Mary Ann Rankin | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting an F Anonymous 12/18/2025	Dr. Rankin is like a wolf with sheep's clothing, You walk into her class on the first day and she very sweet. You are relieved to know you have an easy semester ahead of you. You pay attention, not like it matters anyways. The first exam comes up, you study but are not worried. You open the exam on canvas, everything on it has been nothing you have ever learned. The question are at the 400 class level, no amount of studying would have prepared you. At the beginning she said no curve, you thought this class might be easy, now you're hoping she lying. I have personally not gotten above a 50 on one of the exams. A 48 was my peak. That might just be me, but everyone in our group me either there with me or had a worse grade then me. She also cannot get technology working for her ever. She made us buy a 30 dollar program just for us to barely use it and her not knowing how it works. Please just don't this class especially with Dr. Rankin. I won't lie she is very sweet but has no heart when it comes to give good tests, actually teaching us the subject, and when more than have the class is failing. If you take this class, I wish the best to you but you messed up.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a W Anonymous 12/18/2025	This professor is absolutely THE WORST PROFESSOR I have ever had the DISPLEASURE to work with. This professor has never once in her life reflected on her passive aggressive attitude and blatant disrespect towards students. Goes off on tangents that are irrelevant to the class and tests are made to confuse and purposely fail you no matter how hard you study. She also does not care about disabilities and scheduled an exam retake with 2 days notice (not enough time for people with disabilities to book with the testing center, need at least 7 days notice) DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!! I withdrew after the first test and it was as though the gods themselves lifted the weight of the world off of my shoulders. I had to report her to the ADS center and only then did she even allow me to attempt the retake at another time. To me it felt as though she lacked empathy and awareness for her students. Do WHATEVER POSSIBLE to not take this class and if you must - pick a religion and pray. That is all. Good day everyone.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a D+ Anonymous 12/17/2025	Do not take her if you have a choice. She is a nice person but a horrible horrible teacher. I do not know a single person in this class who is currently passing. Her tests are extremely wordy and complicated for no reason and she does not provide ANY sort of resources to prepare. No matter how much you study you will never get an A on any of her exams.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/15/2025	I believe she tries her best to give credit but man her exams are impossible to take. Even with complete knowledge of the material, (which isnt a likely scenario given how much content is packed in this course) each question is framed as a mind game, making you question every answer. She poses the questions as a, b, c, d, a and b, two of the above, all of the above etc. it makes a general understanding of content not the goal of this course, which for an intro class is too much to ask. Don't take this class if you can avoid.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 12/10/2025	I honestly don't even know what grade I will be getting in this class right now, since your overall grade in Canvas is either hidden or incorrect. However, I really don't expect to get an A because this class has truly been so horrible. I do want to say, as many others have written, that Professor Rankin is extremely intelligent and kind; however, I would absolutely not recommend taking this class with her. I have not missed a single class all semester and take notes on things that she makes seem important, but nothing will help you on the tests. I don't even know why I put time into this class anymore because most people fail/get extremely low scores on every exam. The tests are all multiple choice, but they aren't questions like you're probably used to; there are typically four actual answer choices, with three other options reading "two of the above", "all of the above", or "none of the above" (or some variation of this). Even if you genuinely know the material (which I would say most feel they do because the concepts of this class are very basic), you probably will never end up with the score you want. She made us retake the first exam because the scores were so bad, and on the second exam (which was so, so content-heavy, it was crazy), she allowed for an index card with notes written down, and most people did even worse on this exam than the first. She has asked for our feedback about what goes wrong on the exams, and when we give feedback about how the format is extremely difficult to interpret, she says she "isn't asking for criticism about her exams." All the reviews for past years say the exact same thing, so I am so surprised nothing has changed, and I assume nothing ever will. She also made us buy a $30 subscription to a live polling website that doesn't even work most of the time, and she has now decided it won't count toward our overall grade (which would have hurt most people's grades anyway, but the fact that we had to pay that much money for no reason is very annoying). Most of the people taking this class are biology majors and pre-med, which makes this all even more concerning because most cannot take a low grade in this 100-level class. She goes so fast over important material, so it's really hard to take good notes, and also her PowerPoint presentations are so long and content-heavy that she doesn't finish them most of the time and records them for us to watch after class. There is also a "SimBio" website that has SO many assignments due at random times and random dates, it is very hard to keep up. As I said, Professor Rankin is very caring and smart, but do not take her if you have a choice.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/04/2025	The instructor is terrible. In every single aspect of teaching, I would give her a 0/10. I had a horrible teacher last year (senior year of high school) for calculus, and I would complain about her all the time at home, and I remember thinking she was the worst teacher possible. I could not be more wrong. Dr. Rankin is the worst of the worst. But before I trash her in this essay, I want to say a few good things. 1. She is very nice and genuinely cares about your learning. 