Reviews of professor David Akey

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
This class was very difficult. Though I did not do as well as I hoped, the class was outlined well and expectations were clear. Dr. Akey was a great professor; excited about the material, offering significant office hours both in-person and virtually and very willing to meet 1-on-1 with me as I struggled with the material.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Overall Akey's lectures are a bit on the dryer side and speaks really fast, but exams are straightforward. Pay attention in lecture and review the slides after class. Definitely not a 3/5 -- his class is overall manageable contrary to what people say. Biochem is hard be prepared!

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Professor Akey's lectures are incredibly dense and very difficult to learn anything in class. He assumes lots of knowledge and expects that you remember things from past exams instead of explaining concepts. Be prepared to do a lot of work on your own to understand the content.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
411 wasn't difficult and grades were fair, but instructions were poorly worded and led to wasted time. Lectures were filled with contradictory info (plus we never knew if attendance was part of the grade). Akey also plays favorites, so be prepared to be ignored as a "normal" student. Frustrating experience and wished for a better professor.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Another one of UMs bad biology department professors. Boring monotonous lectures with little help/resources to truly prepare for exams with low averages. Weeder class for sure

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Good luck. I went into exam 4 with an A- and came out with a B. Akey's final exam was by far the worst experience of this course (avg. 57.5% before the curve). It also cannot be dropped. He's not an interesting or effective lecturer at all, which is evident by how poorly the class did on his exam (which was probably intentional on his part).

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Dr. Akey was one of the best professors I've ever had. He is so kind very engaging in the lecture. All of the assignments we did in MCDB 411 genuinely contributed to my understanding of structural biology.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Dr. Akey seemed nice and wrote fair exams, but his lecture style was simply ineffective. His slides were dense, and the order the material was presented often felt illogical, which led to a high amount of time needing to be spent outside of class only to make sense of the lecture. His explanations were far better during office hours, though.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I see a lot of reviews talking about how bad Dr. Akey's lectures are, but in my experience I saw tons of people doing other things while he was lecturing. He speaks quickly and is pretty dry, so stay really focused on the lecture! His tests are very straight forward, so the notecard is very helpful in that regard. Fill out your Cell Map!!!