One of the worst professors/TA's I've EVER had. Lectures are boring and long and not engaging at all. You basically have to teach yourself everything. She gives weekly quizzes that are about 22 questions but only gives 20 minutes for you to complete them, and the questions are very long and complicated. For our discussion section, my TA was not helpful at all. The TA or the professor does not grade your essays. They are graded by some random "grader" who is soooooo harsh and will take points off for absolutely anything. You meet once a week for your discussion section, but you do not review any of the week's readings. You are put into breakout groups and are assigned some stupid group work that you don't really learn anything from. I had to make this class a Pass/No pass because there was no way I would get anything higher than a C. considering this course is a lower division course, it is much harder than it needs to be, and if you need to take this course and you have other options available please do yourself a favor and don't take this course with this professor.

I know it is hard to make a lecture engaging and fun especially during the covid pandemic; however, this class is really boring that the lecture is basically just the repeat of the material from the textbook. And that the lectures are about more than an hour long, with 2 to 3 lecture videos per week. Every week we will need to attend the discussion section with TA and basically, we were just there to complete the assigned group memo by being assigned to different breakout rooms. You will never know which group members you'll get. I had some bad times during the groupwork where everyone just mute and turn off their camera and I ended up doing the work for the entire group. I feel like this is something the course has to be improved so that everyone deserves their grades based on the efforts they made. Other assignments include mini projects (2 pages), weekly lecture discussion response, and chapter quizzes. I would say the chapter quizzes are very hard especially if you are a slow reader. There were usually 20 questions and given only 25 minutes to complete, which is kind of challenging to me especially since many of them were scenario-based. Overall, this class is doable and the grading was ok...but I wouldn't say I have enjoyed it.

This class is difficult in the COVID-19 environment, especially because your TA is not always the one to grade your assignments. However, the professor was willing to make multiple accomodations for grading that seemed too harsh and provide grade bumps for the midterm. It is just a typical research methods class that is less-enjoyable over the internet

Overall Vibe: I think the current reviews of Dr. Yu are extremely harsh. The class was totally fine, and there's no reason to "stay away" from her as a professor. The material is dry, but that's the nature of the class. You are signing up for social science research methods, so social science research methods you will get! The class was super lecture-content heavy and there is a lot of information packed into the quarter. I attended every single lecture and took thorough notes, but definitely should've studied more given the amount of info covered. If you do not attend/pay attention in lecture for this class you will have a very hard time. All this being said, I actually learned a lot in the course and would 100% take again with Dr. Yu. She presented and broke down many important methodologies and gave a solid foundation for us to move into future social science courses. Unlike some other reviewers suggest, I personally did not have issues with her clarity or understanding her speaking style.

Exams: There were 2 exams (1 midterm, 1 final) each was all multiple choice, in-person, closed-book. They were a bit challenging, but not unreasonably so in my opinion. I got raw scores of Bs on both exams (average of ~83%), but I didn't study particularly hard for them. I think I would've scored better had I spent more time studying and utilized my TA's office hours for additional test prep. The score distribution was surprising-- people on average did pretty poorly on the exams (I'm guessing because people simply didn't come to class). But on both exams there were a few students who got perfect scores, so certainly it is possible if you put in some effort. I thought my exam grades were fair for my level of effort. Due to the unfavorable grade distribution, Dr. Yu implemented a 10% curve for both exams. So with the curve my exam scores were: 84% --> 94% (midterm) and 82% --> 92% (final). Treat this like an AP history-style course in terms of studying and note-taking and you will be fine.

Readings: There was a textbook, but I basically never read it. Her lecture slides cover everything important from the textbooks. But if you aren't going to read, you MUST attend lecture.

Papers: There were a few written assignments introduced and graded by the T.A.s. They gave us time to work on these in class. There were two "mini-projects" which were ~5 page double-spaced papers that helped you understand two concepts: 1. spuriousness in media and 2. coming up with "good" and feasible research questions. Then there was a larger final paper (mine was ~11 pages of content and ~2 pages of references) which was a research project proposal. Completing this proposal was very helpful to me personally. I actually submitted it to the Sociology dept's senior honors thesis program and was accepted into the program. It's great to use as a writing sample or as a roadmap for how to write thorough future research proposals. All these were reasonably graded, and my T.A. provided helpful feedback.