2. She tries very hard to be accommodating to everyone 3. She is very knowledgeable 4. She provides a study guide The tests are extremely difficult, even though they're all multiple choice (except one, which had short answers), with each answer many times having all of the above or two of the above or none of the above as answer choices, making each question extremely time-consuming and unnecessarily challenging. Now, with such confusing answer choices, surely the questions were easy, right? Nope. But I get it right, it's a college-level class, you should be prepared for difficulty. But the sheer amount of material you must not just understand, but master, in this class is inconceivable. I'm gonna try to explain it, but I don't think I can truly put it into words. Let's take the second exam, for example. This one unit (unit 2) had more material than YOUR (yes, your) high school bio class by about 3 fold. The study guide she made was 13 pages long, and she didn't finish it because it was "taking her too long". I'm not joking, she literally couldn't finish the study guide, which is just a list, a list, a fricking list of things we need to not just know, but master. I kid you not, one of the bullet points on this 13-page list was "Know the general changes that happened over the history of the Earth", and that's just an example, we also had to know basically every single organism that has ever existed and the phylogenetic tree they are a part of. And there's much more (which I won't get into, because it would take 13 pages of writing). And that's just unit 2 (there are 3 units) Now, let's talk about lectures. I went to every single lecture and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:00 PM. When my lecture ended, I was furious. Her slides are extremely wordy, and she talks very slowly, and her sentences are often broken with frequent stutters and pauses. You might be thinking, Oh, that sucks. She must be so slow. Wrong. She goes through these slides at light speed, often going through 50-80 slides per lecture (in 50 minutes). I don't know how it's possible to talk so slowly and go through slides so quickly. I honestly can't explain it; you just have to see it for yourself. There's also a fun little aspect of her lectures called PointSolutions, which is essentially an app we were required to purchase (cost $60 for a subscription, I believe) where she can quiz us randomly during lectures. You have 30 seconds to answer, and the questions are graded. It's like Kahoot but from hell. It is often super buggy, and she forgets to give us the access code, like once every two lectures, so most people ended up with like a really bad grade on point solutions (which is supposed to be a grade booster). Now, let's talk about homework. This class uses a website called SimBio, where sections of a textbook or interactive experiments/games are assigned for homework. It's pretty organized and makes sense, except they are extremely time-consuming. Most classes get these assignments very infrequently and are given a lot of time to complete them, but not Rankin's class. We had one assigned after every single lecture. Oftentimes, it was more than one, even getting up to three sometimes. I spent about 70% of this semester working on nothing but this class, and it was still my worst grade by far Wow, that is a lot of horrible stuff. But I didn't even get to the worst part yet THERE IS NO CURVE. Please, for your sake, do not take this professor. Not even the most pain-crazed masochist would. But if you get stuck with her, here is some advice: Don't take notes in class; instead, just listen to what she is saying and go back over the lecture slides and take notes then. Lecture notes are much more important than SimBio assignments. Do the SimBio's if you can, but prioritize the class notes. Use the study guide she provides. Good luck, and may God have mercy on your soul, because she won't.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a C Anonymous 11/09/2025	Dr. Rankin is super sweet and clearly very knowledgeable, but she teaches the class like we’re PhD students. The amount of depth she goes into is honestly ridiculous for an intro-level course - the class is insanely hard. For some people, this is their very first bio class - as a Biology lover, I feel bad for them because this is their first impression of biology, as it feels like we’re being thrown into a graduate-level course. Our first midterm? 40 questions in 45 minutes. Some of them required calculations — no calculator allowed. Every question was multiple choice, but not the normal kind where you can guess or eliminate answers. Nope. Each question had like 5–8 options, sometimes including “2 of the above,” “3 of the above,” and “all of the above”… all in the same question. The class average was somewhere between 30–40%. And guess what — she refuses to curve because she “doesn’t believe in curving.” She’s clearly from a different era of education, and while her experience is impressive, she really needs to understand that those old-school methods just don’t work for today’s students or the way we learn now. After our first exam, she said she was “disappointed” with the test scores and offered to let us retake the exact same test. When people raised their hands to explain why we struggled — like how we didn’t have enough practice problems or how some questions clearly needed calculators — she literally cut everyone off and said, “I’m not asking for your critiques right now, I just need a yes or no for the retake.” Her lectures are brutal. Three times a week, she stands in front of a screen and reads straight from her PowerPoint. Each lecture has its own deck — anywhere from 50 to 100 slides — and every slide is just a wall of text in size 12 font. She also uploads extra videos of herself talking outside of lecture, plus textbook PowerPoints that are another 25+ pages each. On top of that, she made us pay for two external tools outside our school: SimBio – about $90, with 3 assignments per week that each take 1.5–2 hours. They’re fine, but completely useless for the exams because the questions are way easier. PointSolutions – aroundt $30 AND NOT MENTIONS IN REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS, where she asks 1 or 2 random questions during lecture (sometimes none at all), and we have to respond through the app. It’s graded, so if you miss a class, and/or get the question(s) wrong, you lose points. After the first midterm, even the students who used to sit up front realized there was no point in paying attention. Now everyone just sits in the back and takes their own notes because listening to her read slides does nothing. Again, Dr. Rankin is a very nice person, and very knowledgeable, but the way this class is structured is just not it...
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a C Anonymous 11/01/2025	I want to start by saying that Dr. Rankin really is very nice. It's clear that all of the decisions she makes regarding the class are in an attempt to help students succeed, and she is VERY knowledgeable/passionate about the subject she is teaching. That being said, everything about this class stressed me out from beginning to end. The homework for this class was interesting, and I learned a lot from it, but it rarely helped at all with what you would see in the exams later on. She would also give practice quizzes, which were helpful in the sense that you would see what her exam style would be like, but they still didn't really help all that much. The only way I can describe the actual exams is hell on Earth. If Lucifer himself were to wake up one day and say, "Hey ^w^ I'm going to make an exam for these damned souls," they would look like the ones we took in this class. In fact, the whole class did so poorly on the first exam that she actually decided that she would let us retake it two days later, without changing the questions at all, because the average was like 40-50%. I learned after the first time that the only way to do well on the exams in this class is to take notes on every last slide in the presentations (50-80 slides each + many of the slides are just walls of text in size 12 font) and memorize, memorize, memorize as much as you can and then pray. I took BSCI170 last semester without having taken a biology or chemistry class since my freshman/sophomore year of high school, and I barely struggled at all in that class compared to what I have dealt with in this class thus far. I feel bad saying all of this because again, Dr. Rankin is so nice and so incredibly intelligent, but I have yet to meet anyone in my class of 100+ people that have said her teaching style works for them. It feels like 30 years have been taken off my life.