Not too difficult but VERY memorization heavy. If you are good at memorizing definitions, pathways, etc. this shouldn't be too bad, try to review daily as each lecture covers a chapter. Almost everything on the slide which is highlighted can appear on the test. Knowing how, when, and why microscopes, plates, etc. are used is also very important. Do the study guides at the end of each chapter slide as there is few study materials. There are also past quizlets with the exact same questions which I wish I knew earlier. Discussion is optional until the group presentation around week 5. It wasn't very helpful as the discussion worksheets weren't difficult and I was able to do them on my own so sometimes I would skip. Professor is very passionate and kind but lecture was not very helpful or worth going to as everything is on the slides.

I like Professor Berthet as a person, but unfortunately not as a professor. There is a lot of information to cover, which is the nature of the class, but I am still wondering as to why MT2 and the final were written to much harder to lower the test averages. There's not really any telling of what information is more important in the lecture slides, so there's a lot of cramming information into your head. Not an impossible class, but I do hope Professor Berthet makes her tests more fair or lectures more helpful in the future.

Berthet doesn't seem to realize that she is teaching a class of college students. She talks like her audience is high school freshman, which is a problem when the topics that need to be covered are at an upper-div level. Her lectures are basically useless, as the tests are not based off of them. Read the textbook, check into iclicker every day at 11:20ish. It's not an impossible class, but the way it's set up makes it frustrating. It's easy to see how someone could fall out of love with the subject by taking this class. If you can take it with someone else, then do. If you must take it with Berthet, don't fret too much, just be prepared to shell out for the textbook.

As an MCDB major taking this class as an elective, it's a very easy class because like 70% of the material is a repeat of stuff I've already learned in my MCDB and LS classes. However, the way Dr Berthet teaches the class kinda just sucks. She goes so so sooooo fast during lectures, so you're just focused on writing down what's on the slides that you get no time to actually process what you're learning. The slides themselves are extremely dense. She says to read the textbook, but this is definitely not necessary (I stopped reading after week 1) as her slides basically are a rewritten version of it, even including info from the book that she doesn't want us to have to know for the class. Also for some reason we only had in-person lecture MW and the Friday lecture was a pre-recorded video. The worst parts of this class were the tests. For the first midterm, the TAs wrote the MCQs and she wrote the FRQs, but I guess she wasn't happy with an 84% average so for the second midterm and the final she wrote all the MCQs too. The problem with this was that you could tell she wrote them in a rush and definitely did not proofread them, because so many did not make sense (e.g. I had to ask a TA what half a question meant and the TA had no clue so she went back to look at the answer key, then I watched her pull out her phone and look it up, and then she told me something that definitely did not match up with what the question said but at least she led me to what was supposed to be the correct answer), and there was even a question that is biologically impossible (asking about what happens with missense/nonsense/silent mutations in a promoter...). I'm fairly certain some of the questions were asking things she never taught us, and the only reason I could answer them was because I learned them in other classes. She did get what she wanted though, averaged of 75% on the second midterm and 78% on the final. But all this to say, I very much disliked how Dr Berthet ran this class; it was doable for me but I can't say fs that would be the case for others.
Grading breakdown:
20% Homework (canvas discussion posts answering an easy prompt each week)
5% Discussion presentations (group presentation in week 6, very easy but ofc you do need to coordinate with your group outside of class)
5% iClicker lecture participation (can miss one day, but we didn't even use iClicker that much so theoretically you could miss more days if you check which slides have an iClicker)
40% Midterms (20% each; 20 MCQs, 4 FRQs with parts)
30% Final (technically cumulative, but very very much centered on post-MT2 material)

Loved Professor Berthet, she's passionate and is pretty understanding. I never read the textbook because all information is on the slides but it is purely memorization and studying should come from daily review not any cramming. I think the downfall is the second midterm because it's hard every year apparently and the average was very low despite no curve given whatsoever. The TAs write the FRQs which often have mistakes and are misleading but I think the exams are generally fair if you can interpret what they're asking for. Loved the content and professor.

