The coursework is REALLY dense. Every lecture has about 45 slides; and every single slide EITHER has a mountainous amount of text OR a complex diagram. And no matter how minute a detail is… it is fair game to be on the test. There is also no buffer to your grade. Just your discussion quizzes merged with your attendance grade, Tests, and 2% SONA. The weekly Quizzes also Usually have about one or two very specific questions, so it’s difficult to get a 100% each time. This quarter we could drop 3 weekly quizzes (instead of 2) because of the COVID situation. Something important to note is that during midterm week, you STILL have weekly quizzes, so if anything, you have even bigger workload during midterms. AND if you had COVID during one of the other weeks, you *essentially* are forced to “use up” your quiz drops for that week, Meaning that for midterm week Quizzes, you probably had to do well to compensate…
The tests (32q midterm, 35 q final) are all multiple choice, and could be finished in about 40 minutes (although we are given 1.5 hours). Every question is kinda like “you know it or you don’t”, so the test itself goes by pretty quickly although the wording could be better. I’d say about 5 out of the total questions are just so unnecessarily specific. And that’s already 15% of my test grade that I have to Wing.
Now for people who insist on taking the class with Kennedy (just b/c they have to Or b/c they think it won’t be as bad as people say) here are some tips to help alleviate the Pain!
(1) Take a Discussion Section LATER in the week! Please! You don’t want to be burned out from a midterm, then have to take a quiz in the next hour -especially if you haven’t studied at all for the quiz b/c of the midterm…*sweats* -
(2) Study off the Discussion Slides first THEN study the lecture slides. The Discussion Slides pick out the most important concepts and Then that’ll help you piece together what is Actually happening in lecture (lol). As I mentioned before, a lot of this course is memorization, but there is only so much you can memorize if you don’t understand it! So try to understand at least the major concepts.
(3) Study consistently BUT for the nitty gritty stuff, memorize the day of the test. There is quite a bit of the nitty gritty, but don’t prioritize that over the other major concepts.
(4) do the SONA! (Don’t forget the deadline)
(5) Understand the Pathways! Compare and Contrast between the Structures/Pathways and Know what they do! (especially for Midterm 2)

But hey! If there’s any good part about this class is that the final is noncumulative :D Also p.s. Maggie is a good TA! If you don’t understand something, I would go to their office hours.

Kennedy is awful. Just awful. She is rude, condescending, apathetic towards her students, and overall unreasonable. I had to devote so much of my time to this class to barely get an A, and I usually do not leave reviews, but I felt so strongly that I had to warn other students.

Her tests are hard. She has trick questions, explains concepts differently than the TAs, and includes information that wasn't ever included on the slides. Her questions are also vague, and you will need to use the entire time to finish the tests. She has a continual habit of ignoring emails, and on the few she responds to, makes an effort to talk down to students or belittle them for asking about basic course questions. She blames students for the scores instead of her teaching; if her students constantly score failing/ barely passing averages THROUGHOUT THE YEARS, she should do some reflecting on her own teaching and conduct instead of telling the TAs COVID made students lazier - the reviews written during online learning and even before speak more about her.

Being premed makes the class much easier, but I am honestly appalled by the way she treated her students, and I do not even know why UCLA would hire someone who seems to show no interest nor put in any effort into teaching her own students. You need a lot of background knowledge for this class, and even then, you will need to devote the bulk of your time into studying.

I understand that COVID cases are going down, but requiring a doctor's note THE DAY OF the test despite the quarantine period is so unreasonable and was so unfair to students who were exposed to COVID who could not yet test negative but had to quarantine per school guidelines. She backtracks on any promises she makes about listening to her students, and instead blames them for any lapse in judgment on her part. I have never had a teacher that focused so much blame entirely on her students, rather than accepting responsibility for consistently low performances. She seems to not understand that test scores are also a reflection of her teaching. I feel so bad for my classmates who did not get the grade they worked for and now have their futures ruined because of her course. There are better professors out there - take this course during the summer - or get a good therapist if you start her class.

you have 4 or 5 weeks worth of slideshows to memorize that are 50 slides each, but then the midterm/final were only 33/34 questions. I enjoyed the class and the material though so it was fine. lectures were only audiocasted which motivated me to go to class bc she references diagrams and pictures a lot on her slides which is hard to pick up on via audio.

