UC Berkeley Extension Professors

[MSJC]

Hi, has anyone taken any of the following classes with these professors at UCBX?

Intro. to Human Physiology - Lawrence Basso
Organic Chemistry I - Jay Parrish
Medical Microbiology - Nidhi Ahuja

Would love to hear some opinions on the teaching style and effectiveness of these professors, what your experience was like, and how the grade distribution worked out! Feel free to PM me too Thanks so much!

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[asdfghk]

Its probably too late, but DO NOT TAKE ANY CLASS BY NIDHI AHUJA..... DO NOT DO IT! Your GPA will be messed up because you will most likely fail. How can a college keep a class like this going? I bet the attrition rate is less than 25% for her classes.... at least her online classes.

 

[Apostatic]

I agree with asdfghk--I took Dr. Ahuja for a UCBX course and absolutely regretted it. She is without a doubt the worst professor I have ever had. It's honestly surprising that the course is even accredited.

 

[GreatAdviceForPass]

What's wrong with it?

check out ratemyprofessor.com
Most professros from there don't seem to have good feedbacks.
Remember you need A's to get into med school. Choose wisely before wasting time and money and regretting.

 

[jazzmetal]

Are the professors for UCBX different than the professors at UCB?

Yes.
I've taken a bunch of UCBX courses now (and was a Cal undergrad) - happy to answer other specific questions on the program. OP, feel free to PM me if you're still looking for info on the professors you list. I can speak to a couple of them.

 

[macdavis22]

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[asdfghk]

Hey, Im currently taking UC berkeley medical microbiology.... I completely agree and wish I had seen this forum before I enrolled. I was wondering if you would be willing to give me some insight into what she expects for the final? Not questions of course, but if the layout is similar to the quizzes/hw assignments or if she just pulls random material for the final. Thanks so much in advance!

Layout is just like midterm. Random, essay questions. If you do not know the book inside and out you will fail. The questions are vague and general. She expects you know the smallest details or she will take off 10-15 points for not telling her that "the DNA wrappes around histones" when her question was "how does DNA replicate". If you can take it somewhere else, just drop now.

 

[macdavis22]

Layout is just like midterm. Random, essay questions. If you do not know the book inside and out you will fail. The questions are vague and general. She expects you know the smallest details or she will take off 10-15 points for not telling her that "the DNA wrappes around histones" when her question was "how does DNA replicate". If you can take it somewhere else, just drop now.

Thanks a lot! I am just over halfway thru so Ill see how it goes the next few weeks... I wish I had dropped sooner.

 

[Mike Dacre]

I don't know about Lawrence Basso or Nidhi Ahuja, but Jay Parrish is the best professor I have ever had. He is not a hard grader, but more importantly, he really loves the subject and wants you to learn what is really important. He explains clearly, he answers questions, and is very engaged. If you want to do well in organic chemistry, I can honestly not recommend him strongly enough, he is absolutely fantastic.

UCBX is very variable in teacher quality sadly. Jay was amazing, and my Physics I professor Violeta Grigorescu was phenomenal. However, she had to drop out of teaching for a semester and we got a different professor for physics II: Minhua Zhu. She was honestly the worst professor I have ever had. I HATED her classes, and I learned absolutely nothing. I just dropped it, so I will have to take Physics II again later. I kept going with the lab though, my physics lab prof was great, the chem lab prof was so-so.

So definitely search for your profs before you sign up at UCBX, they are not UC Berkeley professors (Jay is a pharma guy with Gilead) and some of them (e.g. Jay) are absolutely amazing, and others are absolutely terrible. One last note: I just barely scraped an A for Physics I, it was so hard, but I learned it amazingly well, so I was helping to teach other students in my lab section... and then I learned that they were getting easy As in their lectures, despite not knowing the material at all! I still got my A and learned enough to make the MCAT easy, but it still irked me a bit to realize just how heterogenous grading at UCBX is.

Anyway, in summary, be careful, but definitely take Jay's class, it is truly fantastic.