Participation: Participation is graded for both lecture AND discussion section (T.A.s took role at beginning of each class). So, you must attend BOTH to receive full participation credit. Participation is graded in class via iClicker questions. I actually thought the iClicker was a super helpful way to reinforce new concepts, and the questions were structured very similarly to exam questions. If you missed a few iClicker questions due to technical difficulty, being in the bathroom when it was asked, etc. it did not hurt your grade and neither did the accuracy of your answers-- Dr. Yu just looked at your average overall participation in the iClicker questions to assess your lecture participation grade.

Additional Advice: You really do need to study for this class, and if you are not a strong writer you should get extra support and feedback from your T.A. BEFORE you submit your papers (not doing so seemed to be the downfall of some of my classmates' grades). Furthermore, I would not recommend this class to someone looking for a fun GE! This isn't that. But if it is required for you, or you're generally interesting in social science research, you will come away feeling you learned quite a lot and have a strong foundational understanding of the methodologies and practices covered by Dr. Yu.

Key Takeaways:
-Neither the professor nor the class is as bad as people say it is
-This will build a strong foundation for your future research endeavors
-This is NOT A FUN GE! So look elsewhere if that's what you want
-There are NO weekly quizzes anymore (seems like this was the case in the past)
-Would recommend this professor to any mildly academically motivated students. We are at UCLA after all, not sure why everyone is so obsessed with finding classes where you have to do 0 work.
-You CAN do well in this class!!

Lectures are very boring and word for word taken from the textbook. However the exams are pretty easy if you study the vocab and understand it and she adds points to everyones score (don't know if that counts as a curve). There are 2 mini-projects which are just one page essays that are pretty straight-forward and easy (also if you have a TA who isn't too strict). One final paper that is a research proposal that is ok, I personally didn't do too great on it, but the previous assignments cushioned my grade. I really think the material itself is easy, and as long as you have a good TA you should be fine.

Honestly, I should have listened to the previous reviews for this professor and never taken this course with her. The lectures are long, boring, and unclear. You practically have to teach yourself the material because they are so unhelpful. The professor expects way too much for this class, especially considering that it's an intro course. The weekly quizzes are unreasonably timed. The mini-projects are graded out of 95, although your grade is still out of 100. Essentially, you miss 5 points right off the bat. For example, if you miss 6 points on the mini-project, that's an 89/100. Dumb, I know. I could probably keep going about how much I regret taking this class, but you get the memo. Spare yourselves and choose any other professor for the course. She will practically ruin any bit of passion or interest you had in Sociology.

Take these reviews with a grain of salt. This class was not that bad and I finished with an A+. This class consisted of weekly chapter quizzes, weekly discussion posts, weekly "mini projects" in discussion, a midterm, and a final research proposal. While the lectures could get pretty boring (they were recorded and posted weekly), as long as you read from the textbook and take notes on that you will do fine on the weekly quizzes. The weekly quizzes are more conceptual based and not many of the answers can be found directly in the textbook (she will give scenarios and ask you to apply concepts).
The only real complaint I have about this class are the mini projects. During discussion every week we would either work independently on a mini project which was due 3 days after discussion or work in a breakout room together with about 4-5 other students on a project. I found these group projects highly frustrating as I always ended up being the only person working on the project. You only had the hour of discussion to complete it and I often found myself doing the whole thing (it's impossible to get people to participate who turn their camera/mic off on zoom). These were graded fairly, but I guess there was one TA who graded really harsh (I think his name was Zep). The midterm was fine, it was basically a longer version of the weekly quizzes. The research proposal was very easy for me because I was taking a class in which I had to conduct a research project so I was already familiar with it. Furthermore, it's only like 5 pages and its only a proposal so you don't actually have to conduct any research.
At the end of the quarter the professor dropped our lowest quiz score but only because a large group of students sent emails to complain to her about their grades.

If you put in the work and take notes you will be fine in this class.