I honestly loved Dr. Schein. He is one of the most concerned professors at UCLA when it comes to him wanting ALL of his students to succeed. Dr. Schein has 4+ hours of office hours EACH WEEK where he uses the time to ask and answer questions (very very helpful) Dr. Schein also emphasizes the importance of not memorizing. This may be a little tough at first, but trust me DON'T MEMORIZE! Sure it will help you on some of the questions on the test, but when you open a practice MCAT book and find similar questions (which you will) you will be able to answer the questions better if you had not memorized, but learned concepts. Overall, Dr. Schein is an amazing professor and I would recommend anyone who is serious about getting a high score in the biology section of the MCAT to take this professor and actually learn the material.

Things I liked about the course:
Professor Schein's enthusiasm for the material was contagious, and made it a pleasure to go to class. He did his best to keep the lectures engaging and his slides were very interesting. He also made an effort to connect the material to real life applications, and I liked the emphasis on understanding the material as opposed to memorization. He cares about his students learning and makes himself extremely accessible. He's also quite humorous on occasion. Also, I found his curve to be very generous.

Things that can be improved on:
Although in class, he emphasized that understanding the material was more important than memorization, random details would show up on the exams. It was impossible to get these questions right unless you memorized lecture slides. As a result, I found his advice to be misleading.

I disliked how he would constantly go over class time, and then sometimes call out, or prevent students from leaving. It bothered me even more because he would waste a lot of class time by making us stand up and stretch and then go over time. I also disliked how he failed to finish lecturing on the last chapter of the course, and we were tested on it anyway.

If I could give this professor one pointer, it would be to use the class time more wisely- then maybe, he would not constantly go over the given 50 minutes, and be able to finish the course material. Overall, I would recommend Professor Schein. I had a good experience with him and he definitely has passion and sympathy for students that you will be hard pressed to find in other professors at UCLA.

115:
if you are a psych major needing to fulfill the 110/115/120a/120b, i highly suggest you dont take 115! but if you do end up taking 115 with this professor:

he has a 30/30/30 grade curving basis meaning he hands out A's to 30% of the class B's to 30% C's to 30%...
if you take this class and have a tight schedule or are a student who is working i highly suggest you dont take this class. 2 of the midterms are in the evening 7-9pm & you also have to go to a required movie viewing for 5 pts (completely unrelated to the course material).
he always lectures 3-4 minutes past the class time.

Class is a lot of material but very doable. He curves so don't worry too much. As long as you get over 85 on the tests, you should get an A / A-.

Study hard on the tests. Read the lectures and memorize only the lectures.
Book helps for clicker questions. For clicker questions, if you have the powerpoints printed out, look a couple of pages ahead and sometimes, the answer to the clicker question comes up.

Also, he makes you read a whole other book on top of the endless amount of crap u gotta do for this class..

No one likes to read every single review so I'll just put the basics.

1. It is LS after all, so just memorize all the slides, INCLUDING details like when civilization began and diameter of eukaryote and you will do well.

2. As a person, he is absolutely the most annoying human being I have EVER encountered. He will treat you like a kid and make everyone repeat things in class, like the word diffusion.

3. There are clicker points BASED ON CORRECT ANSWERS so you will have to go to class.

4. An Inconvenient Truth is MANDATORY and will be on the final (random statistics like what percept of scientific journals believed in global warming or the Greenland thing that someone mentioned).

5. LS89 Honors is VERY easy. You may have to present in discussion, but you can just say you don't understand because chances are you don't.

6. Midterms and Finals (basically a midterm) are all from slides, maybe a few from Life Ascending, but none are from book. Final has Inconvenient Truth.

7. There are section quizzes so you have to go to those too and these can save or break your grades depending on TA.

***This is the most important recommendation: if you read through the other reviews, which I did before the class, there are some posts that complain about his ridiculous midterm questions. READ them because he uses them again. I got at least 2 questions per midterm right because of other reviews. I tried giving you a few but read them.

Took Psychology 115 Fall 2011.
( did not find 115 in the course list, but I had to choose one. Just ignore where it says LS2)

To begin with, you should not even be here. Bruin walk is poor indicator of how a class actually is. Anyone taking science classes should already understand why that is.

That having been said, I found Schein and his class to be excellent. 115 is not necessarily an easy class, and the material can be challenging, so I'm not saying it will be an easy A. What I'm saying is that this is one of your best opportunities to master difficult material. A lot of other professors lecture on what they please and leave it up to the students to make sense of the textbook on their own.

Schein actually gives overview lectures which prepare you to really understand the material in the text. You don't need to worry about some artificial ratio of questions from text vs. questions from lecture. The whole class is extremely well integrated, and really geared towards helping the student to really understand the material. Slides are posted and lectures are podcast for review.

Also, the class has tons of graded material spread along the quarter, in addition to the exams. A quiz in section every week, 2 clicker questions every class, a (short)paper, etc. This may sound daunting, but is actually very helpful. None of it is busy-work, nor is it even very labor intensive, but it actually tests the assigned material. If you are a lazy reader (like I am) this class will make you read and keep up with your reading. Once exams came around they weren't even that stressful because by then I knew the material and there was no cramming, because the constant trickle of graded material had forced me to keep up.

The exams are kinda hard, but no more so than in any other Psych class. Plus, it's all on a curve anyway. I believe (I cant swear to this) that as many as the top 30% of our class got an A's and the next 30% got B's, so the curve is very fair.

If, like me, you're a lazy reader and a procrastinator, or if you find biopsych intimidating, take Psych115 with Schein. It will pay off.

My grade: A- (or it may have been a solid A, I can't remember)