CLUSTER M71A
Biotechnology and Society
Also listed as SOC GEN M71A: the same class, and each department holds its own seats and its own grade history.
This is a year, not a class
Clusters run across three quarters, fall, winter, then the spring seminar, and UCLA counts the credit on completing the yearlong cluster: four GE requirements and the Writing II requirement. Signing up for the first quarter is signing up for the year.
Dibs only reads Winter 2026, so the later parts show no sections here: that is this term, not the sequence ending. What you keep if you take only part of a cluster is a question for the Cluster Program, not something these numbers answer.
Grades
3.86
Average grade awarded in CLUSTER M71A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
90%
of the 1,271 letter grades
D, F or W
0.6%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
<1%
1 of 1 student passed
The registrar's own records: 1,271 grades over 5 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
No summer session is in that record.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 5 terms ran 3.83 to 3.89.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 327 · 25.7%
- A 695 · 54.7%
- A- 118 · 9.3%
- B+ 43 · 3.4%
- B 58 · 4.6%
- B- 11 · 0.9%
- C+ 5 · 0.4%
- C 5 · 0.4%
- C- 3 · 0.2%
- D+ 1 · 0.1%
- D 2 · 0.2%
- D- 1 · 0.1%
- F 2 · 0.2%
- P 1 of 1,275
- I 2 of 1,275
- DR 1 of 1,275
Percentages are of the 1,271 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), incompletes (I), and withdrawals (DR).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
Withdrawals are the exception to "excluded": DR is not scored, but it IS counted in the D, F or W figure above, which is reported over the letter grades plus the withdrawals. Pass/no pass and S/U outcomes are outside that figure on both sides.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Winter 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PANOFSKY, AARON L reviews ↗ | 3.85 | 3.85 | 1,031 | 4 | 89% | average | not teaching it |
| RENSEL, MICHELLE A reviews ↗ | 3.85 | 3.85 | 1,026 | 4 | 89% | light | not teaching it |
| SCROGGINS, MICHAEL JASON reviews ↗ | 3.84 | 3.83 | 526 | 2 | 88% | light | not teaching it |
| LEE, RACHEL C reviews ↗ | 3.83 | 3.83 | 260 | 1 | 88% | heavy | not teaching it |
| VAUGHN, RACHEL ANN reviews ↗ | 3.83 | 3.83 | 260 | 1 | 88% | average | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
What the work looks like
- 2 exams, said by 3 reviewers
- Quizzes mentioned, no number given, said by 1 reviewer
- 1 paper, said by 2 reviewers
- Projects mentioned, no number given, said by 1 reviewer
- Presentations mentioned, no number given, said by 1 reviewer
Read from 62 reviews about 1 month ago. dibs counts only what a review actually states, so a kind of work nobody mentioned is absent rather than zero.
In Winters
Has not run in Winter in the 4 Winters dibs holds records for, back to Fall 2021. That is 4 years of grade records rather than the course catalog, so it says what has happened and not what the department will do next.
From the terms dibs holds, which start in Fall 2021 and exclude summer. A department can run a course in a quarter it never has before.
From the registrar's catalog
(Same as Society and Genetics M71A.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Course M71A is enforced requisite to M71B, which is enforced requisite to M71CW. Limited to first-year freshmen. Exploration of methods, applications, and implications of biotechnology and of ethical, social, and political implications as well as biological underpinnings. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking CLUSTER M71A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.