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/24/2023	Professor Rankin is super nice and caring. She genuinely wants her students to succeed and she'll help you out if you're struggling. Other than that her class was not well put together. The homework each week wasn't consistent, there were a lot of them, they were pretty easy, but they seemed to be due on random days. I missed some homework assignments because I couldn't get into the flow of the work, so I'd check the homework page and suddenly there was an assignment due Monday that I missed because it wasn't there a few days ago. Her exams were also really hard. They were mostly multiple choice, with some short answer response questions. And they were still hard. People who guessed on every question could get a similar score (and not a good one) to people who took the notes and studied. The first exam went so poorly for the class as a collective, we got a complete do over. Her lectures were also really dry and I found it a real struggle to pay attention. The only thing that saved my grade from a D is the fact that she dropped the lowest exam score and curved (?) the other exams slightly.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/21/2023	Dr. Rankin is extremely knowledgeable. She is also kind, caring, and has her student’s best interests at heart. However, her lecturing was not too engaging and her test writing was unreasonable for a 100 level course. Class consisted of only lectures, which was mostly her reading off very dense slides. Occasionally, she would include her personal experience from her research, which I found really interesting. Most of the class skipped her lectures since they were dry, but I think it was valuable to go, since she would briefly mention something that would show up on exams. Every now and then she would become enthusiastic about certain species and she would become animated. Honestly, I wish her lectures consisted of her describing her research on various species. Her exams were very difficult. Not only were the questions wordy and difficult to interpret, they frequently had answer choices of A, B, C, D. Two of the above, E. All of the above. Her exams were also given online in Lockdown Browser, so it was impossible to annotate the questions while taking the exam. She did allow for a notecard on Exam II, Exam III, and the Final. (Unfortunately, the averages for Exam I, II, and the Final were all still failing.) However, she offered a total 35 points of extra credit on exams, so that was really helpful! Homework was given through the online textbook. There was a lot of it and it was not useful. It took 3 hours a week in addition to reading the textbook. Keeping ahead of the textbook reading was key. Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was necessary since it was difficult to absorb the content from the lectures. Overall, Dr. Rankin is really a nice person. She wanted us to do well, but she just wasn’t used to teaching a 100 level course. The content for this course was extraordinarily interesting and that motivated me to read the textbook. It was also neat seeing how the content we learned in class was applicable to her real world experiments. If you’re trying to get into the Biology LEP, I would recommend taking an easier (safer?) professor, but if you want to push yourself and hear about the research application of BSCI160 info, Dr. Rankin is super cool.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2023	Class content is interesting, Dr. Rankin is clearly passionate about the subject. However the exams are extremely difficult especially for a 100-level class (averages in the range of 40-60% and no curve)
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/11/2023	Dr. Rankin is one of the most sweetest and kindest professor I have so far. However, I believe that she has this expectation of student that they should already know what she's talking about. I did great on the third exam because I read ALL The chapters in the textbook and attended her lectures thrice. I might have done better if I attended her lectures. So in summary, if you're gonna take her class, be sure to read the textbook and take notes while you're at it AND attend her lectures with full consciousness because her voice is very soft so its very relaxing in a sense (or it makes you sleepy) and I think you'll be good to go.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/08/2023	Don't get me wrong, she is hella qualified in this field, but because of this she makes the course much harder than it should be. Lectures are dense and read off of slides (the times where she does stray off the slides is to go in depth about a species that is interesting but useless for us to memorize), exams are so advance, I had a TA tell me how the format of the exams/ questions are ones she sees in her upper level courses. That being said, we are her first time teaching this course so she didn't know how to dumb it down for us. Also, because we were the first ones, we got an entire retake on Exam I (same exam, questions and answers, and you got the average taken between the two as your final score), and a cheat sheet for Exam II. She is so sweet and caring, but I would hesitate to take her unless you are confident in your test taking skills...
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/03/2023	Do not take this professor, even if it's the only section available. Class is ridiculously boring, the posted slides aren't the same as the ones she shows in class since they're missing some slides or are in the wrong order. The slides are also just walls of text, so it takes a long time to find information. Exams are impossible, some questions were about content that was never talked about in class. Questions take a long time to read and understand, as do the answer choices, so time is a real threat. Multiple-choice questions have options like "two of the above" so even if you understand the topic and pick one of the right choices, the whole question is wrong. The third midterm is 3 days before the final. The only thing this class has going for it is that she allows 2 attempts on quizzes, but the quizzes are just as hard as the exams.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI160 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/11/2023	Exams required heavy studying of material and lecture slides were very dense. I stressed more about her class than I did for Orgo 2.
Mary Ann Rankin BSCI338N Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/21/2022	I want to start off by saying that Dr. Rankin is an extremely nice and caring person. That being said she is just not a good lecturer. The material is dense, but not as dense as her slides. Class is extremely boring. The weekly quizzes are extremely difficult but you are given two chances to complete it so after getting a 4/15 on the first attempt you can spend an hour trying to decipher her questions and go through her powerpoints to find the minute detail she is asking. You will have 15 minutes to complete 15 multiple choice questions, which are not straight forward nor easy. Her tests while also online are just as difficult and annoying. I took this class as a Biology elective and it may have been the single worst decision of my life. This is the worst class in Maryland. Do not take Dr. Rankin, unless you want to be constantly frustrated and receive a poor grade.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting an F
Anonymous
12/18/2025