I'm surprised there aren't more reviews for this course + prof. combo after taking it and wanted add to validate the other recent post. Don't get me wrong, she's a nice person, gentle voiced lecturer, loves to speak about herself and her research which sounds interesting. But not a great instructor. THE COURSE WAS SO MESSY, and she had delayed or vague answers to our questions. The other review's experience of the campuswire is correct! Why have the page if we couldn't get the answers we needed - TAs would answer only random questions, not sure if they needed to check with her for other Qs but they were mostly left unanswered. Save yourself and try and take it with someone else!

Lecture: iClicker required, 2x a week 50 min., except she would read off the slides, mention small details about example organisms for 1 minute while she spent the rest of the time going over the broad concept - which was misleading because she said we didn't need to know specific organisms, and somehow you get the question wrong on the test because you don't know it by name. It wouldn't be worth going to lecture if there was no iClicker - oh wait! I'm pretty sure she gave everyone full iClicker points because she kept opening/closing polls by accident so even if you were supposed to have a certain amount of them done there wasn't really a way to track them. TLDR: very basic microbio topics, very detailed Qs on exams - you have to do quite a bit of inferencing.

Lab: As the other post says, it's a lot more work than you'd expect for a 5 unit course. But this is where most of the fun was and I really enjoyed the lab portion - some days you get out after 2 hours and some after just 1 you're done. You get an "unknown" you're tasked with identifying through vary many tests and present on at the end of the quarter with your group, which is a good bit of your grade too (100-200). Lab worksheets are 1-4 points (think, out of like almost 700 points) so not much but graded on accuracy and because you need results from tests back to analyze them they're due two weeks after each exercise is due. Mid-quarter you'll get to the point where you have like 8 sheets due every Sunday. There's lab practicals to check your skills but the TAs will prepare you well for that imo. I liked that we did a lot of the tests we learned in 101 and even more!

Further Logistics: She said the syllabus would be out of 705 in the first lecture, syllabus said 685. No answer to anyone's questions on this. A hefty amount of your grade is tests even though it's a LAB class - over 50% lol. They were fine, a little tricky and you obviously did a lot better if you could remember that one specific organism she mentioned for 0.2 seconds of the class - but some questions we all walked of the class in unison like "what the _ was that," and her wording on a lot of the questions would make you think she plugged a straightforwardly written Q into ChatGPT and went "make this harder to understand," truly. She gave us a 9 question study guide for MT1 which was way too easy to help with anything, and then none for the next two exams (lack of continuity there, thanks).

Also I'd like to CLARIFY something from the other post - NO EXAMS WERE CURVED, there was an ERROR on the key of one version of the exam which I happened to have - they put like 3 or 4 wrong answers on that key (also, each MCQ was like 3 points which is so much to lose, which is why it may have seemed like a curve but really the grading was just incorrect).

TLDR: Good labs, impossible tests, weed out course, avoid and take with another professor if possible. If not, strap in.

I don't see any other reviews so I thought I'd write one for all the Bruins interested in taking this course. There's one thing that should be established immediately: this class is a 3 unit course, but the workload is more akin to a 5 unit course. Do not expect this class to be a cakewalk even if you took mimg 101 prior to this. There are two labs a week with no makeups if you miss them. During the lab they will hand you a sheet of paper and you fill out the data, then you have to go home and complete the worksheet problems, which the TAs are unhelpful with in lab. The problem with the worksheets is that they are graded heavily for your lab portion of the grade, but Berthet's grading scheme in the class is to pick a random question on the worksheet and if you get it wrong then you get a 0 for the worksheet even if you completed everything else. The tests for the class were very tough, and the professor consistently would take material outside of the course entirely (such as clinical applications) and ask questions about it on the exam. It was obvious that the tests were poor quality and extremely rushed. There was a study guide she posted but then she said at the top as a disclaimer that it could be any other content in the course so that wasn't very helpful. This class has a lab manual and a course textbook and between both the readings this should really be a 5 unit, as they will test you on anything mentioned in the manual, slides, lecture, or textbook. The lecture isn't recorded and has Iclicker as well. The first two lab practicals were easy but the last one was intentionally misleading in the wording of the questions, most people did worse on that one. Berthet was often extremely unorganized, at the beginning of the quarter she messed up the gradescope and had us jump through a bunch of extra hoops to join a entirely new separate gradescope (not linked to bruinlearn) and only announced this on Campuswire (despite telling us campuswire was optional to have). Then we'd ask questions on Campuswire and she wouldn't even communicate with us, even though it was her idea to have Campuswire??? Rarely were there announcements on bruinlearn, the syllabus was up front so make sure to read that to know what's going on in the course, but don't expect any reminders leading up to things like lab practicals.

