There's no doubt that this is one of the hardest courses I have taken as a neuroscience major. There is just a lot of information and you really need to understand how everything works very well in order to be able to apply your knowledge. I feel like the exams were pretty fair, you just really need to allocate a lot of time to studying. But the information is very important and applicable and I enjoyed how he talked a lot about the experiments that established our knowledge of biology. The lectures are not recorded and I honestly dont know how people get by without going. The homework questions are very helpful though. #tCFS25

If you get a choice, take this class with Koz. He is a great lecturer, talking slowly so you can get your notes down and cracking jokes in the middle of the lecture. However, he doesn't record lectures so you have to record them yourself. This guy is a walking book of knowledge as well, and he is very helpful in office hours. However, your whole grade in the class is based on 4 exams, which kinda sucks. Additionally, they are very difficult to get over an 80 on if you do not fully know the content- there's a lot of good answer choices. I felt all of the exams were fair and there was nothing super nit-picky on them. The final is not cumulative, though, and there is enough leeway that if you do badly on one you can come back from it. Cell is a hard class, but if you take it with Koz it will be much more enjoyable.

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.

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!

I originally took this course with Wormington and had to retake with Kozminski. Plus, Wormington subbed for Koz for a couple of weeks when I took it. Therefore I think I have a good feel for both professors. I personally liked Koz wayyy better. Some may say his lectures are a bit more dry/boring but that's exactly what made them so much easier to follow. He talks very slowly and simply and so it is easier to keep up and take notes. He also doesn't use as much biological jargon as Worm. I am not a strong biology student, so this was helpful. For example, every time Koz said "apoptosis" he would follow it with "programmed cell death" so if someone forgot what that meant, he literally told you. I didn't study as much for the exams, but I did religiously attend lecture and re-listened to lectures, never opened the textbook, and still ended with a B!

*** Both professors are nice and seemed to care about their students. Worm was super helpful in office hours. However I think his lectures are harder to follow.

BIG TIP: Always ATTEND lecture. It sucks waking up for a MWF 9am but this will save you. Record the lectures yourself. Koz does not record them himself, and fellow students SOO gatekeep sharing/sending them. During class, quickly write down the time stamp of any parts you missed while taking notes, and when you re-listen to the lecture ONLY re-listen to these parts. This will save SO much time. Re-listening to an entire 50min can take multiple hours, and you WILL get behind.

Koz has no homework, but personally I disliked having to submit homework for Worm THREE times a week. It was exhausting!! Koz still gives take home questions so you still get practice.

Coming from someone who had to retake, 3000 really is not that bad if you just go to lecture and pay attention - that's it! You got this!!!

Cell Bio is a beast of a course. The material is complex and demands much more of you than intro bio. However, I would say that it is pretty fair with Kozminski. He is a decent lecturer (although I personally preferred Wormington's style when he had to step in for Koz while he was out) and is fair with his expectations. It IS upper-level biology after all, it will be very challenging no matter who teaches it. Maybe it would've been better with Wormington, idk, but it still would've been challenging either way. I finished the course with an A and did it alongside orgo (with only AP Bio credits, i didn't take the intro bio series), and I found it mostly manageable. Koz's grading system is straightforward, with a slight curve built into it. Usually around 85% is an A, and he was nice and lowered the thresholds at the end. But he isn't transparent at the beginning with how pluses and minuses are assigned which is annoying. I say go for it with Kozminski!

Some tips for success:

~Koz doesn't give homework, which means that ALL of your grade is exams, which is definitely very daunting. Be prepared to study for many hours and blankly stare at questions having no idea how to answer them. His "take-home" questions give a decent idea of how he asks test questions (especially the ones where you have to interpret data). DO EVERY TAKE HOME QUESTION and discuss them with friends, you can fill in each others' gaps in knowledge.

