I majored in biochemistry and this was the first (and only) health sciences course that I took during my undergrad.

The course (during the fall 2007 semester) was taught by four professors, each offering a slightly different approach to their teaching and injecting their own style into...

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While I agree that preparing for the final exam was difficult and stressful, I feel the final exam should not scare people from taking this course. You can definitely prepare for it. Yes, there is some external research but the majority of the exam questions was simply application of concepts learned in class.
I felt it was much better than simple regurgitation as done in midterms. However, it IS time-consuming and you really do want to work with your peers to get all the work done.

The professors were not terrible at all - I thought they were great. They knew their stuff and they were passionate about their topics, although their English accent may not have been a native one.

I would recommend the course to people, especially if they are interested in health care field, as immunology has huge implication in various aspects of health.

Originally Posted by mangunmd

For the Fall 2011 term there were 4 professors responsible for lecturing our class, but there was really only 1 professor that I liked (Dr. Stampfli). He was the only one who made going to an 8:30/10:30 class worthy. The other 3 professors were really confusing and sometimes really hard to understand, which forced me to resort to the textbook to understand most of the material.

The two midterms we had I thought were fair and simple as long as you reviewed the details of your lecture notes. I felt the second midterm was much easier than the first (which was probably because most of the material was based on Dr. Stampfli's lectures).

The two assignments we did were not too hard. It was mostly just a pain to find time to do them since I had other midterms and assignments to do around the same time. I was a little confused on how to approach and start these assignments, but tutorials really helped me so I definitely recommend going to tutorials.

My only real problem with this course was the final exam. They gave us 10 days to prepare 10 1-page answers which was supposedly enough time. I personally did not feel it was enough time because I had 3 other exams before the immunology one. I had to do a lot of extra research to answer the questions, either looking through the whole textbook or using outside sources (i.e. articles) which took a lot of my time. I also stressed over the fact I had to remember all 10 of my answers because we weren't allowed to bring any cheat sheets or notes during the exam.

Looking at my final mark was shocking. I was doing consistently well throughout the term but because I did poorly on the exam, my grade dropped drastically. This was my first health sci course and I don't think I'll take another one again. Overall, I say the course was very disappointing.

DITTO THIS! I was so crushed when I saw my mark because I put so much effort into my exam answers and I don't have a mark that reflects it. For me to have gotten the mark that I did, I would have had to barely pass the exam. I'm definitely going to go see my exam when I get the chance..BUT the material is very interesting; I just found it very dense and it can be difficult to be concise and specific and the same time, which is something they really strived for on the midterms.

I think Dr.Bramson is lecturing this course in fall 2012.
Does anyone know anything about this prof?

Dr. Bramson is an amazing professor. Very approachable, extremely fair, knowledgeable and open to questions about the material he teaches. He is also the head of the Immunology Department. Amazing professor; tests are fair, not easy, but fair.

Originally Posted by Farhan

Dr. Bramson is an amazing professor. Very approachable, extremely fair, knowledgeable and open to questions about the material he teaches. He is also the head of the Immunology Department. Amazing professor; tests are fair, not easy, but fair.

do you know if there is a group project involved in this upcoming semester?

I found it to be pretty interesting. I didn't like the fact there was so many professors, and I found one of the professors hard to understand. The midterms were pretty easy... multiple choice, true and false, and short answer. The Final exam was also pretty good as they gave you the questions before hand

About how hard was it for non-HealthSci kids to get into this course? Third year science students register two days after them this year.

I took this last semester (so Fall 2013) and loved it! Great profs and very interesting content. Its a lot of material but its only twice a week giving it an "average" amount of work. You really have to study hard to do well but it is one of those courses that will give you what you put in. Some tricky concepts but overall I think this is an important course to take for anyone interested in pursuing the bio medical sciences.

Would anyone like to give any detailed updated review on this course. I'm highly interested in taking it. Thanks!

I've heard its changing this year from numerous health sci students. The prof was debating whether to add back the final exam but I'm not 100% sure if this is confirmed. The final exam for this course is time consuming and requires prep beforehand (during exam period) so I was highly advised against taking this course until they removed the final and added a presentation as the final assessment. It was definitely a better course without a final and the material was very interesting! The tests were fair and the essays were pass/fail. All in all, awesome course and interesting content and a fairly easy course without the final exam.

Did anyone take this course in the 2015-2016 year? What changes, if any, had been made to it and what's the breakdown of this course?

Originally Posted by HelloThere

Did anyone take this course in the 2015-2016 year? What changes, if any, had been made to it and what's the breakdown of this course?

I took this in winter 2015 and it was a really great course. The course consisted of 3 midterm tests (10% each), a research paper and presentation (30% of final grade in total - I'm pretty sure it was 10% for the presentation, 20% for the actual paper but I'm just going off memory) and 40% exam. The midterms were fair but by no means easy. If you really understand the material of course you'll do fine but pure memorization won't get you very far unfortunately. They were looking for very specific answers for the short answer portion of the midterms and the multiple choice was tricky at times but nothing outrageous. One of the midterms had an average that was around a high 50 or low 60 and they ended up adjusting the grades. The paper and presentation, while requiring a lot of time and research, was generally a mark booster. This is the only reason I ended up doing well in the course I think lol. The exam was a "take home" exam because they gave us like 10 questions ahead of time (I think it was a week or 10 days before the exam date) and 6 of them appeared on the exam word for word as they gave them to us. The questions required lots of outside research but we ended up making a google doc and sharing information to come up with answers. Again, I think they were looking for pretty specific answers for the exam so I don't think the average was very high but it definitely wasn't too difficult to do well on the final.

Basically don't underestimate the difficulty and effort needed to do well in this course and most importantly the amount of time you need to put in. The material is very interesting, the profs are great and my TA was amazing but it's by no means a bird course. Having said that I ended up with an 11 (mostly because I had an amazing group for the paper and presentation) but it ate up quite a bit of time in the semester.

Good luck if you decide to take it