I found the lab portion of this course to be extremely enjoyable, but felt as if I was being preyed upon by the professor and set up for failure, just like other "weed out" classes here. This class is no different. She said that we did "too well" on the first exam, said that the second one would be much harder, then laughed in class. The second midterm was so hard she had to curve it because no one could possibly get all the answers right given the material in the course. We also had to do a big project and presentation at the end of the quarter on top of the 3 exams which was a huge pain. Overall, I had a great time in the lab but this professor made the class so much more stressful and intense than it really had to be for a 3 unit.

Professor Berthet brought an extrordinary passion to microbiology but the class had so many flaws that made me despise the class. She will blaze through lectures and will try to finish as quick as possible if she realizes she is running out of time. Though she emphasizes that you must read the textbook, it isn't necessary as all the content on exams are on the slides. She hosted office hours directly after her class. You can only receive your SAQ for exams back and you will need to put an unnecessary amount of effort to just find out what you got incorrect on your MCQ portion. The exams are 30 MCQ with 4 SAQ while the final is 50 MCQ with 5 SAQ w/ a notes sheet. This class is doable, but receiving feedback on exams was my biggest frustration in this course similar to lower division courses. I would pre-read the slides before lecture, to account for her speed and reference the learning objectives as a resource to have a cumulative representation of exam content.
I did not enjoy this class.

Professor Berthet is honestly one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. She is extremely engaging, approachable, and understanding of her students. She does her best to explain concepts and answer questions during class so that everyone understands, and after our first midterm feedback, she was also clear about what she does and doesn't want us to know. I think the class agreed as a whole that her exams were generally fair. She tests on information from her slides and not the textbook, though I would definitely recommend reading the textbook chapters for a thorough understanding of the concepts, especially to prepare for exam questions that ask you to apply knowledge. Exams consisted of majority multiple choice questions with ~3 free response questions. There were two weekly homework assignments, one from the textbook (you will need to buy/borrow the textbook for these questions) and one on Canvas. I would say the workload is definitely manageable as long as you are consistently going to class and not playing catch up. The homework is graded based on effort instead of correctness so I would highly recommend doing all of them since they're basically free points. Discussion attendance is mandatory and around week 5 we were required to do a group presentation in discussion. Professor Berthet may offer extra credit based on how the class does as a whole, but it wasn't guaranteed. She generally wants an average of 70-75% for every exam. Overall, I would say as long as you do the bare minimum of going to class + turning in all assignments, you will be able to understand all the concepts. If you understand the concepts and can spend a week or so memorizing them before the exams, an A is doable. Professor Berthet wants the best for us and always offers extra office hours or one-on-one meetings if you need more help, so don't be afraid to ask!

Professor Berthet has amazing energy and tenacity to teach. It is clear that she wants all students to succeed, and I can feel that every time I walk into lecture. My qualms have so much more to do with how the course is set up rather than the instructor. The course is meant to have us memorize and cram information in our brains rather than approach from an application stand point. Professor Berthet tries very hard to integrate an applicational component, but it is just pushed aside to make room for memorizing topics. The only other critique would be the way slides are prepared. It is often too much text or colors become confusing. I appreciate very much to have an instructor who cares, but information is still taught in a forgettable way.