Attendance was mandatory. 30% of the grade came from group projects, in which you do not pick your group. The lectures felt very long and it was hard to stay focussed. An A is achievable, but requires lots of work throughout the quarter. The final was challenging. I would say only take this class if you need to.

I liked the guest lectures, content of the course was pretty cool. The tests were a little difficult for me, but manageable. There are a few group projects. Professor was nice, lecture was not recorded though and attendance is required.

I took CHS 100 as an HBS major elective (had to successfully petition which I did) and because I'm interested in pursuing public health. I found the lectures fairly interesting, but not super engaging in the virtual format. Although we occasionally did breakout rooms and group work, most of the class was listening to the professor give a lecture on material that was often not that challenging to understand and could be understood from just looking at the slides. Class consisted of assigned readings, making weekly discussion posts (for credit), a few group projects (which didn't take too long and were pretty easy), and two midterms (no final). As someone mentioned earlier, the readings were a little heavy at times, but I felt like I could usually get by with skimming and focusing on the main points that were highlighted in the professor's guided reading questions. Exams were overall pretty fair and were open note so weren't too stressful. I didn't love the class, but it definitely covered some public health fundamentals and was pretty easy for an upper div course I could get major credit for.

I personally found this class the most time consuming out of the three I took this quarter. It has waaaay too many readings. Professor Tavrow goes over a lot of information on her slides that we are not even tested on. Pray you get good group members for your three group projects since they can make or break your grade (all together they make up 30% of your total grade). That being said, I do feel like I learned a lot from this class about health in general. I would take this class again, but not stress myself out as much about doing all the readings. As long as you do the ones the TAs tell you to read for both midterms you should be fine.

This class is pretty easy and requires minimal effort. Dr. Tavrow is very nice and accommodating, but to be honest, I found the class incredibly dull. She is not a particularly engaging lecturer. She often had guest lecturers and they were sometimes interesting, sometimes not. Attendance is required but you can definitely get away with just logging onto Zoom and walking away from your computer. Basically, if you want a pretty easy A, take this class, but not if you want something interesting.