BSCI170C | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting an A- Anonymous 07/12/2022	I didn't like her very much, but she is a very good lecturer. You can tell how passionate she is about biology and how interesting she finds the subject. She had weekly review sessions and would record them and upload them on zoom. Due to my schedule, I could never attend these in person, so it was great that they were recorded. Her TAs have all taken the course before and are extremely helpful. Bonus quizzes were also given to help with test scores. There were also pop quizzes. She introduced special topics to help apply the course to the real world. At the beginning of the semester, she walked us through everything that needed to be done to pass the class, and she had a peer-tutoring program set up for her class. There is a lecture note set to purchase for the class (it's like $25), that is extremely helpful and well detailed. There is no homework in this class which is nice, but as a tradeoff, it is suggested you study at least two hours a day for the subject. If you are not a biology major and have other coursework (I personally took this class alongside organic chem and calc ii) that isn't always sustainable. My advice would be to always remain on top of the lectures (skipping is definitely not an option for this class) because she covers a lot of content. Her exams also focus on application questions, so you need to be able to understand the content well enough to answer those. If you can I would suggest Keller or some other BSCI 170 professor, because you will be doing a lot more studying in Anne Simon's class that maybe is worth it.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Anonymous 07/11/2022	Don't take this class! Unless the rest of your schedule is light and you literally have no other obligations, it's not worth it. Just sign up next semester. I'd even suggest a summer session over taking her class. On the first day of class, Dr. Simon told us that we would think we understood the material but we really won't understand it at all. And she's so worried about people passing by luck that she intentionally makes the exams extremely difficult. This, combined with the fact that she does not offer any homework (just tests and quizzes) is why the average on the first exam was 54. Homework is an integral part of the learning experience. It ensures that you are on the right track. And it allows you to boost your grade in circumstances like receiving a low test score. Although she doesn't provide homework she did have help sessions twice a week. But these sessions would often last 2+ hours and there was no way of passing the class without them. She admitted that she wants us to spend at least an hour a day going over notes, an hour in class, and spend time at the help session. This amounts to 4 hours of work some days. If you want to maintain your GPA, do NOT take Dr. Simon. I had to make the decision to drop her course, but I regret nothing because I got to maintain my GPA and make the Dean's List. Now I'm taking an accelerated course at a community college, and the workload is about the same, but I'm able to retain more information because the teacher actually provides homework and feedback. Not taking her class will be one of the best decisions you ever make in college.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting an A Anonymous 05/26/2022	Dr. Simon was a wonderful professor and is extremely passionate for biology. What stuck out to me most was her compassion for her students. She had optional help sessions on Zoom twice a week and stayed until every question was answered. At the end of every lecture, she would stay with students to help them understand what we just learned. Yes, you have to put in a lot of work, but this is a college STEM course! If you take the time to ask questions, go to help sessions (the TAs she has are wonderful too), read a page of the textbook, you will do well. She provides practice exams and answer keys to help you study. I was never bored in her class as she was lively and never read off of slides like other professors do. She incorporates "special topics" to apply what we lean to the real world. And she even gives bonus quizzes to help boost your grade. When students were sick from covid, she would do personal Zoom calls and go over the lectures again. What I specifically loved about this class was the AMAZING LECTURE NOTE SET!!! I brought that yellow book everywhere. Simon made this book and students would annotate the lecture notes-- SO much easier for us to learn this way and allowed us to keep up with her pace. This way I was able to listen to what she had to say rather than mindlessly scribble things in my notebook. She was such an amazing professor, and I even got to personally have a call with her when I was really struggling. Please take this class if you have the opportunity!!!!!!!
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting a D Anonymous 05/25/2022	Hardest introductory class, you're better off with a different professor. She expects you to spend at least 4 hours a day studying for her incredibly hard exams. I wouldn't advise taking this course with any chem or math because you will not pass it. Our class averages were extremely low and not curved. While she does put in a lot of time into her class, it would make your life easier to take this course with a different professor.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2022	Dr. Simon is very passionate about teaching. Her lectures are interesting as she relates biology to everyday life or current topics. She wants you to succeed and spends time outside of class to meet with students every week. One this to be wary about having Dr. Simon is that her class is very challenging. You will need to allocate lots of time outside of class to study and prepare for exams. (if you don't enjoy biology and want an easy A take another teacher). The first exam average was around 54 and averages on the exams tend to be around 50-65%-ish. She gives easy pop quizzes to help raise your grade, but you still need to study and be prepared. Take Keller if you can.