PSYC 2160

This was a class that I took my first year and first semester. Me, thinking it was gonna be interesting, soon realized that I hated it, but I decided to stick with it. The first chapter was very interesting and then everything became very boring as the class continued. Don't get me wrong, Professor Long is very smart and very knowledgeable. However, the tests are insanely hard. Even with attending every lecture, taking notes, and reading the textbook, I ended with a very low score and it didn't reflect the amount of work I put in the class. Overall, I would not recommend anyone to take this class unless you are 100 percent interested in it and are willing to do all the work.

This was probably the worst class i've taken at UVA. Although i found the information to be generally interesting, the lectures themselves are super dry and tiringly long. Professor Long is clearly knowledgable, but she's not great at delivering that information to students that are learning it for the first time. The exams are unnecessarily difficult as you have to remember the details of hundreds of studies that she talks about throughout the weeks. There are clicker quizzes, which are helpful a bit grade wise, but they do not reflect the kind of questions that you find on the exams. Overall, I did not enjoy this class at all and would not recommend to anyone.

Do not take this class unless it is absolutely necessary. The exam averages in this class were lower than the exam averages in orgo. Prof Long is way too smart and her exams are impossible. For each question you can select either one or all of the answers and generally every answer is correct but you have to choose the answer that she thinks goes best with the question. Nightmare of a class.

I was one of the few people who liked this course. With course registration around the corner I feel like I should write this review and do Dr. Long some justice because I absolutely loved having her as a professor. Yes, the course was fast-paced, but it's just like any other upper level psych or bio course. The information in the course is really interesting, so learning all of it was not too bothersome. Also, Dr. Long is very passionate, knowledgable, and approachable! She really wants you to do your best and succeed in her class. I recommend going to her office hours or even just going up after class to talk to her. When it comes to the textbook, I never read it (never bought it lol) and it did not hurt me at all. Tests were purely lecture information, the textbook was really there as a supplement, but it wasn't necessary at all. Her lecture presentations are very straightforward, and she posts the slides online after lecture. With that being said, I would definitely attend every lecture and take notes on what she is saying. The slides alone can be a little confusing to understand without her verbal explanations. When it comes to quizzes they were pretty simple. Each one has 4 questions; you take 10 quizzes and you get to drop 5 so it was an easy 20/20. Now here comes the part everyone hates, tests. Tests were not the worst thing in the world. There are 3 of them and Dr. Long is nice enough to drop your worst one. Study efficiently and effectively. She is testing your understanding, analysis, and ability to apply the knowledge in different scenarios. She is NOT testing your memorization skills. Her tests consist of a lot of "select all that apply" type of questions, so you have to be able to see the bigger picture with the information she provides you in lecture. As for the final, it is just like a big midterm. It was cumulative, but there was a big focus on the information covered after the 3rd test. Same type of questions that you see in the midterms, no tricks. Study for it like you would a midterm. This was my favorite class last semester. The information was amazing and Dr. Long is an amazing professor. I recommend any psych major/minor, neuroscience lover, and premed student to take this class.

TL;DR
Yes, this is a 2000 level psych course, but it isn't social psych. Treat it like it is 3000 level.
You don't need the textbook
Attend lecture and take notes
She drops 5/10 quizzes and 1/3 midterms
Midterms test application/understanding and not memorization
Getting an A is very doable!

This course moves at a faster pace than most other 2000-level PSYC courses. When I took the course, grades were determined from short weekly iClicker quizes on material covered in class, and several midterms consisting of both multiple-choice and short answer questions. If you're willing to do the reading, it's a really interesting and engaging course. Prof. Long is extremely knowledgeable, focused in her lectures, and open to receiving feedback from students. There's a lot of memorization required to do well, but that's pretty much to be expected in 2000-level courses that survey the field. Overall, I enjoyed my experience - it wasn't the easiest, but it rewarded engagement with the material.

