MCDB 50 was a very interesting class. I genuinely enjoyed the material and learned a ton about these issues. I felt, however, that Professor Lee was one of the worst professors that I've had at UCLA. This is not me being biased against her because of a bad grade in the class––I received an A+. What I felt was the problem was this: with the amount of money that each of us pays to attend UCLA, I felt that very little time or effort was put in by Dr. Lee to make sure we succeeded. To start, for the midterm and final, you will not be given any practice exams, any study guide, or any other direction other than "study the lecture slides." I felt that this was very inappropriate considering the amount of detailed information we covered. I understand that it should be independent studying, but a general outline of the issues that she felt were important to look at would've been more helpful. On top of that, she instructs the entire class to create a 30 minute movie at the end of the quarter (in the weeks leading up to finals week, might I add) which I thought was a complete waste of time. With a class that large, a handful of students are bound to take on the vast majority of the workload, and I was unfortunately one of those students. It did not enhance my learning or understanding of the class in any way, shape, or form, and nearly every other member the class who I talked to felt this way. It really did feel like one of those high school projects that is just assigned as busy work, and especially during finals week it became very stressful. Imagine trying to coordinate filming schedules with 70 students in your class, and you can understand why this would be problematic, If you're very interested in MCDB, then take the class. The lectures are very well put together. If you're on the fence, or this class is not a major requirement, don't waste your time.

Yes, this class is a fair amount of work; however, the knowledge that you gain from this class is remarkable. I am also taking MCDB 104BL and I have learned so much about research from Dr. Lee. If you want something out of your degree, take this class.

Took Winter 2021. Ridiculous workload. I would spend hours upon hours every week doing the lab write ups which were nitpicked by the TA. Idk if all the TAs we're as nitpicky as Keziah (she sounded like the hardest based on our class groupme) but you would lose points for the slightest of errors. Rubrics for the assignments were also vague making them hard to do and then they tell you common mistakes on assignments after you hand them in which is super unhelpful and unnecessarily stressful. Grading was also super slow. It wasn't until week 10 that ppls grades from week 5 were submitted making it hard to fix mistakes. During our weekly assignment quizzes, there was one question that literally 100% of the class got wrong and the prof didn't remove it. I will say that at least the prof and TAs are clear in the prerecorded lectures and lab time, but as I said before, they're incredibly vague when it comes to the rubric for things which are turned in.

I will preface this review with this statement: this class is not curved, tough and requires a lot of studying.

Professor Lee is great; she was very helpful and made it clear to the class that she was available to meet and gave appropriate times. The lecture slides were sometimes hard to follow, and she would often brush over experimental techniques, assuming that we know what they are.

The exams are long and very time-constrained. You MUST know all experimental techniques before her exams if you want to do well. However, she did give plenty of bonus points on the exams (15% bonus points for both midterms and 20% bonus points on the final) to cushion your grade and boost you up. There is a presentation that must be done on a research paper that everyone has to do in discussion, but it wasn't too bad.

Overall, a very fair class. The TA was extremely helpful and made this class a little more doable.