~STUDY EVERY SLIDE RELIGIOUSLY. Study and memorize each and every diagram and biochemical pathway. ESPECIALLY the secretory pathway, you have a whole exam on that. Know what each protein/enzyme does and what would happen if it were not working or working overactively (he loves these kinds of questions!).

~Don't worry about the textbook. He assigns long readings with each lecture, but they're mostly unnecessary. I skipped basically all of them ha ha. Everything you need is in the lecture slides, save for maybe a few questions where he took things from the textbook. Instead of doing outlines, your time is better spent studying the slides and attending office hours.

~RECORD LECTURE AUDIO. He does not do this himself, and I found it very helpful to re-listen to his lectures and fill in the gaps in my notes.

End of the day, this course is tough and will hit you like a brick wall. I found it WAYYY harder than orgo, so yeah. But, if you take the time to study and understand what is being taught, you'll be ok. Don't stress so much about which prof you take it with. Good luck all!

****I took this class during a COVID semester, in which the exams were online and open note****

Koz, in my opinion, is a great professor and definitely the way to go for cell just for general enjoyability and comfort, though he doesn't have HW grades/extra credit like Wormington. Not only is he funny and kind to students, but he's also pretty reasonable. On the syllabus, there are grade thresholds. There's somewhat of a curve (not a huge one) already built into them, like, an 85% or something could still be in the A range. AND at the end of the semester, based on the average course grade, he lowered those thresholds. He also is a professor who DOES believe in rounding up (like an 89.9 would be considered a 90), which can be rare in this department for sure.

As far as his lectures, you need to write down everything he says. DO NOT rely on the text on the slides. If he doesn't record the lectures for you, I strongly advise you to record them yourself. He will explain graphics and big concepts in extreme detail and, yes, you need to know all of it. I rewatched the lectures numerous times. Also, you gotta read the book. He expects you to, and there will be questions in his study guides that are straight from the book. That being said, DO THE TAKE-HOME QUESTIONS! They're sometimes from old exams. There were a few times last year that he used the same question formats (not same exact questions), and knowing how to tackle them already was crucial! Koz loves to throw confusing graphics on the exams, so if you already know how to interpret them, you're ahead. He added short answer and short "essay" questions to the exams last year as well. Try to answer these questions in similar language to what is used in lecture because details are important here. Also, seriously go over your essay question response feedback. Sometimes responses were graded incorrectly/the question was worded poorly and easily misinterpreted. Koz will usually give you back points if you have a good argument. Sometimes he won't budge, so pick your battles wisely once the answer key is released. Like I said in the beginning, he's reasonable.

Overall in cell, graphics are everything. Practice drawing out pathways, ESPECIALLY when you guys get to the secretory pathway. Good luck! Even though it's hard, the material is pretty cool.

This class... was not a good time. Interesting. But I wouldn't take it again. The course grade is based only on four exams and there is no curve. The exams themselves have multiple choice, short answer, and short essay questions. The questions can be really confusing too because they are often worded strangely or you know the answer but it's just not one of the options. They were also really specific, like you needed to know just the right grain of information from a slide or the textbook. And some questions, not a lot, but a few, were just from the textbook so I'd recommend reading it. Readings for each lecture can be as short as 2 or 3 pages or entire chapters. All that being said, the exams were open note and that helps a lot if you have good notes, but can also mean you spend too much time trying to find information and then don't have time to finish the exam. It's no fun when you're submitting the exam with 2 seconds left. There were 'take home questions' at the end of each lecture and the TA would go over the answers in discussions, but honestly it was so hard to pay attention and more than once the TA would give us the wrong answer and have to correct later, which only made people more confused. This class has a bad reputation, but it earns it. I spent more time on this class than any other this semester and somehow this was my lowest grade. I had to change my study habits and note-taking for each exam until I found something that worked for me because my usual study methods that can get me an A in any other class just didn't work for Cell Bio. I would read the textbook before lecture, then look through the powerpoint before lecture, then watch the lecture live, then read over my notes again later that day and try the practice problems, then go to discussions and try to pay attention, then as the exam approached I would rewatch all the relevant lectures (exams weren't cumulative) and go through my notes adding things and making notes to myself. It worked well enough to get me a B, which I'm pretty happy with considering. My one piece of advice is that if you don't do well on the first exam, don't stick with the same methods that didn't work. Try something new and hopefully you'll see your grades going up on each exam. And you have to find something that works for YOU. You can try my process if you want but I make no guarantees. This class will push you to make yourself better and you can't rely on other people to do everything for you. This is a really interesting class and I feel like I learned a lot, but it was exhausting and stressful and I wouldn't recommend for anyone who isn't taking it for their major. Don't go into this class expecting an A, just do your best and it'll be fine. Best of luck :)