Dr. Rankin is like a wolf with sheep's clothing, You walk into her class on the first day and she very sweet. You are relieved to know you have an easy semester ahead of you. You pay attention, not like it matters anyways. The first exam comes up, you study but are not worried. You open the exam on canvas, everything on it has been nothing you have ever learned. The question are at the 400 class level, no amount of studying would have prepared you. At the beginning she said no curve, you thought this class might be easy, now you're hoping she lying. I have personally not gotten above a 50 on one of the exams. A 48 was my peak. That might just be me, but everyone in our group me either there with me or had a worse grade then me. She also cannot get technology working for her ever. She made us buy a 30 dollar program just for us to barely use it and her not knowing how it works. Please just don't this class especially with Dr. Rankin. I won't lie she is very sweet but has no heart when it comes to give good tests, actually teaching us the subject, and when more than have the class is failing. If you take this class, I wish the best to you but you messed up.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a W
Anonymous
12/18/2025

This professor is absolutely THE WORST PROFESSOR I have ever had the DISPLEASURE to work with. This professor has never once in her life reflected on her passive aggressive attitude and blatant disrespect towards students. Goes off on tangents that are irrelevant to the class and tests are made to confuse and purposely fail you no matter how hard you study. She also does not care about disabilities and scheduled an exam retake with 2 days notice (not enough time for people with disabilities to book with the testing center, need at least 7 days notice) DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!! I withdrew after the first test and it was as though the gods themselves lifted the weight of the world off of my shoulders. I had to report her to the ADS center and only then did she even allow me to attempt the retake at another time. To me it felt as though she lacked empathy and awareness for her students. Do WHATEVER POSSIBLE to not take this class and if you must - pick a religion and pray. That is all. Good day everyone.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a D+
Anonymous
12/17/2025

