This class gave me PTSD (Post Traumatic Scerri Disorder). Professor Scerri is the worst professor I have EVER had. This class left me defeated, confused, and unprepared. This class is so hard, and there is so little support for students. This class is the only reason why my GPA dropped - I was a straight A student until now. We weren't given enough time for exams, and they had parts a-e for every question. Absolute hell. Not to mention that the answer keys weren't even correct and we could barely get clarification or corrections from both the prof and TAs. Grading of the midterm was inconsistent too, and many students reported that their final grades were curved DOWN. Like what even??? Scerri is also a very passive aggressive individual and there were some instances where he was rude and discouraging to students who had genuine questions. Unless you somehow got on his good side, he would treat you with very little respect. I had him for 14A as well (in person) and I wish I learned the first time around to stay far away from his class. Honestly, just get a good tutor or PLF because you'll learn jack from him. I relied on YouTube chemistry tutorials and explanations to get by. If you take this class, Lord have mercy on your soul, because you're going to need it.

Eric Scerri is knowledgeable about the course material, but he has a biased pedagogy and discriminates against his students. He has mocked and belittled students, including myself, both during class and office hours, which has left me feeling too ashamed to ask for help and wanting to leave STEM altogether. He's made degrading comments about community college students; he perpetuates the idea that a student's worth is correlated with their letter grade; he compares students with vastly different backgrounds and grades them against each other, forcing students to compete and giving those from more privileged backgrounds an automatic advantage; overall, he cultivates a demeaning, inequitable and hostile learning environment, which has left me feeling discouraged and defeated in my academic pursuits.

Scerri is the worst, most unaccommodating professor at UCLA. I didn't think much of him before entering the class and think even less of him now. His class is severely disorganized ( I mean the man had no sense of respect for the stuff he teaches). He is often very arrogant and downright condescending towards those who ask him questions in his classes.
I came into the class with quite a strong background in Chemistry but the way that he and his staff work, it makes it quite difficult to work with. His tests are not bad but the graders make mistakes and as a result one's score is jeopardized in the class.

He is not a good professor and I would stay away from his class -- he might be easy but his class is more disappointing than any other -- in terms of academics and otherwise.

Before taking this class, I was warned by many people that I should NOT take this class. After taking the class, I would give about the same advice to my peers. The professor does not use actual slides, but rather PDF documents with often unorganized information. When asked questions in class, he often took a long time to answer the questions, and sometimes just avoided the question entirely. It was clear many times that he did not really review his lecture slides before class. It seemed to me that he didn't really care for his student's wellbeing, as evidenced by the fact that he told students to never use his personal email and to only post things on the discussion forum (which he also rarely checked/answered). The exams were not too bad, especially given that they were open note, but I relied heavily on AP Chem knowledge to pass the class. If you can take the class with a different professor, please try to do so. If you cannot, make sure you attend TA sections (because the TAs are sometimes or usually better at explaining the information than Scerri) even though they are not mandatory, do a lot of practice problems, and watch a lot of Youtube videos on concepts you don't understand.

I definitely did not learn anything in this class, which will most likely hurt me going forward. Because this class was online, the class, as a whole, did extremely well and it was almost too easy, so I would take the grade distribution for the Spring 2020 quarter with a grain of salt, because they do not match the absorption of content.

Scerri is very smart but his lectures are super boring and fairly disorganized, despite having slides. Especially on Zoom it became increasingly difficult to pay attention. I would not take another class with Scerri, not because he's a bad or unfair professor (his tests are extremely fair and easy to do well on), but because I don't feel like I learn enough in his classes (I had him for both 14A and 14B and have almost no knowledge about chemistry).

This class is so hard for no reason!! The grade for this class is made up of Thinkwell quizzes, the midterm, and the final. Thinkwell doesn't take up too much time, but we were not given enough time for the midterm or the final. For the midterm, we got 2 hours and 30 minutes to submit, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't when you have almost 30 questions. By the end, I was scrambling to finish. The final wasn't any better. We were given 3 hours and then another 30 minutes to submit. Eric is horrible at communicating, and at the end, we breezed through electrolysis and we had so many problems about it on our final. The grading of our midterm was inconsistent, and it was very difficult trying to communicate to either the TAs or Eric. The answer keys Eric gave to us to study with were wrong!! Honestly, going over homework problems helps a lot but not even that was able to save me from the inconsistencies of the tests. Overall, I would recommend this class with Eric because he allows open notes during his tests and Thinkwell makes up a decent enough portion of your grade.

This guy wasn't that good for me. He's whatever.

Scerri is a good lecturer and professor. In class, he often goes through the material at a rapid pace so it's hard to learn in class unless the concept is really easy. He doesn't have his lectures recorded which makes you show up to class. Despite general confusion in lecture, this is where discussions bridge the gap between what was taught in class and what you retained. The class was easy if you were able to cover the material after lecture and understand what was going on. You will need to study for the tests, if you don't, expect to fail.

Lectures: Attend every lecture because if you don't you will have to learn the concepts on your own from the slides and it will be much harder. Scerri is able to explain the concepts well and, lacking this, will make it much harder to learn.

