that "positive psychology = good" as interventions covered in class miraculously buffer T cell decline in HIV, strengthen immune response to vaccines, and... promote faster wound healing? This haphazard understanding results from how the course is structured; specifically, in deliberately showing students a variety studies without efforts to unify and connect things to one another, students are left with a disorganized, muddled understanding of course concepts.

Thankfully, exams are not very challenging and Dr. Bower does not try to "trick" students. Answer choices are straightforward and for most students, paying attention during lecture and doing light review will be sufficient to score an A. For instance, the mean/median of the midterm was ~87%.

There is something else a previous review brought up that I want to clarify: someone mentioned that you should not ask Dr. Bower for a recommendation letter even if you do well in her class and go to office hours. I was confused why they said that without explanation, but after asking for a recommendation letter myself I now understand why—Dr. Bower has a no LOR policy for PSYCH 152 students. She states this is because large lectures make it difficult to get to know students on a personal level. While I don't disagree with her, this is also the case for 90% of courses at a large institution like UCLA (at least in my experiences). It feels somewhat lazy and at worst irresponsible to have a broad "no LOR" policy for students that often need these letters for graduate/medical school admissions. Thankfully, I was able to ask another professor, also teaching a large lecture course, who took time to personally meet with me outside of class to go over my career goals and application. Just a heads up for future students who may want a LOR!

Super easy tests. But MEMORIZE EVERY NUMBER'S RANGE (not the exact number). Know if it's 11,000 patients or 34,000 patients or 75 patients. She cares about that a lot, but it's NOT going to be 73 vs 74. Just the GENERAL RANGE. second piece of advice: u don't need to read any of the books or articles. i wanna say it's 28 questions of very easy lecture main ideas, and 2 questions from readings.

Psych 152 with Dr. Bower was definitely a fast-paced class that had a whole lot of content covered. The lectures are recorded but audio only so keep that in mind if you're planning on not attending. There's also in-class activities but it was via a Google Form so some people would do them without physically being present in lecture. I found the exams to be really tough and often very specific to certain words she said during lecture. I studied a lot for this class but didn't feel like my grade reflected my efforts. Our TA really wasn't that helpful so a lot of times it kind of felt like you were alone in this class. The content is also pretty dense and certain topics are harder to understand. However, I still do feel like a learned a lot from this class but would've appreciated it the exams weren't as hard as they were. There's also a few quizzes and reading response questions which aren't too hard. There's no extra credit offered either.

This class was overwhelming at first because of the huge portion of our grade from the group project but Dr. Bower and Arielle listened to our queries mid-quarter through and changed the requirements and made the group project significantly easier.
A lot of interesting material in each class and the exams were multiple-choice, pretty straightforward, and I honestly didn't read the book at all but you could control + F it for the couple questions that are asked.
Loved the class and Dr. Bower and Arielle were super understanding and would clarify anything that we weren't sure of. Definitely a good class to take :)

I would definitely recommend this class to other people. Grade was basically 5 reading assignments (20%) which take about 20 min max to do and can be done literally by skimming the article and looking for the answer and a midterm and final. I took this course during the virus situation so I had the opportunity to opt out of the final which I really appreciate Dr. Bower for doing because my other psych prof made the final mandatory for everyone. But based on the midterm the average was in the high 80's and many of the questions are based directly off the lecture slides and are very straightforward and not tricky.

I found the material to be interesting but I will say that the ppts consisted of 50+ slides per lecture so there is a fair amount of material but the material is STRAIGHTFORWARD so just put in a two or three days before the exam and you will be good!

Straight up one of the most bizarre classes I've taken. Everything was just kind of there as information on her slides, with no overarching themes. The guy who said it could be those 5 words were right. The final was kinda vague hence my grade, otherwise was on track for an A-. Kinda annoying how she doesn't curve or drop the lowest grade in the responses, so a 2/3 on one of top can get you only 94% worth of the credit in that 20% worth section. Don't take this if you don't have to.

Professor Bowers like to put a lot of materials on her slides. A lot of the stuff she said seems repetitive and hard to differentiate. I can summarize the class in 5 freaking words: inflammation, CVD, cancer, SNS, HPA, mostly positive effect... She uses the same thing over and over and over and over, but changes each study slightly each time. This class is so hard to study logically and really has no flow, except just to PURELY MEMORIZE. Also her slides averages around 50 slides of dense, but annoyingly similar information (psychology in medicine is super good...). I do not dislike the Prof. personally, just the way she structures the class is so redundant and difficult to discern. If you suck at memorization, don't take this class.

Professor Bower was very knowledgeable and the material from the class is pretty interesting. The tests and reading assignments are straightforward and are graded fairly (although the readings are scientific articles that are hard to get through...). At times, it was easy to be distracted in lecture because they were monotonous and were mostly about research studies. There were required iclicker questions and the lectures were not recorded on BruinCast so attendance was basically mandatory (given one grace absence). I would recommend this class only if you're really interested in the material and if there are no other Psych electives that interest you for the quarter!