BIOL 3000

I took this course in Spring 2023 as a first year. I personally loved it! I don't truly understand why the reviews for Keith are so bad. I think his lectures are super straightforward and make a lot of sense. Although I ended up with an A in the class, I think it was due to the fact that Cell was my main focus the entire semester. I also studied for cell practically every single day and attended every single one of his group office hours, which I highly recommend, and never missed a lecture. Keith is very good at explaining things and is also very fair and reasonable. I found his exam questions to be a range from very easy simple fact recitation to difficult reasoning/application questions. However, I think all the questions he asked were valid, even if somewhat annoying sometimes (ex. I got a question wrong because I didn't notice that he had made something plural rather than singular) and if you know your stuff, you will be okay. Do the practice questions after every lecture, before discussion (which I also recommend going to and not missing)! Reading the textbook is useful enough, but I think his lectures provided a good base for the readings. I did the readings before every lecture for the first 3 exams and took notes, but I found that was unnecessary and a big waste of time. For the last exam, I tried doing the readings after the lectures and found that to be more helpful. I also stopped taking detailed notes on the readings. Overall, I loved this class despite the difficulty. Just make sure you pay attention, ask questions in office hours, do the practice questions, do the readings for deeper understanding, and you will be fine. I found Keith to be a funny and genuinely nice/helpful guy, even if he is a character. Good luck, you got this!

Kozminski’s lectures are very passionate and very clear. He is extremely kind and open to answer questions/reexplain things (after class). The fact that the lectures are so good makes the grading system suck even more because you have constant anxiety over the next exam instead of being able to pay attention in class. The 3rd and 4th exams especially are information overload, with way way too many topics on them at once. The grade breakdown is fair though, since you only need about a 75% in the class to get a B. As long as you go in understanding you probably will not get an A, the class gets much better. Definitely a course where you will struggle if you care more about your grade than the content you’re learning. Regardless I still think there needed to either be 5 exams or some kind of extra buffer to your grade or both.