Do not take her if you have a choice. She is a nice person but a horrible horrible teacher. I do not know a single person in this class who is currently passing. Her tests are extremely wordy and complicated for no reason and she does not provide ANY sort of resources to prepare. No matter how much you study you will never get an A on any of her exams.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/15/2025

I believe she tries her best to give credit but man her exams are impossible to take. Even with complete knowledge of the material, (which isnt a likely scenario given how much content is packed in this course) each question is framed as a mind game, making you question every answer. She poses the questions as a, b, c, d, a and b, two of the above, all of the above etc. it makes a general understanding of content not the goal of this course, which for an intro class is too much to ask. Don't take this class if you can avoid.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
12/10/2025

I honestly don't even know what grade I will be getting in this class right now, since your overall grade in Canvas is either hidden or incorrect. However, I really don't expect to get an A because this class has truly been so horrible. I do want to say, as many others have written, that Professor Rankin is extremely intelligent and kind; however, I would absolutely not recommend taking this class with her. I have not missed a single class all semester and take notes on things that she makes seem important, but nothing will help you on the tests. I don't even know why I put time into this class anymore because most people fail/get extremely low scores on every exam. The tests are all multiple choice, but they aren't questions like you're probably used to; there are typically four actual answer choices, with three other options reading "two of the above", "all of the above", or "none of the above" (or some variation of this). Even if you genuinely know the material (which I would say most feel they do because the concepts of this class are very basic), you probably will never end up with the score you want. She made us retake the first exam because the scores were so bad, and on the second exam (which was so, so content-heavy, it was crazy), she allowed for an index card with notes written down, and most people did even worse on this exam than the first. She has asked for our feedback about what goes wrong on the exams, and when we give feedback about how the format is extremely difficult to interpret, she says she "isn't asking for criticism about her exams." All the reviews for past years say the exact same thing, so I am so surprised nothing has changed, and I assume nothing ever will. She also made us buy a $30 subscription to a live polling website that doesn't even work most of the time, and she has now decided it won't count toward our overall grade (which would have hurt most people's grades anyway, but the fact that we had to pay that much money for no reason is very annoying). Most of the people taking this class are biology majors and pre-med, which makes this all even more concerning because most cannot take a low grade in this 100-level class. She goes so fast over important material, so it's really hard to take good notes, and also her PowerPoint presentations are so long and content-heavy that she doesn't finish them most of the time and records them for us to watch after class. There is also a "SimBio" website that has SO many assignments due at random times and random dates, it is very hard to keep up. As I said, Professor Rankin is very caring and smart, but do not take her if you have a choice.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/04/2025

