u/Helpfulrandom4

I took Professor Johnson for BIOL2152 in Spring 2026.

She's honestly an awesome professor. Her exams are pretty comprehensive and representative of what she teaches. She posts all her pre-recorded lecture online. I skipped class maybe 1/3 times. The video lectures saved my butt!

She does 3 exams and a cumulative final. I made a 90, 88, 92, and 91.3 respectively.

The first exam is worth 50 points, the next two exam are 100 points, and the final is worth 150 points.

There are also 4 quizzes each worth 10 points and 4 homeworks worth 15 points each. Be sure to check your homework with peers or your TA, because it's pretty much free points. The quizzes are very surface level compared to the exams. For me, a brief watch over all the lectures were plenty to make a 9/10.

She offers a 10 point bonus opportunity during the semester. You can either write a 500 word short essay explaining a research paper colloquially or do something creative. I chose to make a little comic, and it was pretty fun! She also offers "tiger points," which are questions she'll ask at the end of class. If you get them right, it's one bonus point. For our class, she did 12 tiger points over the semester. She also gave an extra point for the course eval, and 1-2 bonus points for a fun review activity in our last recitation class.

The exams are difficult. You should truly know everything from her lectures (or video lectures). The final was mostly on the last lectures, so you don't need to review much other than the stuff from exam 1 for the final. She asks lots of multiple choice where you need to apply what you learned to hypotheticals. The majority of the exam points are from the practical questions. Those are extremely easy if you just do the homework and follow along to her examples in class or video lectures. She pretty much puts the exact same questions on the exams with different numbers.

I liked her class a lot! She's a great lecturer, and her research seems really interesting. I've heard other students say that Igor Schneider is easier, but Alyssa Johnson was a great professor, and I feel like I truly learned and retained a lot of knowledge.

I took John Hopkins' CHEM1202 course during the spring 2026 semester.

I made a 84.9, 67.1, 76.0, and a 100 on the exams and a 100 on the final. He lets your final replace your lowest exam score if it helps your grade. He also allowed us to retake an exam of our choice. I chose to retake my second lowest exam (exam 3); I ended up making a 100 on the retake. I made a A+ in the class overall.

The class is weighted as such:

4 exams: 35%
Homework and participation: 35%
Final: 30%

I went to class maybe twice during the entire semester. He grades participation using a platform called Poll Everywhere. You can log in remotely during class time and answer questions. Honestly, there's not really a point in going to class. He tends to be a bit repetitive. If you benefit from linking chemistry concepts to metaphors and analogies, lecture might be beneficial, but it was a bit monotonous.

Since homework is weighted so heavily, do the homework if nothing else. You can run through all the prelectures and competencies and fail every exam and still pass the class pretty much. I didn't try on the earlier exams purely because "Nah, that's what the final replacement is for," but doing well earlier on probably would've been nice.

His textbook is... subpar. All the f's are replaced by random symbols. It's in an awful font on MacBook. It doesn't have many practice problems. When I finally locked in towards the end of the semester, I used a pirated copy of the Pearson chemistry textbook to teach myself, and did all the competency questions and the exam review. The competency questions are the best representatives of the actual exam questions. The exam review tends to be easier, but more focused on the conceptual questions if that's what you struggle with. Exams tended to be pretty 50/50 between math and conceptual.

SI sessions were kinda bad. The best thing about them was the worksheet your instructor makes with ChatGPT probably. I suppose it depends on your SI instructor, though.

He also gives some bonus for your homework grade if you complete all the competencies. I'm pretty certain he just puts your grade to 100% if you're around 80-90% already. He did that for my friends who took him for CHEM1201 last semester and for me this semester.

The exams are taken in the same auditorium he teaches in. If worst comes to worst, it's theoretically EXTREMELY easy to put on a baseball hat and peek over at your neighbor's form. They're usually the same questions in different order.

It's hard to fail this class. If you actually study, you'll do great on the exams and the group final. Take Schneider if you really want a free A in chem, but be wary that his students aren't typically prepared for the group final that every student in CHEM1202 takes.