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/18/2022	Okay, I am going to list everything about this teacher. In the beginning she was so nice, and she made her learning entertaining (she still has these attributes). She told our class about help sessions and how she will hold them every day for 2 weeks in the beginning of the school year, then she switched over to doing help sessions Monday's and Wednesday (might I add she is a very busy woman; she has her own lab she runs). These help sessions were very helpful in understanding the topic and I feel like I got the grade that I got because of attending these help sessions(p.s. out of 200 students <20 came to help sessions, attending them is vital to passing). She would also record them so people that were not able to attend the sessions could watch later on their own time. Her first quiz was very easy and the class did well but after that the quizzes got progressively harder. She teaches bio in a more hard way compared to the other teachers. If you are more focused on getting an A in a bio, I would not take Simon. But if you are focused on actually learning and using the material then I would recommend Simon. We go over topics that are very dense and hard to understand. These are the same topics that other professors in Bio don't go over or they would skip it, since 170 is an intro class. So this class is harder compared to other intro bio classes. Now for the grades, Our first exam average is a 54, second exam is a 61, third exam is a 63, and our final exam our average is a 111(it is out of 200 points) which is a 55 percent. She does not curve and more than half of the class most likely failed. The tip to passing this class is to know more than the person sitting next to you. If you are able to always score above average then you should be fine. Her exam questions are all multiple choice. She does not curve, but she gives out these bonus quizzes that are out of 0 points which helps our grade.(25 is the max we got on a bonus quiz). She would raise the amount of points we get on a bonus quiz if we do well on her exam, and she did that for my class. Her TA's are very helpful and knowledgeable. Many people dropped her class after the first exam. She isn't out to get us but she does realize her class is definitely harder compared to others but she won't make it easier. P.S. I also know some people that switched their majors because of Simon, so take that as you will. If there is one thing that you get from this, know that this class is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. 14-16 hours of studying a week.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/15/2022	This class is extremely difficult for an introductory biology class. Dr. Simon is very knowledgable, is willing to help with any questions/concerns and tries to make sure that students are understanding the material. However, other intro bio professors have much higher GPA's and exam scores. If possible, I advise anyone who is not a bio major to choose a different professor. I dedicated about 15 hours a week to this class and I am barely passing.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Anonymous 03/09/2022	If I could advise anyone on anything it would be to not take this introductory (!) course with this professor. She makes it extremely, incredibly, unnecessarily difficult for an introductory (!) course. I wouldn't be as upset if I knew that the level of difficulty of this class was the same under every BSCI170 professor, but after talking with multiple people taking this course with other professors, they aren't learning even half of what we're learning. The exams are incredibly difficult, the average for the first exam was a 54% and Professor Simon doesn't curve exams at all. However, Professor Simon is extremely knowledgeable and helpful with the material, and to be transparent I'm not taking full advantage of all the help that's offered, but that's partly because I feel like she expects way too much of our time and effort. I know people that had to drop other classes because this, again, INTRODUCTORY course demanded too much of their time. My friends who have taken this class with other professors were taken aback by the material we were learning at the speed we were learning it at.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Anonymous 09/16/2020	I have a love/hate relationship with this class. There is a lot of work that needs to be put into to receive a good grade and Dr. Simon does not hide this fact. Dr. Simon preaches that this class will help you with your biology classes later in your college career and she is not lying. This class has helped me immensely with my other bio and bchem courses because you really have a basic and core understanding of most of the topics discussed. I will say I am not the biggest fan of Dr. SImon herself but must admit taking this class is worth it.
Anne Simon BSCI170C Expecting an A Anonymous 03/17/2020	I love Professor Simon! I took BSCI170C in the spring semester of my freshman year, and she is still by far my favorite professor. I think the class she teaches now is for honors, but nonetheless, if you're worried about taking her class because of the reviews (like myself), I really recommend you take it because of how interesting her lectures were. She goes into a lot of detail, but what I learned in her classes helped me out with BSCI207 and BSCI222. Don't believe the comments that say her reviews are fake (they most definitely are legit); granted everyone will have varying opinions on her (I had friends who found her pretty hard) but it's a manageable class and I thought she was really understanding of student's circumstances. When I took it, she had easy bonus quizzes, and at the end of the semester, everyone who had an A- in the class got rounded up to an A :) Do what you will with this information, but I learned a lot in her class.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
07/12/2022