Professor Long seemed nice enough, but this class was "taught" at a breakneck pace in which random facts and studies were presented on a (dry) powerpoint for 75 minutes. The studies would often lack context, and Dr. Long was never clear as to what aspects of the studies we needed to know and which aspects we did not. Hint, its everything. The quizzes are 5 questions every week and you have 45 seconds to answer them, which makes them easy unless Professor long feels like shes making thing to easy and then puts a question up there that is completely doable, but with need for at least 2 minutes to read over. The exams were never consistent, with the format changing each time, and Dr. Long assigned entire chapters in the syllabus, only to skim through maybe 10 pages of it during lecture, making reading the chapters a huge waste of time. Disappointing class. Moral of the story - never take a brand new class.

This class has its pros and cons. You get very easy points from the clicker questions and even bonus points. But the tests are extremely difficult and for no good reason. It’s very writing heavy and she requires you to memorize each study that is mentioned in lecture, and there are a lot, and know everything about it. She emphasized that the class is focused on studies because the field of cognitive neuroscience is so new, thus there is little evidence to back up the claims presented in the studies, so it would be unfair to test us on them. This is a fair point, but at the end of this class I now feel like I know a bunch about individual studies, but very little about a cohesive topic of cognitive neuroscience.

Oh boy, Cognitive Neuroscience. This class is callous in comparison to other Psychology classes, but I must also say I found it a lot more interesting than most others. This material we learn is fascinating, but unfortunately, the delivery is lackluster. I think it is essential to recognize the fact that Dr. Long is a first-time teacher. That being said, she still was unnecessarily harsh at times. Her first set of lectures before exam one was marred by complaints of how fast she was going. Safe to say, recording lectures was (sadly) my best friend. Her syllabus is 25% Clicker Questions and 75% Exams (three with the final being noncumulative). I found the clicker questions at times stupidly tricky and very pressure-filled, but it is better than all the other Psych classes that are 100% exams. Fortunately, you only need a good grade on five of them. The rest contribute to bonus points which is an excellent incentive that helps with this class. The exams were a beast of their own. Often, these exams were challenging, and they were graded incredibly tough. She supplied a beefy curve to the second one, but that is not to be expected with every exam. This makes it painfully annoying with preparation almost necessary at least four or five days before exams. I found them straightforward, but only after endless hours of studying. Long felt approachable, but also needs to improve her lectures massively as it is borderline impossible to succeed in this class without having much of what she has written down due to the lackluster powerpoints. Overall, this class was fascinating as a subject but needed massive improvement when it comes to lectures and a consistent exam outline. Take if you have an interest in neurobiology or cognitive psych, but avoid if you do not.

I would not recommend taking this class if you do not have to. The class consists of 3 tests and clicker "quizzes" every week. The tests are multiple choice and short answer. The quizzes are not particularly hard and they count the same as a test grade. There are 10 in total but only the 5 highest count and the rest are extra credit. These quizzes can literally save your grade so don't take them lightly. You have to go to lecture to be able to do well in this class. The textbook is way too dense and only the material she covers in lecture is on the exam. However, her lectures are very dry and hard to sit through. That being said, this class is 100% memorization. She lectures based off of experiments and you have to know literally every detail of the experiments to do well on the exams - all of which start to jumble together in your head. There are at least 30 experiments per exam and she could ask you about any one of them in the free response. Overall, this class is very tedious to study for and even if you do study a lot, you still might not know everything.

For reference, I took PSYC 1010 before this course and had some background knowledge of the subject, and I found this course to be pretty challenging. The challenging part of this class comes from the tests. There are 3, each worth 25% of your grade, with the remaining 25% of your grade being your top 5 clicker quizzes (the other 5 are extra credit, up to 5%). This course is so lecture-oriented that I never did any of the textbook readings once I realized she didn't emphasize it. She posts all her lecture slides, but you definitely need to go to lecture to get all of the information that you will be tested on. I don't think she realizes she's regurgitating way too much information for the class to completely follow. The clicker quizzes are every Wednesday, and I never found them to be difficult if I reviewed my previous lectures notes beforehand. Now, the tests. First of all, I understand that since this is a new course and she's a new professor, she is trying to figure out the best way to test the material, so the changing of the format of the tests was fine to me. However, the tests are out of 100 points and ridiculously hard. I only did well on the first one because of my prior knowledge and the other two, I studied very extensively for them, and still found them to be difficult. She expects you to memorize every single detail and all of the experiments that you go over in class. If you want a reference for how many there are for one test, I wrote them all out for the last one and it was over 5 pages front and back. Her short answers are killer and you really need to know your information. Overall, it was an interesting class but I definitely would not want to retake it.

