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

I actually really loved this class. From the students I talked with that were also in the class, this seems to be one of the most polarizing classes I've been in. You either love it or you hate it. But that makes sense, since general chemistry is often a weeder-type class for many pre-med students.
I will say this though: it's possible for anyone, even if you're not "good" at chemistry, to get a good grade in Eric Scerri's Chem 14A and have an appreciation for the material.
40% of your final grade in this class is the final exam, and 30% is the midterm. Dr. Scerri will give you several old exams to study and STUDY THESE!! Even MORE importantly, go to the test bank and search for as many old exams as you can find. Split it up between you and your friends to get literally as many exams as possible. These past exams are very useful because Dr. Scerri has been known to copy and paste pretty much all of his exam questions to his current exams, or he may change a single word or number. Understand how to do problems on as many practice exams as you can find and you'll be golden. I got a 98% on the midterm and a 97% on the final through this method, because as I reviewed more and more practice exams, the problems that I had with the material eventually disappeared. I can guarantee you that people who don't do well in this class don't do this.
20% of your grade is online quizzes, which aren't too difficult, and 10% is homework, which can be quite tedious but is overall manageable. Scerri is very funny at times, but can also be quite dull at other times. However, I would say he's in the better half of professors I've had at UCLA. Don't even bother wasting money on the textbook.
Lastly, going to discussion definitely didn't hurt me either. Some of the more complicated concepts such as molecular orbital theory and hybridization were ironed out for me through my TA's teaching.
Overall, this class is manageable, and the resources for you to do well are definitely there.

Okay so coming from a low education background, this was my first REAL chemistry class. And oh my goodness, this professor made me hate chemistry.

I honestly believe that this class is just dependent on how you learn... and I've met people who really like Scerri as a professor. But he just wasn't it for me. Hardly anything stuck and I found it hard to find the correlation between some concepts and what we were talking about last week. Again, might just be me, but I feel like I didn't learn much coming out of this class and was just scraping by.

All in all, easy workload (as long as you don't put it off) and an okay class. Not my vibe though.

The Chem 14 series is just hard altogether, there is no "easy" professor, especially if you don't know how you learn. With that being said, GOODLUCK. Try new methods, and rely on yourself rather than the professor! I personally liked Scerri for 14A, but don't rely on my review

Wonderful professor, take this great man for 14A!!

As a north campus major having never taken AP chem, I felt uncomfortable heading into this class. However, Scerri's teaching style is extremely student friendly and easy to grasp. As multiple reviews below me have advised, MEMORIZE THE COURSE READER. EVERYTHING from his exams comes from the course reader. If it's not in the course reader- it won't be on the test. But if it is, even if it's some insignificant graph you didn't think to glance at, it might very well be.

The grading system for our year was simple- 30% midterm, 30% thinkwell quizzes, & 40% final. Thinkwell quizzes are a bit frustrating since they often cover different concepts than you learned in class, but just go by the videos posted on their site and you'll secure a 90%+ on them. Plus you get 3 tries on each, so don't sweat it too much.

All in all, this guy is amazing. He's funny, kind, and there to help students- not to mention he has an awesome accent. Nearly every lecture was entertaining for me, and again, I am not a science person. With a 92% quiz average, 91% (unweighted) midterm, and unknown final, I came out of the class with an A. If I did it, anybody can do it. Put in the time, review the course reader every night, and you'll be rewarded with that seemingly unattainable Chem 14A 4.0.

And a shoutout to the most amazing Teaching Assistant a student can ever ask for- Heidi Bednar. This woman will simply chem concepts for you like none other. Find her on the first day of lecture, write down her discussion times, and attend them. I could write an entire essay on how awesome of a teacher she is, but I'll leave it to you to go to one of her section and find out for yourself.

Initially terrified going into this course, and without a solid/positive chemistry background to rely on, I had meager expectations for my performance. Other reviews on Scerri did not do much to help my apprehension. However, I found it remarkably easy to succeed in this course. All that was required was to show up to lectures, pay attention during lectures (or diligently watch the recorded lectures), and take sub-par notes via annotations of the slides. This by itself helped solidify the course material, with the occasional youtube video that cleared any questions up. To study, all you needed to do was thoroughly review the past exams he posts and ensure that you understand the solutions to all questions. I made a study guide before the midterm and final where I wrote down everything I learned in my own words, and that was enough to understand the concepts. Overall, I found Scerri to be an entertaining lecturer aside from the occasional sly British humour that sometimes took students off guard. Don't be scared of this class!