I didn't like her very much, but she is a very good lecturer. You can tell how passionate she is about biology and how interesting she finds the subject. She had weekly review sessions and would record them and upload them on zoom. Due to my schedule, I could never attend these in person, so it was great that they were recorded. Her TAs have all taken the course before and are extremely helpful. Bonus quizzes were also given to help with test scores. There were also pop quizzes. She introduced special topics to help apply the course to the real world. At the beginning of the semester, she walked us through everything that needed to be done to pass the class, and she had a peer-tutoring program set up for her class. There is a lecture note set to purchase for the class (it's like $25), that is extremely helpful and well detailed. There is no homework in this class which is nice, but as a tradeoff, it is suggested you study at least two hours a day for the subject. If you are not a biology major and have other coursework (I personally took this class alongside organic chem and calc ii) that isn't always sustainable. My advice would be to always remain on top of the lectures (skipping is definitely not an option for this class) because she covers a lot of content. Her exams also focus on application questions, so you need to be able to understand the content well enough to answer those. If you can I would suggest Keller or some other BSCI 170 professor, because you will be doing a lot more studying in Anne Simon's class that maybe is worth it.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Anonymous
07/11/2022

Don't take this class! Unless the rest of your schedule is light and you literally have no other obligations, it's not worth it. Just sign up next semester. I'd even suggest a summer session over taking her class. On the first day of class, Dr. Simon told us that we would think we understood the material but we really won't understand it at all. And she's so worried about people passing by luck that she intentionally makes the exams extremely difficult. This, combined with the fact that she does not offer any homework (just tests and quizzes) is why the average on the first exam was 54. Homework is an integral part of the learning experience. It ensures that you are on the right track. And it allows you to boost your grade in circumstances like receiving a low test score. Although she doesn't provide homework she did have help sessions twice a week. But these sessions would often last 2+ hours and there was no way of passing the class without them. She admitted that she wants us to spend at least an hour a day going over notes, an hour in class, and spend time at the help session. This amounts to 4 hours of work some days. If you want to maintain your GPA, do NOT take Dr. Simon. I had to make the decision to drop her course, but I regret nothing because I got to maintain my GPA and make the Dean's List. Now I'm taking an accelerated course at a community college, and the workload is about the same, but I'm able to retain more information because the teacher actually provides homework and feedback. Not taking her class will be one of the best decisions you ever make in college.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/26/2022

Dr. Simon was a wonderful professor and is extremely passionate for biology. What stuck out to me most was her compassion for her students. She had optional help sessions on Zoom twice a week and stayed until every question was answered. At the end of every lecture, she would stay with students to help them understand what we just learned. Yes, you have to put in a lot of work, but this is a college STEM course! If you take the time to ask questions, go to help sessions (the TAs she has are wonderful too), read a page of the textbook, you will do well. She provides practice exams and answer keys to help you study. I was never bored in her class as she was lively and never read off of slides like other professors do. She incorporates "special topics" to apply what we lean to the real world. And she even gives bonus quizzes to help boost your grade. When students were sick from covid, she would do personal Zoom calls and go over the lectures again. What I specifically loved about this class was the AMAZING LECTURE NOTE SET!!! I brought that yellow book everywhere. Simon made this book and students would annotate the lecture notes-- SO much easier for us to learn this way and allowed us to keep up with her pace. This way I was able to listen to what she had to say rather than mindlessly scribble things in my notebook. She was such an amazing professor, and I even got to personally have a call with her when I was really struggling. Please take this class if you have the opportunity!!!!!!!

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting a D
Anonymous
05/25/2022

Hardest introductory class, you're better off with a different professor. She expects you to spend at least 4 hours a day studying for her incredibly hard exams. I wouldn't advise taking this course with any chem or math because you will not pass it. Our class averages were extremely low and not curved. While she does put in a lot of time into her class, it would make your life easier to take this course with a different professor.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/21/2022

Dr. Simon is very passionate about teaching. Her lectures are interesting as she relates biology to everyday life or current topics. She wants you to succeed and spends time outside of class to meet with students every week. One this to be wary about having Dr. Simon is that her class is very challenging. You will need to allocate lots of time outside of class to study and prepare for exams. (if you don't enjoy biology and want an easy A take another teacher). The first exam average was around 54 and averages on the exams tend to be around 50-65%-ish. She gives easy pop quizzes to help raise your grade, but you still need to study and be prepared. Take Keller if you can.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/18/2022

