I thought this was a solid class. I took this my sophomore year for the psych major, and I hadn't taken chemistry since sophomore year of high school. lectures often have mistakes in them that do get corrected, but overall they were informative. they also had great practice problems. what really helped was lab. Spencer was probably one of the best TA's I've ever had, he was so clear and explained everything really well. Definitely attend section if you need help and clarity. Scerris was also nice and I did think he was approachable, you can stay on the zoom for a good while afterwards to ask questions. if you follow along the practice questions and do the homework, the exams really shouldn't be difficult at all. don't shy away from this class, I was scared at first but really there is no need to be nervous.

a lot of the reviews here bash scerri and the class but it’s about as hard as you’d expect a college-level (weeder) chem class to be. i studied hard and it was doable. (not easy, doable.)

grade distribution: for my quarter, it was 30% hw (easy 100%), 30% midterm, 40% final. the midterm and final themselves weren’t curved but the final grade was. (iirc it was a downgrade :( ). no extra credit.

lectures: scerri goes really fast in lecture which was def a struggle to keep up with but i HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend going to his office hours. he’ll go over material again and again and you can ask follow up questions, which you can’t really do in lecture. he’s also not that scary. he actually has a sense of humor (i know, how surprising) also, he usually stays behind lecture for a few minutes to answer questions. even if you don’t have questions, i recommend you hang out there so if someone else asks a question, you can benefit from the answer.

homework: the class uses owl for homework assignments, which has lots of attempts and you can keep coming back to it. it’s due at the end of the quarter but don’t fall behind cuz it takes forever. one problem is that the owl questions aren’t even what you’re expected to know for the course, so just speedrun them and you’ll be fine. (it’s an easy 100% so do not mess up. it’ll put you at a huge disadvantage for the final curve). other than owl, there’s no other hw.

exams: for exams, scerri does reuse so many old questions. do as many of his past exams as possible and that’ll set you up really well for the midterm and final. he posts a couple on bruinlearn but see if you can find others (like at the test bank, etc.). don’t start studying too late — there’s so much to study.

your ta will usually have practice questions for you to do. if you want more practice, other tas also sometimes post their questions on bruinlearn, so you can check that out.

also, this course is def not just like ap chem since it does cover some quantum stuff. it is complicated and you will have to work at it, but find a good study group, engage with the material, and you’ll be able to do it.

good luck!!!

The class itself is not that hard, especially after they removed o-chem. I found his thinkwell quizzes to be quite confusing and frustrating but they did help me learn the material before exams. Do all of the recommended homework problems and you'll be fine. Know everything that he talks about in his slides because that is the material that will show up on the exam. I don't consider this class unreasonable at all.

I did not take AP chem in highschool

I would not recommend to take this class with Scerri unless you absolutely have to. The grade is divided 30% for sapling quizzes, 30% for the midterm, and 40% for the final. The class is essentially asynchronous and I ended up watching all of the lectures on 1.5 or 2 speed the next day. The lectures only consisted of him reading through the (already posted) lecture slides but, occasionally, he would add new information or complain about how few people had their cameras on.
There are 5 sapling quizzes, all due at the end of the quarter. The questions come from the textbook and there was some overlap to the class content, but just as much content was never introduced during lecture. I would not recommend reading the textbook or doing the practice problems because there is just too much of a disconnect from the actual, tested class content.
The midterm and the final were excessively long and tedious. If you took AP Chem, the midterm should not be too difficult but towards the end of the course there is a good amount of new material that you will have to study in depth. Thankfully Scerri posted practice tests that were in the same format as both exams which were helpful for studying for the exams. Discussion was not mandatory, but I wish I went more often since the TAs essentially review the material from the past week. You can go to any section so I would recommend asking around to see which TA is the best.