Chem 14A with Scerri was definitely not my favorite class. All of his lectures involve him clicking through the same slides that he has used for the last 10+ years. As such, class is very boring. All of the lectures are video taped. In the winter, he held a 12:00 and a 4:00 class (they are the exact same) and you can attend either class. Scerri drones on about various concepts but seldom provides helpful examples. So, you might think you understand a lecture, but by the next class you are lost again. I recommend taking minimal notes in class and mostly listening to try to absorb as much understanding as possible, and after class taking through notes using his posted slides before the next lecture. Sometimes he will attempt to crack a joke, but it is often lost because most students don't understand his dry British sense of humor. You can ask questions in class, but unless you are one of his 'pets', expect to be dismissed. If you ask a stupid question, he will call you out on it and slightly mock you. The only homework is quizzes accessed online via achieve. The quizzes have unlimited attempts, so it is essentially a completion grade. They correspond to weeks 2-7 of material and are all due week 8. I waited till last minute, but in hindsight would have done a little bit each week. They definitely pile up! Discussion sections vary between T.A.'s , but my TA Elijah was great! He basically gave a simplified mini lecture every week that summarized the lecture content.

The grade distribution was:
30% achieve quizzes (easy 100%)
30% midterm
40% final

The midterm and final were fair, but you definitely need a good understanding of the material (and there's a LOT of it). There were many 'why' questions that weren't specifically addressed in the slides and require further inference. There was a sizable curve on the midterm (I got a 67% which ended up being a B with the curve)

Overall, the class is not impossible, but it's not very enjoyable either. To succeed, you definitely need to stay on top of the material, cramming is very difficult!

AVOID HIM
In high school, I had a really poor chemistry class and so I came in with virtually nothing. We completely skipped the basics. The way that Scerri approaches the class is that he assumes everyone has a very good and kind of advanced knowledge of chemistry which he verbally expresses in a very snarky, indifferent, rude manner. When asked questions he a lot of the time just either says "that's easy you should know this", doesn't answer the question, or goes into something more complicated. This really doesn't encourage others to ask questions. His grade is composed of 3 things: Achieve quizzes, midterm, and final. A lot of the time the achieve quizzes and what Scerri was lecturing about did not correlate. And his lectures are him droning on. On the midterm, there were a lot of typos and mistakes on the tests that they were writing down on the board, some of which were hard to read and locate. They completely missed correcting one and kept it that way. The midterm was also regarded 5 times and the rubric was changed as well. My grade fluctuated within 30 points within a day, went up, went down, down lower, and then finally up by one point. There was never an explanation for why. I ended up dropping the course because I felt that I had learned more from my PLF than from Scerri and that was not enough.

These students are on crack. I worked my ass off for this class got a damn B+ that ain't bad but still not ideal. He is funny but when students would ask clarifying questions he would make sly remarks that could easily discourage a student from wanting to engage with him further. There is a lot of room for you to make your own study plan so if you need a lot of check ins this class is not for you. This class is structured to make you responsible for your education and if you don't understand a concept it is up to you to use resources both from class and outside resources. The upside to this course is that there is not a lot of homework, there are these things called sappling quizzes but those are all submitted at the end of the quarter and you have unlimited attempts for every question. He speaks fast but in a monotone voice so if you have difficulties paying attention in lecture...best of luck on staying engage. You have to put in a lot of focus because on second of distractions you went from mole conversions to orbitals really quick.

as for the practice exams he gave us the wrong solutions to some questions and the exams had a few questions drawn from previous exams but not all.

he also doesn't tell you the curve so you don't really know how your grade was determined. i heard students who had gotten A's on the midterm but got a B or B- in the class where as other students failed the exams but got an A in the class. It is subjective and not my favorite class.

I would recommend taking it with a different professor.

TLDR: if you need constant homework assignments to keep you on track this isn't for you. if you are better with less work to allow you to have more time to study then yessss take this class.

The content before the midterm was relatively easy to pick up especially if you took AP chem in high school. The second half of the course introduced new material that, for me, required a little more work to understand, but it was never unbearable.
The only homework we had was Sapling quizzes, which were basically practice problems that gave you unlimited attempts to complete. Some of the material on the quizzes were not taught in lecture, which was annoying, but Dr. Scerri assured us that we were not responsible for knowing it. Dr. Scerri only tested us on material explicitly mentioned in class, so I found that the best way to prep was to rewatch old lectures.
Dr. Scerri doesn't require attendance, and at the end of the quarter only around 60/235 students actually showed up to the live lecture. After each class, he would stay around for 30min-1hr to answer any questions, so that was really nice. He's really good at clarifying topics, so don't be afraid to ask!
The most intimidating thing about the class was his curve, which only benefitted us because he used at-home testing as a justification for giving us a really difficult midterm. For the curve, he takes sets the mean score as the minimum score for a B+ and then bases the curve around that because he "can't give everyone an A."
If you watch the lectures and study his practice exams, you'll do fine.