The instructor is terrible. In every single aspect of teaching, I would give her a 0/10. I had a horrible teacher last year (senior year of high school) for calculus, and I would complain about her all the time at home, and I remember thinking she was the worst teacher possible. I could not be more wrong. Dr. Rankin is the worst of the worst. But before I trash her in this essay, I want to say a few good things. 1. She is very nice and genuinely cares about your learning. 2. She tries very hard to be accommodating to everyone 3. She is very knowledgeable 4. She provides a study guide The tests are extremely difficult, even though they're all multiple choice (except one, which had short answers), with each answer many times having all of the above or two of the above or none of the above as answer choices, making each question extremely time-consuming and unnecessarily challenging. Now, with such confusing answer choices, surely the questions were easy, right? Nope. But I get it right, it's a college-level class, you should be prepared for difficulty. But the sheer amount of material you must not just understand, but master, in this class is inconceivable. I'm gonna try to explain it, but I don't think I can truly put it into words. Let's take the second exam, for example. This one unit (unit 2) had more material than YOUR (yes, your) high school bio class by about 3 fold. The study guide she made was 13 pages long, and she didn't finish it because it was "taking her too long". I'm not joking, she literally couldn't finish the study guide, which is just a list, a list, a fricking list of things we need to not just know, but master. I kid you not, one of the bullet points on this 13-page list was "Know the general changes that happened over the history of the Earth", and that's just an example, we also had to know basically every single organism that has ever existed and the phylogenetic tree they are a part of. And there's much more (which I won't get into, because it would take 13 pages of writing). And that's just unit 2 (there are 3 units) Now, let's talk about lectures. I went to every single lecture and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:00 PM. When my lecture ended, I was furious. Her slides are extremely wordy, and she talks very slowly, and her sentences are often broken with frequent stutters and pauses. You might be thinking, Oh, that sucks. She must be so slow. Wrong. She goes through these slides at light speed, often going through 50-80 slides per lecture (in 50 minutes). I don't know how it's possible to talk so slowly and go through slides so quickly. I honestly can't explain it; you just have to see it for yourself. There's also a fun little aspect of her lectures called PointSolutions, which is essentially an app we were required to purchase (cost $60 for a subscription, I believe) where she can quiz us randomly during lectures. You have 30 seconds to answer, and the questions are graded. It's like Kahoot but from hell. It is often super buggy, and she forgets to give us the access code, like once every two lectures, so most people ended up with like a really bad grade on point solutions (which is supposed to be a grade booster). Now, let's talk about homework. This class uses a website called SimBio, where sections of a textbook or interactive experiments/games are assigned for homework. It's pretty organized and makes sense, except they are extremely time-consuming. Most classes get these assignments very infrequently and are given a lot of time to complete them, but not Rankin's class. We had one assigned after every single lecture. Oftentimes, it was more than one, even getting up to three sometimes. I spent about 70% of this semester working on nothing but this class, and it was still my worst grade by far Wow, that is a lot of horrible stuff. But I didn't even get to the worst part yet THERE IS NO CURVE. Please, for your sake, do not take this professor. Not even the most pain-crazed masochist would. But if you get stuck with her, here is some advice: Don't take notes in class; instead, just listen to what she is saying and go back over the lecture slides and take notes then. Lecture notes are much more important than SimBio assignments. Do the SimBio's if you can, but prioritize the class notes. Use the study guide she provides. Good luck, and may God have mercy on your soul, because she won't.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a C
Anonymous
11/09/2025

