Went to every lecture, took detailed notes, memorized a truckload of useless stats/details and got a B? It's the format of his test that makes everything so confusing and frustrating. He also doesn't even base his test questions on the emphasized details and the extra information (not in the uploaded slides) given in the lectures. He was really frustrated about his students not showing up to the lectures, but he made those lectures pointless and purposeless for his test anyways. Here's a breakdown of this quarter's grade distribution:
A+ ~1%
A ~7%
B+ ~3%
B ~66%
B- ~11%
C ~10%
C- ~1%
Long story short, he thinks his students don't do well on his tests, because they are too lazy to attend the lectures and study for the exams. So, he throws out a bunch of B's and tells his students to not complain about their grades and instead be "nice to your professor." This class is not worth your time and stress!

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!!! I had to take this class because I am a public health minor but if you’re just looking for a G.E please do yourself a favor and do not take this class with Detels. Professor Detels has to be the worst professor I’ve had due to his way of grading and giving exams. He would cancel his office hours regularly, wouldn’t host review sessions and expected you to memorize over 150+ slides every lecture for his stupid hard exams. The exams were confusing and unclear. His slides were not helpful as they would deter you from the right answers and contradict the facts he would give. I tried really hard in this class, went to almost every 8am lecture and still got a B. Only about 7% got an A in his class. He is a bad professor.

I feel like this class could have been structured in a better way. The lectures were indeed interesting, and there were a wide variety of topics covered, but having students memorize over 50+ details per lecture leading up to a final that is your entire grade does not make any sense. As mentioned in the previous review by one of my peers, only 7% of the class received an A, and the heavy proportion of the class fell in the B-C range. This class does not test on your knowledge of public health - it tests on your knowledge of how much statistics, information, and facts you can memorize before the big final. On top of that, each "fact" that you had to know was very time-consuming to confirm, because there are multiple diagrams and charts that could lead to a different assumption of the statement (aka, not a clear answer).
During the midterm/final, each question legitimately had answers like "all of the above" or "a and b," which is very confusing for most who can think differently about each question. Overall, I would not recommend this class to anyone who is trying to take an easy GE. Not worth your efforts or your time for a final that is worth your entire grade. I took this class in hopes of learning more about my major (HBS), but I ended up stressing and learning nothing but facts. Good luck!

If you love yourself... DO NOT take this class, especially not with Roger Detels. He has got to be the worst professor I’ve encountered at UCLA, he doesn’t care for his students success and makes your final exam your final grade. His slides consist of boring facts and confusing diagrams, and most lectures will be around 150+ slides. I worked so hard for this class trying to memorize every little detail and fact, and even attended every lecture... I still ended up with a B and so did about 80% of the class. His test were so confusing and left you doubting yourself since most were a&b questions and all of the above, which left a lot of room for doubt. The professor is also borderline racist and just insensitive to a lot of topics. He preaches “be kind to your professor” but clearly has 0 respect for students since he offered 0 extra support. He truly ruined Christmas for a lot of people.

Nothing much to say...my experience has been an ABSOLUTE JOKE. While I am a human bio pre-med and I excel in almost every other class that I have taken, I barely got a B+ after putting in 110% effort. This class' s structure is not intended for proactive learning or critical thinking, and your grade will be completely based on how well you can memorize useless and minor statistics and terminologies before the exams. The process involves little to no learning as the entire class will just be trying to memorize slide contents and papers with zero learning engagement. The lectures are mediocre at best, but the professor sometimes makes racist statements, whether intentionally or not.

If you are an expert at short-term memory and have the confidence to memorize useless detailed content better than 93% of the class, you will walk away with an A. If not, good luck to your GPA. I am not the best when it comes to brutal memorization, so I put in countless hours into preparing for the exams and ended up with a B+ despite being among the top 12% of the class. It may even ruin my chances of getting into med school. I truly hope that no one attends the class one day so that it will get canceled. This class is a shame to a school with many intelligent young talents.

I was told by departmental counselors to take this class cause it would be "interesting and easy". Maybe this class would be interesting to you if you enjoy memorizing literally hundreds of power point slides and useless statistics. And even if you do go through a billion slides and charts, and think "Okay, I can narrow this down, this stuff seems important, I'll focus on this", it's not; the tests are completely unfair and confusing, and the entire time you'll be asking yourself why you'll ever need to know the exact number of how many teaspoons of sugar you should eat day, or whether the UK or Australia has more physicians per 1000 people. I took multiple other difficult STEM courses along with this course, yet this class will be my worst grade because the class is not based upon critical-thinking, it's based on how well you can rub a cheese grater on your forehead.

I loved professor Detels so much! He was a super sweet old man with so much experience. The class context was also interesting.

BUUUUT the test and class curve was trash. You would think the test would focus on overarching themes since it supposed to be about public health, but instead the tests focused on obscure details and stats. He gave 200/300 students B's and only 25 people As. No A-'s
Furthermore, the final is your ENTIRE grade, unless you did better on the midterm than the final is 77.77% of your grade and the midterm is 33.333%

I'm very upset because I did not need this class. I just thought it would be interesting. I did very well on the midterm, but got B- on the final. Also, there were a few questions that he gave the wrong answer on the key the midterm and he put them again on the final. I asked which answer they wanted for these, the one on the answer key or the correct answer. They told me they could not tell me... Also you cannot dispute any of the answer key for the final. This is my worst grade so far and I did not even need to take it.

this class is the worst. I signed up for this as an elective since I have heard good things about it but oh my god I am regretting taking this stupid useless class. more than 1800 powerpoint slides with all useless statistic informations that you need to study and memorize. not that which I did, but the exam is hard and tricky.
the curve is really bad 66% gets B which means either if you get 72% or 82% you end up with. the same grade. only 7% gets A.
I am a premed and this class was just something I regret taking because it ruined my GPA for nothing, not a major clsss and not even seems a hard class, but it is because the professor does not want to give A. also there its no A- at all.
wished I took something else.

The class was based on a midterm and final. I took this class for an easy upper div class because this class was supposed to be an easy a class but it wasn't. Only about 7% of people got an A in the class, and the exams were confusing and had way too many specific questions as well as confusing answer choices. I felt like each question had an all of the above as a choice, as well as multiple choices correct, which as you can imagine can mess with your mind during the tests. Each lecture had like 125 pointless graphs for lecture slides and I felt like I learned nothing at all and was just seeing a bunch of pointless data not really knowing what is important for the test or not. I don't recommend this class at all, maybe its better with another professor.

My only B grade at UCLA. The professor gave practice tests that seemed fair for the material we had to study. When we actually got to the tests it seemed that he tried so hard to create new questions that the tests were way harder than previous years and were based on information that you wouldn't expect to have to memorize from the slides. Guest speakers were interesting and Detels had interesting stories but the tests were completely irrelevant and unnecessarily difficult. No graduate students who took the course this quarter received an A, and a majority of the class received a B. He messed up my transcript, especially as someone hoping to get into graduate school. Also, he made some racist remarks during the quarter. I don't recommend taking his class as it seems to be way harder than previous years.