This course is extremely heavy on memorization. You need to know very specific information about many different processes in the brain, as well as specific steps and results of studies that support these processes. There are three exams and weekly iclicker quizzes (each quiz is 5 questions, your lowest 5 are dropped). I found it difficult but not impossible to do well on the iclicker quizzes. The exams were killer. I would go into them after studying for many hours, feeling prepared, and still do poorly. That said, I found the topics super interesting and professor Long is very knowledgable and good at lecturing. I feel like I got a lot out of the class, it's just hard to get a good grade. Not an easy A by any means.

One of the worst psychology classes I have taken at UVA. This class should not be a 2000 level class. There is so much previous knowledge you need for the class. I highly recommend PSYC 1010 or a neuroscience class before taking this class. Professor Long does not care about feedback from her students and makes the exams extremely difficult. Her exams changed each time. On the first exam, there was an essay . On the second exam, there was no essay and 8 short answer questions. On the last exam, we were allowed to choose the short answer questions we could answer. The variability of these exams made it extremely difficult to predict what is on the exams. Professor Long goes through information too quickly in class and simply spits out facts rather than explaining the concepts. I am genuinely interested in the material but the way Professor Long presents the material makes me not want to pursue continuing studies in a neuroscience class. Be warned I would rather take PSYC 2200.

This class is very information intensive. It moves at a relatively quick pace and is mostly memorization. The content is interesting but there is just a lot of it. There are a lot of specific studies to memorize as opposed to just pure vocabulary and concepts. The textbook can help in understanding topics that you missed in class but the chapters are very long and the reading is not needed to pass the tests. Professor Long is very knowledgeable but dumps a lot of information on you quickly every class which a lot of times does not allow you to process the information. Overall, I would only take this class if you have an interest in neuroscience.

This course is extremely misleading. It says it is a 2160 class, yet the difficulty is much higher. Professor Long goes at a fast pace through the lectures and you are struggling to type everything she is saying every class. I took this class thinking it would be a psych class, as it was under psych 2160, but it more bio and neuro material and it's very dense. The textbook is even denser and difficult to read and most people don't do it. Long is extremely knowledgeable about the topic, as she talks about her studies in the class, but she doesn't seem to understand that this is supposed to be an easier class than how she is speeding through the material. The tests are not cumulative, which is nice, but they include tiny details that she flies through during lecture and there is lots of writing about studies and there are so many of them. If you like a notes-dense, memorization-heavy, studies-filled class, take this, otherwise don't bother.

I wouldn't take this if you don't have to. Rating it as a 2000 level course is kind of misleading as its a pretty difficult course. Prof. Long is clearly knowledgeable about the topics and is always willing to provide good answers to questions even in a good lecture, but she flies through the material during the lectures. You almost feel like she presupposes a good amount of knowledge about the material and that the lecture is more of just a recap. You don't need to do the textbook readings to do well which is nice because the chapters are like 60 pages long. The weekly quizzes are generally easy, but we had a few quizzes where she counted questions that only 25% of the class got right which was frustrating. If you're into biology definitely take it, but it is definitely more bio than psych.

The course subject for this class is very interesting, but Professor Long is an inexperienced professor and it shows. The class is almost fully made up of studies and theories about cognitive neuroscience, and it moves very quickly. Even the smallest detail could be on the exam, which is made up of extensive writing. The course topics are very disorganized. The iClicker quizzes are not difficult and you can get bonus points through those, so that's a plus. I do enjoy the topics we learn in this class, but I just think the class itself is not characteristic of a typical psych intro class in its difficulty and speed.

I really enjoyed this class. Professor Long is knowledgable on the topics that she teaches and a very clear lecturer. There are weekly quizzes but only five of the highest grades count and the rest are extra credit. There are 3 exams and none of them are cumulative and they're all pretty straight-forward. As long as you come to class you can get a good grade. The textbook reading, though . it helps solidify understanding, isn't necessary for a good grade. This class is definitely one of the easier ones to satisfy the neuroscience requirement for cognitive science and it's super interesting.