This professor is awful, she was extremely rude and condescending in her responses to student emails. Her lectures we unorganized and she basically read off the slide without further explanation. There was a lot of human error and discrepancies in the quizzes due to the fact that TAs made the questions themselves and often made mistakes. All the exams and quizzes were sequential (could not go backwards) even after all the negative feedback she got from students. The quizzes and exam were proctored online through Respondus which just added unnecessary anxiety for students. She was not accommodating in the slightest for any reason during the pandemic. I highly discourage taking this course with this professor.

Grading Scheme:
Discussion Quizzes 35%
Midterm 32%
Final 33%
Extra Credit: 2 SONA hours (2%), 60% of class completed evals (1%)
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Professor Kennedy:
So each lecture includes a LOT of information, with 50ish slides of material each time. Slides are posted before lecture on CCLE and lectures are audiocasted. Professor Kennedy is an okay lecturer. She somewhat expands on her slides, but for the most part all of the information is there. She explains some images and diagrams though. The material was interesting for me at times, especially for the second half of the class. Sometimes she would misspeak during lecture based off of the correct information on her slides and wouldn't correct herself. Overall she's okay. She's very nice though.
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TA Eric Harvey:
Eric was very nice. He would show these weird and close to random videos before discussion that kind of expanded on the concepts.To be honest I didn't really pay attention in section, so I can't speak too much on his teaching ability. But this quarter we had a lot of Monday holidays so quizzes were postponed and doubled up to the next week. So having to take two quizzes some weeks ate up a lot of time in discussion, leaving not enough room for actually going over content. He would also hand out worksheets once in a while, but again, there wasn't much time for us to actually go through it on our own or finish going over them. But that's not really his fault.
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Discussion Quizzes grade: 34.5/35
Essentially every week you would have a 10-question multiple choice quiz in your section based on the previous week's material. The TA's made their own questions and they were a bit tricky but generally easy to do well on even if you just start studying for it earlier that day. I'd say don't fuck around with the quizzes. There were these two girls in my section that would laugh loudly at all the answers they guessed wrong when my TA went over them after the quizzes. Out of 8 total quizzes, only 7 of the highest grades are counted, each quiz worth 5% of your total grade. So try to do well on them. For me, it helped to condense the lecture notes and study from those.
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Midterm grade: 23/32
So I really underestimated just how much studying I needed to do for these exams. I didn't start studying until literally the night before, so I obviously fucked up. The first part of the class has a lot of structures you need to memorize. There were 32 multiple choice questions. And essentially each question on each of the exams is worth 1% of your grade, so every question counts. She makes the questions quite tricky, so you really have to know your stuff. The grade distribution for the class tells me that most people were also in the same boat as me. It looked like a cut and paste normal distribution with about 3/4 of the class getting a C or lower. I got a 72% and the mean was a 71% (22.8/32). Really, really study.
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Final grade: 31/33
So obviously I realized my errors in studying and started working on the material earlier than last time. It helped that the final was on a Friday, so I started studying on the Tuesday. It was 33 multiple choice questions and each is again literally 1% of your grade. It wasn't cumulative and only covered the last half of the quarter. I pretty much rewrote my typed condensed notes and studied off of those. I think I did so well partly because the material was more interesting to me that the first half contained more structures to memorize. But also because I actually tried to study well. I dunno what the distribution of the scores was because it hasn't been posted yet, but I suspect more people did better than the first one hopefully.
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Extra credit: 3%
So if you complete 2 hours of SONA research studies you can get up to 2% added to your grade. I did it literally during First Week. Just get it out of the way for some easy extra credit. Also near the end of the quarter Kennedy announced that she would offer an additional 1% extra credit if 60% of the class completed professor evaluations. Also another easy thing to do. These really help your grade, especially since your grade is dependent on such few items.
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Overall grade: A-
I think I didn't get the grade I wanted because I really underestimated the class, the breadth of its content, and the amount of studying I needed to do to really master the material enough to test well on it. I'd say to progressively studying throughout the quarter to do well on the exams and quizzes. Alternatively you can also start intensive studying a couple few days before the exam to do well like I did for the final. Whatever you choose, make sure you make as many questions on the quizzes and exams work in your favor.