Dr. Rankin is super sweet and clearly very knowledgeable, but she teaches the class like we’re PhD students. The amount of depth she goes into is honestly ridiculous for an intro-level course - the class is insanely hard. For some people, this is their very first bio class - as a Biology lover, I feel bad for them because this is their first impression of biology, as it feels like we’re being thrown into a graduate-level course. Our first midterm? 40 questions in 45 minutes. Some of them required calculations — no calculator allowed. Every question was multiple choice, but not the normal kind where you can guess or eliminate answers. Nope. Each question had like 5–8 options, sometimes including “2 of the above,” “3 of the above,” and “all of the above”… all in the same question. The class average was somewhere between 30–40%. And guess what — she refuses to curve because she “doesn’t believe in curving.” She’s clearly from a different era of education, and while her experience is impressive, she really needs to understand that those old-school methods just don’t work for today’s students or the way we learn now. After our first exam, she said she was “disappointed” with the test scores and offered to let us retake the exact same test. When people raised their hands to explain why we struggled — like how we didn’t have enough practice problems or how some questions clearly needed calculators — she literally cut everyone off and said, “I’m not asking for your critiques right now, I just need a yes or no for the retake.” Her lectures are brutal. Three times a week, she stands in front of a screen and reads straight from her PowerPoint. Each lecture has its own deck — anywhere from 50 to 100 slides — and every slide is just a wall of text in size 12 font. She also uploads extra videos of herself talking outside of lecture, plus textbook PowerPoints that are another 25+ pages each. On top of that, she made us pay for two external tools outside our school: SimBio – about $90, with 3 assignments per week that each take 1.5–2 hours. They’re fine, but completely useless for the exams because the questions are way easier. PointSolutions – aroundt $30 AND NOT MENTIONS IN REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS, where she asks 1 or 2 random questions during lecture (sometimes none at all), and we have to respond through the app. It’s graded, so if you miss a class, and/or get the question(s) wrong, you lose points. After the first midterm, even the students who used to sit up front realized there was no point in paying attention. Now everyone just sits in the back and takes their own notes because listening to her read slides does nothing. Again, Dr. Rankin is a very nice person, and very knowledgeable, but the way this class is structured is just not it...

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a C
Anonymous
11/01/2025

I want to start by saying that Dr. Rankin really is very nice. It's clear that all of the decisions she makes regarding the class are in an attempt to help students succeed, and she is VERY knowledgeable/passionate about the subject she is teaching. That being said, everything about this class stressed me out from beginning to end. The homework for this class was interesting, and I learned a lot from it, but it rarely helped at all with what you would see in the exams later on. She would also give practice quizzes, which were helpful in the sense that you would see what her exam style would be like, but they still didn't really help all that much. The only way I can describe the actual exams is hell on Earth. If Lucifer himself were to wake up one day and say, "Hey ^w^ I'm going to make an exam for these damned souls," they would look like the ones we took in this class. In fact, the whole class did so poorly on the first exam that she actually decided that she would let us retake it two days later, without changing the questions at all, because the average was like 40-50%. I learned after the first time that the only way to do well on the exams in this class is to take notes on every last slide in the presentations (50-80 slides each + many of the slides are just walls of text in size 12 font) and memorize, memorize, memorize as much as you can and then pray. I took BSCI170 last semester without having taken a biology or chemistry class since my freshman/sophomore year of high school, and I barely struggled at all in that class compared to what I have dealt with in this class thus far. I feel bad saying all of this because again, Dr. Rankin is so nice and so incredibly intelligent, but I have yet to meet anyone in my class of 100+ people that have said her teaching style works for them. It feels like 30 years have been taken off my life.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
05/24/2023

Professor Rankin is super nice and caring. She genuinely wants her students to succeed and she'll help you out if you're struggling. Other than that her class was not well put together. The homework each week wasn't consistent, there were a lot of them, they were pretty easy, but they seemed to be due on random days. I missed some homework assignments because I couldn't get into the flow of the work, so I'd check the homework page and suddenly there was an assignment due Monday that I missed because it wasn't there a few days ago. Her exams were also really hard. They were mostly multiple choice, with some short answer response questions. And they were still hard. People who guessed on every question could get a similar score (and not a good one) to people who took the notes and studied. The first exam went so poorly for the class as a collective, we got a complete do over. Her lectures were also really dry and I found it a real struggle to pay attention. The only thing that saved my grade from a D is the fact that she dropped the lowest exam score and curved (?) the other exams slightly.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/21/2023