Discussion: It really doesn't matter which discussion you go to. If your TA sucks, go to the other TA's. The more TA's you go to, the more practice you will have before the midterm/final. Each TA will give you a deeper understanding of the concepts and from a different perspective. I went to every TA discussion in the week and found that even if I already understood what was going on, it was beneficial.

Office Hours: I never went, but I've heard they're helpful.

Tests:
The tests are relatively difficult and you should prepare by using the test bank, reading the book, and doing the owl questions(BEFORE the test). From what I've gathered, he likes to ask at least one extra challenging question on the test. The tests aren't impossible but if you've never encountered the question before it's going to be difficult to figure out the correct answer. The formula sheet he gives doesn't cover all the questions as some you have to memorize to get correct (derivations or recall). The content comes from what he's discussed in lecture so really no surprise there, you just have to understand what was going on. There was only one midterm this quarter and I think the average was a B/B-. Studying for 2 days straight going over the released midterms and memorizing them until the early hours of the morning paid off and that was enough to succeed on the test.

For the Final: Thoroughly go over as many finals as you can get your hands on. Most of the questions are small revisions if not the exact same question from other finals. If you know how to run through a question, you will be able to do so on the final. I noticed he liked to repeat rather challenging questions that students often got a 0 or partial on. Study those challenging ones so you will be able to answer them if they appear.

Grading: He grades the class on a curve. You can't do average and expect to get an A. You have to work harder than 90% of the class if you want to score as such. You won't find out how well you did on the final until the next quarter. The grade you see is the curved grade, not the grade on your final.

I would like to think that Dr. Scerri has turned a new leaf. His exams used to be upwards of six questions with multiple parts, complicated equations, unclear directions, and every other atrocity you could think of. In light of his bad reviews, this quarter he opted to make the exams more organized, succinct, and tolerable.

Our midterm was rather pleasant, actually. Our tests were curved up and I was one of a few students who got 100% (sorry but I hope that gives context as to who's talking here).
The midterm was based on practice exam questions we had gotten during discussion sections, and his previous exams were a great litmus test for what types of questions we would expect.

The final exam, however, was an entirely different story. Because of the TA strike, our exam with multiple-choice on a Scantron. The multiple-choice questions were adulterated from the same online source and Prof Scerri lacked the common sense to supply us with the necessary information to approach these online questions. Because of this fault, 5 of 45 questions on our final exam are being omitted, with a 6th question having answer options from an entirely different question (formatting issue?). Compounding this, students with the CAE were told that they were five questions to omit and not approach, but students in traditional lecture halls are only told about four. For this reason, we are currently running the risk that students with accommodations will have an artificially lower score because they were told to leave another question blank.

Take this as a testament to his communication style: he sucks at it.

As other reviews have indicated, his lecture slides are incredibly unorganized and his style of walking us through lecture slides during class with occasional elaboration does little to aid our comprehension.

While I might not be as direct as the other reviews to "Avoid Scerri at all costs," I would advise that you might want to avoid him if unorganized slides, a lack of communication skills, a snobby personality, and a stark tendency to say "obviously" when trying to explain challenging concepts are a deal breaker to you.

Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.

Rough class, but I think it's reflective of what weeder prerequisite college classes are like. If you took a ton of AP classes in high school, it's definitely possible to get an A. I pretty much ignored my other classes and solely studied for this one which was how I managed to get an A.

Lectures: VERY FAST. It might feel discouraging, but TAKE NOTES. Even if they're sloppy or not perfect get a pen to paper and try to follow. If you don't take notes, you're going to have a lot harder of time trying to grasp concepts later on. Also---the things Scerri verbally mentions during the lecture are often the minute details he expects you to remember during exams.

Slides: Straight up memorize these. However, take note of the slides/concepts you don't need to know (he just adds them for curiosity sake lmao). For everything else though, if it's on the slides it will probably be on the exams.

Owl Quizzes: These are just problems he assigns online. They're an awesome grade booster, but aside from that completely useless. Scerri himself told us that they're not reflective of what's on the exam and are usually harder than the exam content. Complete them periodically so you don't fall behind.

Exams: Two midterms + one final. Half problems were free response and half were multiple choice. Exams seem difficult at first, but are possible to master. Ask around for test banks/past exams from classmates. I did 4 full practice exams before each midterm and the same for the final and got good scores (in the A- and B+ range). For problems you don't understand, STOP and spend as long as you need to understand them; it's worth it. By the time I took the exam I predicted basically all of the problems so there were no surprises. TAs were also super graceful with the free response and give generous partial credit. Also---our final had absolutely no spectroscopy, if that's helpful.

TAs: I had Dimitri, and he was a God send. These TAs know exactly what's on the exam, and they're willing to tell you if something is on the exam or not (just ask).

Office Hours: Scerri's office hours were always so packed; people were sitting on the floor and in the doorway. TA office hours are better.

Scerri himself is an extremely knowledgable scientist---not quite a skillful professor. I think the reason why he has such awful ratings is because fall quarter freshmen are taking this class and aren't used to the difficulty/pace/dynamic of college courses. Don't expect your hand to be held. Once you get the hang of how college classes work you'll be fine. Sit near the front at the beginning and find a study group; they'll be a lifesaver. Good luck, you'll need it.