Eric Scerri is the worst instructor I've ever had the displeasure of having during my time at UCLA, and throughout my entire lifetime of education. He couldn't care less about the success of his students and fails as a teacher in a multitude of ways. 1) His lectures are not only monotonous and boring, but irrelevant to course material and do not, in any way, prepare students for the exams OR homework in the course. 2) the homework on Achieve provides a ridiculous amount of busy work; which could be useful, however, the problems are ALSO irrelevant to the exams given. 3) the exams. Absolutely ridiculous tests, impossible to finish in the slotted time amount, always riddled with mistakes that are only given after Scerri figures them out mid-test and then has proctors write the corrections to the question mistakes on a whiteboard, piece of paper, etc. These exams are not a measure of what is taught in lectures or homework, the only reason I was able to pass them was because I had an angel of a TA (AJ, you are my savior) and had to lean on her immensely to teach the class; something she is certainly not getting paid to do (at least not to the level she should be). 3) Scerri is extremely unprofessional in his communications with students; he is extremely rude and unwelcoming and is extremely inflexible and fails to accommodate his students' needs whatsoever.
I am frankly shocked that UCLA would allow such an awful instructor to step foot in a classroom or lecture hall, much less get paid for what he fails to teach. cannot even fathom how he's kept a job here for 20+ years much less 20 days. I've never had a worse teacher, instructor, lecturer, joke of a professor, whatever you can call him; in my life. And I'm 150% sure that the majority of my classmates would agree, he is astonishingly awful.

Chem 17 offers a lot of help for first timers in Chemistry, but also is insanely quick. Scerri covered 11-12 topics in the 10 weeks and, in truth, missing a class or dropping out of focus for a minute can put you behind. I heavily recommend attending his office hours (the ones he holds in the morning I found work best for 1 on 1 time with the professor). The classwork is light, with four online quizzes that are open everything (book, professor, classmate, internet, and can be taken three times with the highest score being in the gradebook) and two graded homework assignments from the textbook. There is one midterm. If the pace scares you, I still recommend taking this class. It absolutely helps with understanding the subject and opens doors for attending professor and TA office hours.

I'm usually not someone who is harsh on professors at all, but Scerri is honestly intimidating. Lots of us have bandwidth/connectivity issues, etc, and so we didn't all switch our cameras on, and he always used to blame us for not having them on. Apart from that, he could see-saw from being understanding at times to some students and not at all to other students, so overall everyone was just low-key scared to ask him questions. His lectures are hard to follow and overall caused a lot of confusion, and while the midterm was manageable (I think the average was around an 80 something), the final was rough (many things we did not know showed up and he emailed us in the middle of the test to correct some things -which was definitely distracting). I think our TA said the final average for last quarter was something around a 68%, so be warned. We also had to do Sapling quizzes, which, if you stay on top of it, is quite manageable. However, Sapling did not actually translate to the real exams.

TLDR: Midterms are often recycled, but he makes the final super hard & confusing (as well as too long for the time limit). I would not recommend taking Scerri unless you have to, but if you do, be prepared to do lots of extra studying outside of class to understand the material.

I hated this class and only did well out of spite for Scerri

My biggest piece of advice to do well in this class is to GO TO DISCUSSION SECTION WITH YOUSIF. He opens it up to everyone and you can go to any of the available times he has them. They were incredibly helpful and he cleared up concepts that were explained in convoluted ways in class. ALSO, if you go to class and discussion you should do well on the tests because every single problem on the midterm and final comes straight from the slides.

Aside from that, I really don't think Scerri is as bad as the reviews say. I took the class fall 2021 with the expectation he would be a completely unfair grader and horrible lecturer with a 2.9 rating on bruinwalk. Maybe it was because it was online, but the class was very easy to follow along and take notes on. Sometimes Scerri wouldn't answer a question adequately or explain a concept in a way that would just confuse people, but for the most part, I feel like I sufficiently learned all CHEM 14B topics .

Lastly, Achieve quizzes. For the quizzes, I had done 2 of them prior and I did the last 5 from 10pm to 9am the day they were due without any distractions, so that should give you an idea of how to space them out/how much to procrastinate.

I agree with most of the negative reviews. My philosophy to a happy life is to try avoid thinking about this class and the professor as much as possible so all I'm going to highlight is that it is evil to have the midterm and final on Sundays. I missed meeting Timothee Chalamet at the Wonka premiere because of him... That alone... is evil. When I hear the words "Schrodinger's" or "quantum" it's like I'm a soldier waking up to trumpets in the break of dawn. Avoid this class as much as you can. I put my entire chest into this class and got As in all of my other classes, but this one really takes the cake. What do you gain by curving down grades? CHEM 20A with Prof Scerri is the mysterious looming figure that haunts me in my sleep. But I digress. I feel like I got all the content down if I'm being honest... he just seems... a bit unfair. If they're trying to weed me out... they almost got me. To the C+ I got, thank you for allowing me to pass. But I hope to never see you or anything lower than you again. THEY CAN TRY TO WEED ME OUT BUT YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO TRY HARDER! IF YOU EVER SEE ME FIGHTING A GRIZZLY BEAR.. HELP THE BEAR!