Dr. Rankin is extremely knowledgeable. She is also kind, caring, and has her student’s best interests at heart. However, her lecturing was not too engaging and her test writing was unreasonable for a 100 level course. Class consisted of only lectures, which was mostly her reading off very dense slides. Occasionally, she would include her personal experience from her research, which I found really interesting. Most of the class skipped her lectures since they were dry, but I think it was valuable to go, since she would briefly mention something that would show up on exams. Every now and then she would become enthusiastic about certain species and she would become animated. Honestly, I wish her lectures consisted of her describing her research on various species. Her exams were very difficult. Not only were the questions wordy and difficult to interpret, they frequently had answer choices of A, B, C, D. Two of the above, E. All of the above. Her exams were also given online in Lockdown Browser, so it was impossible to annotate the questions while taking the exam. She did allow for a notecard on Exam II, Exam III, and the Final. (Unfortunately, the averages for Exam I, II, and the Final were all still failing.) However, she offered a total 35 points of extra credit on exams, so that was really helpful! Homework was given through the online textbook. There was a lot of it and it was not useful. It took 3 hours a week in addition to reading the textbook. Keeping ahead of the textbook reading was key. Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was necessary since it was difficult to absorb the content from the lectures. Overall, Dr. Rankin is really a nice person. She wanted us to do well, but she just wasn’t used to teaching a 100 level course. The content for this course was extraordinarily interesting and that motivated me to read the textbook. It was also neat seeing how the content we learned in class was applicable to her real world experiments. If you’re trying to get into the Biology LEP, I would recommend taking an easier (safer?) professor, but if you want to push yourself and hear about the research application of BSCI160 info, Dr. Rankin is super cool.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/15/2023

Class content is interesting, Dr. Rankin is clearly passionate about the subject. However the exams are extremely difficult especially for a 100-level class (averages in the range of 40-60% and no curve)

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/11/2023

Dr. Rankin is one of the most sweetest and kindest professor I have so far. However, I believe that she has this expectation of student that they should already know what she's talking about. I did great on the third exam because I read ALL The chapters in the textbook and attended her lectures thrice. I might have done better if I attended her lectures. So in summary, if you're gonna take her class, be sure to read the textbook and take notes while you're at it AND attend her lectures with full consciousness because her voice is very soft so its very relaxing in a sense (or it makes you sleepy) and I think you'll be good to go.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/08/2023

Don't get me wrong, she is hella qualified in this field, but because of this she makes the course much harder than it should be. Lectures are dense and read off of slides (the times where she does stray off the slides is to go in depth about a species that is interesting but useless for us to memorize), exams are so advance, I had a TA tell me how the format of the exams/ questions are ones she sees in her upper level courses. That being said, we are her first time teaching this course so she didn't know how to dumb it down for us. Also, because we were the first ones, we got an entire retake on Exam I (same exam, questions and answers, and you got the average taken between the two as your final score), and a cheat sheet for Exam II. She is so sweet and caring, but I would hesitate to take her unless you are confident in your test taking skills...

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/03/2023

Do not take this professor, even if it's the only section available. Class is ridiculously boring, the posted slides aren't the same as the ones she shows in class since they're missing some slides or are in the wrong order. The slides are also just walls of text, so it takes a long time to find information. Exams are impossible, some questions were about content that was never talked about in class. Questions take a long time to read and understand, as do the answer choices, so time is a real threat. Multiple-choice questions have options like "two of the above" so even if you understand the topic and pick one of the right choices, the whole question is wrong. The third midterm is 3 days before the final. The only thing this class has going for it is that she allows 2 attempts on quizzes, but the quizzes are just as hard as the exams.

Mary Ann Rankin
BSCI160

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
04/11/2023

Exams required heavy studying of material and lecture slides were very dense. I stressed more about her class than I did for Orgo 2.