Okay, I am going to list everything about this teacher. In the beginning she was so nice, and she made her learning entertaining (she still has these attributes). She told our class about help sessions and how she will hold them every day for 2 weeks in the beginning of the school year, then she switched over to doing help sessions Monday's and Wednesday (might I add she is a very busy woman; she has her own lab she runs). These help sessions were very helpful in understanding the topic and I feel like I got the grade that I got because of attending these help sessions(p.s. out of 200 students <20 came to help sessions, attending them is vital to passing). She would also record them so people that were not able to attend the sessions could watch later on their own time. Her first quiz was very easy and the class did well but after that the quizzes got progressively harder. She teaches bio in a more hard way compared to the other teachers. If you are more focused on getting an A in a bio, I would not take Simon. But if you are focused on actually learning and using the material then I would recommend Simon. We go over topics that are very dense and hard to understand. These are the same topics that other professors in Bio don't go over or they would skip it, since 170 is an intro class. So this class is harder compared to other intro bio classes. Now for the grades, Our first exam average is a 54, second exam is a 61, third exam is a 63, and our final exam our average is a 111(it is out of 200 points) which is a 55 percent. She does not curve and more than half of the class most likely failed. The tip to passing this class is to know more than the person sitting next to you. If you are able to always score above average then you should be fine. Her exam questions are all multiple choice. She does not curve, but she gives out these bonus quizzes that are out of 0 points which helps our grade.(25 is the max we got on a bonus quiz). She would raise the amount of points we get on a bonus quiz if we do well on her exam, and she did that for my class. Her TA's are very helpful and knowledgeable. Many people dropped her class after the first exam. She isn't out to get us but she does realize her class is definitely harder compared to others but she won't make it easier. P.S. I also know some people that switched their majors because of Simon, so take that as you will. If there is one thing that you get from this, know that this class is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. 14-16 hours of studying a week.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
05/15/2022

This class is extremely difficult for an introductory biology class. Dr. Simon is very knowledgable, is willing to help with any questions/concerns and tries to make sure that students are understanding the material. However, other intro bio professors have much higher GPA's and exam scores. If possible, I advise anyone who is not a bio major to choose a different professor. I dedicated about 15 hours a week to this class and I am barely passing.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Anonymous
03/09/2022

If I could advise anyone on anything it would be to not take this introductory (!) course with this professor. She makes it extremely, incredibly, unnecessarily difficult for an introductory (!) course. I wouldn't be as upset if I knew that the level of difficulty of this class was the same under every BSCI170 professor, but after talking with multiple people taking this course with other professors, they aren't learning even half of what we're learning. The exams are incredibly difficult, the average for the first exam was a 54% and Professor Simon doesn't curve exams at all. However, Professor Simon is extremely knowledgeable and helpful with the material, and to be transparent I'm not taking full advantage of all the help that's offered, but that's partly because I feel like she expects way too much of our time and effort. I know people that had to drop other classes because this, again, INTRODUCTORY course demanded too much of their time. My friends who have taken this class with other professors were taken aback by the material we were learning at the speed we were learning it at.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Anonymous
09/16/2020

I have a love/hate relationship with this class. There is a lot of work that needs to be put into to receive a good grade and Dr. Simon does not hide this fact. Dr. Simon preaches that this class will help you with your biology classes later in your college career and she is not lying. This class has helped me immensely with my other bio and bchem courses because you really have a basic and core understanding of most of the topics discussed. I will say I am not the biggest fan of Dr. SImon herself but must admit taking this class is worth it.

Anne Simon
BSCI170C

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/17/2020

I love Professor Simon! I took BSCI170C in the spring semester of my freshman year, and she is still by far my favorite professor. I think the class she teaches now is for honors, but nonetheless, if you're worried about taking her class because of the reviews (like myself), I really recommend you take it because of how interesting her lectures were. She goes into a lot of detail, but what I learned in her classes helped me out with BSCI207 and BSCI222. Don't believe the comments that say her reviews are fake (they most definitely are legit); granted everyone will have varying opinions on her (I had friends who found her pretty hard) but it's a manageable class and I thought she was really understanding of student's circumstances. When I took it, she had easy bonus quizzes, and at the end of the semester, everyone who had an A- in the class got rounded up to an A :) Do what you will with this information, but I learned a lot in her class.

Reviews for BSCI170C