Just as some background, this is coming from a student that took this class during a fully online COVID semester and got an A

Don't get me wrong, this class is hard. I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking it if you don't have to. BUT it is not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be if you study smart and put a good bit of effort into it. Go to lecture live, sometimes he takes a bit to upload the lectures. Go to office hours if you can, even just to listen to him answer other people's questions. This class is difficult, but also super interesting. I personally loved Kozminski, I thought he was funny (most importantly haha) and straightforward both in his teaching/what he expects you to know and his exams. I would say exams are a combination of understanding/applying knowledge and some straight regurgitation. I started the class taking copious textbook notes and while I definitely recommend reading the textbook, I realized on the last two exams that reading it thoroughly (BEFORE class!) was enough and spending hours taking meticulous notes wasn't worth my time. Rather, I focused my efforts more on lecture content and the take home questions. For reference, I got an 87 and an 82 respectively for the first two exams and a 93 and a 98 on the last two. Here was the strategy that worked for me - do the reading before class and go to lecture live then the night before the next lecture, read through your notes and go through the previous lecture and answer the take home questions. Make sure you've done all the take home questions before discussion, it doesn't help if you just write down the answers and tell yourself "that makes sense." Trust me. About a week before the exam, handwrite (for me, I remember better handwriting) a comprehensive study guide for yourself, basically retaking notes from your notes and the Powerpoints. Get that done a day or so before the exam and read that over once or twice again and quiz yourself on the take home questions one more time. I hope this helps!

Kozminski is one of the least understanding and most uncaring professors I've ever had. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many students were struggling with his class because learning completely alone is a big challenge. Despite the difficult circumstances, he made the class harder to succeed in by raising the grading brackets from previous semesters. His exams were horribly written, unclear what was being asked, had multiple answers, had typos, and strange philosophical questions that he would harshly grade.

I and many other students worked tirelessly in his class. After contacting other students to understand the collective effort, students would write hundreds of pages of notes, read the huge textbook readings, make diagram study guides, make vocabulary sheets/quizlets, help other students in study groups, late-night studying for weeks, and it was honestly all for nothing.

When I explained to him my hard-living circumstances given the pandemic , he didn't even acknowledge it or compromise for a fair solution. He has treated countless other students with this lack of understanding and care. A girl had her computer crash during an exam and provided evidence of the situation, but he didn't even care or give her more time. I know for certain that if I took this course in the fall with the other professor, I would have done much MUCH better. At least he gives homework.

He lies in the beginning of the year claiming that his class is not as hard as people make it out to be, that he wants to give everyone As, and that he cares about all his students and to contact him if troubles arise especially given the pandemic. None of those points were held true or demonstrated at all.

Don't get me wrong, he is extremely knowledgeable. He is merely not fair, a horrible grader, egotistical, scattered and unstructured in his teaching, uncaring for students, and more. This class was a genuine disappointment and I and countless other students would not recommend taking this course unless it was for your major. Just take a look at the grade distributions for yourself and see how ridiculous this class is. I've never seen so many students dissatisfied with a single professor. It's not the content that is hard, it's the professor that is unfair.