I just finished OchemII with a 96%, thought I'd share my thoughts since no one in this thread has mentioned that particular class yet.
The class was kind of a joke honestly, I started on March 18th and took the final April 8th. The only reason it was 3 weeks instead of 2 is because they ask that you give a week's notice when you register for the proctored final exam. The content of the class is divided up between 6 modules of spectroscopy and 8 modules of watered down biochemistry. The end of chapter quizzes were almost entirely taken from an old chem webpage from another university, which I only stumbled upon on the 2nd to last quiz because one of the questions was so poorly written I had no idea what the answer was and threw the whole thing into Google.
That being said, the few questions that do come straight from the book are pretty bad, and by that I mean they are scientifically wrong, or at best half-truths. For example, There was a question that asked, "Which of the following changes in a DNA molecule may have no effect on the protein for which it codes?" and changing the first, second, or third base in a codon were all options for the answer (The correct answer was the third base of a codon). I missed this question and tried to reason with the instructor, I tried to explain to her (With examples) that changes in either of the first two codons may also result in no effect on the protein. She told me that I was right, but, "Changes in the third codon will NEVER effect the protein, and that can't be said for the other two," and that is what the question meant. I sent her more examples of changes in the third base of a codon can result in coding for a different amino acid, etc etc, fast forward 12 emails (literally) and it has become abundantly clear that she doesn't actually understand the concept we're discussing. Finally she tells me that if my grade comes down on the line between two grades she'll consider giving me the point. Apparently my percent in the class was going to determine how DNA works.
The final itself was less frustrating than the quizzes, but only because by that point I had figured out that if a question was strange or had strange answers it meant that it came straight from the book and I just had to look up the key terms in the index until I found the right sentence in the chapter. They give you 4 hours to answer 100 multiple choice questions, I think I did it in an hour and a half, and I double checked all but a handful of questions by looking the up. If you have the class slides and the book in front of you when you take the final you should be fine, even if you have to look up every answer. (They claim you won't have time to do that, but if you can take the MCAT with nothing but a pencil and paper in 3.5 hours, you can take this test with all your notes in 4 no problem.)
All this negative aside, I would recommend UNE to anyone who needs to do some grade replacement, it's a REALLY easy A, and if you have time everyday or time every few days and a strong biochem background, you can knock it out in no time flat. I really hope that the negative parts of this class are just due to the fact that the book and instructor for the course were both lacking, because I have heard nothing but good things from the other courses, and am planning on taking a few more to get my GPA up to something competitive.
This has been quite the long post/rant, but if anyone has any specific questions on something I didn't touch, feel free to ask.