Professor Kennedy, as someone else said, seems like a kind professor but consistently shows little to no care for student understanding or learning. She was inconsistent in uploading Zoom lectures, even when she was recycling lectures from previous quarters, and her lectures were riddled with contradictory material and information.

Exams were difficult and truly required memorization of every image and word on her slides (each lecture had around 40 slides). Exams are sequential, meaning you can't go back and change test answers once they've been submitted, and the tests were proctored using Respondus.

Quizzes were more straightforward, but I thought it was strange that each was written by your respective TA, meaning the class wasn't tested on the same questions. They were also through Respondus, and they were probably my least favorite part of the class - it took away from discussion time, and my TA had to get through 80 slides worth of material in around 35 minutes because of the time it takes to get through the quiz, log onto the Zoom, and then review the answers at the end.

All in all, this class comes down to brute memorization of a ton of information that hasn't been taught cohesively or in a manner conducive to learning. Needless to say, I would not recommend taking this class with Kennedy.

Do not take this class with Dr. Kennedy. Coming into this course, I did not think it would be too bad as I had already taken Psych 15 (which had some neuroscience) and AP BIO back in high school, but Kennedy failed to realize this was an INTRODUCTORY neuroscience class and expected everyone to understand the course without even bothering to build a foundation first. She talked about her own research during the lectures too- while its all very interesting, she should have focused more on doing her job of teaching. She posted video recordings of her talking over the powerpoint and said everything on the slides could be tested, even things that were mentioned just once throughout the entire quarter. She was rude, condescending, and refused to listen to students, even though we all sent emails asking her to at least reconsider the testing format, which did not let you go back to old answers and used Respondus. I could look past her being a bad teacher, as most researchers focus more on their own research and are forced to teach by the school, but her attitude and refusal to help her own students made this class unbearable.

I think this class was very well organized and Dr. Kennedy was a wonderful professor. I read a lot of bad reviews on BruinWalk about this course before taking it and I actually had a very positive experience learning from Dr. Kennedy this quarter. There was a lot of material to cover and I think it was a hard class, but I do not feel like it was at all unmanageable or that expectations were unfair. The exam questions were worded in a way that made sense, and if there were issues with a quiz or exam question, she resolved it. It definitely isn't always THE MOST engaging of a class and she doesn't knock every single lecture out of the park, but overall I found it to be easy to learn the subject matter itself and there were many resources online to supplement my studying, so it really wasn't so bad.

Based on previous reviews of this class w/ Dr. Kennedy, I was so nervous to take it. However, I was pleasantly surprised w/ how the class went. Dr. Kennedy was very clear about what we were going to be tested on, which made studying soooo much easier. All of her exams & quizzes were based off of the lecture slides directly, and I never even glanced at the textbook once & was able to get A's.
W/ that being said, there are a couple of things I wish I knew before taking the class:
1. It's pretty memorization-heavy. Quizlet became my best friend during this course. I seriously made a Quizlet with pretty much everything on the lecture slides each week, and it saved me through this course.
2. Lectures are audio podcasted. Normally, I would watch lectures after attending them to fill in the blanks.
3. Dr. Kennedy is very receptive to students' questions if they're posted on the BruinLearn discussion forum. She answered every one of my questions thoroughly & in a timely matter.
4. Your grade is solely based on 3, non-cumulative exams & weekly quizzes in discussion section. You are allowed to drop 2 of your lowest-graded quiz scores.
If you're looking for a column A class, I'd take this one. It requires a little bit of time & effort, but it's totally doable.

AVOID KENNEDY AT ALL COSTS.