Favorite professor at UCLA ! He made organic chemistry understandable and fun. And I love his shirts.

I liked this class a lot. Just make sure that you put in the enough work for the class and attend the lectures as much as you can. Even though it will be recorded, attending the lectures keep you focused.
The material is super clear and Pham will exactly tell you what he needs you to know for the class, but as I mentioned, you have to put in a lot of studying hours for this class or nay ochem class in general.

The content was difficult, but the professor made it much easier to understand. The lecture slides and recordings were very helpful to go back and review. Highly recommend the suggested book problems if the problem sets seem too daunting at first. All the materials are there, it's just up to you to manage your time well and know how much practice you need for each concept.

I'll start this by saying that I hate chemistry, it's not my friend, it's never come naturally to me like some of the people in my section, but Dr. Pham makes it manageable. He cares very much about his students learning as long as you show effort and that you care about the class. Most of his tests were fair (except midterm 2 was very mean), but grading is also fair with partial credit. He's very upfront about which mechanisms you need to know and which you don't. He gives TONS of extra credit opportunities, so make sure you do them (some rely on 80-90% of the class participating, so don't be the one who ruins it for everybody). Overall, he's the absolute GOAT and highly recommend anyone to take him!

I want to start off by saying I really do not enjoy chemistry and I was really dreading taking ochem. I (like many others) have not necessarily had the best experiences in the chem department so that really made it worse. In fact, I actually liked chem before I came to UCLA...But anyways, as much as I was afraid of ochem, I was pleasantly surprised by Dr. Pham. I really enjoyed his teaching style, he made everything very clear and relatable to us as students. I really appreciated his funny analogies that actually helped me understand the topics well. He actually made me kinda like chem again. And I actually got a better grade in his class than my other chem classes, which I honestly didn't think was possible considering the stereotype surrounding the difficulty of ochem and how much I sucked at chem in general lol

The breakdown of this class is midterm and final heavy (2 midterms = 33%, the final = 33%), so 66% for 3 tests. This is pretty standard for a chem class. His exams are doable. Maybe it's because I've learned to study better this year but I really found his exams quite a bit easier that the chem exams I have taken in the past. If you redid the problem sets you could have a good idea of the test layout and types of questions. However, to really prepare for the exams and to get down a concept really well, I highly suggest doing as many of the practice questions from the TA worksheets as you can!!! This is what I think made me the most successful in the course. I was really able to get an ample amount of practice problems from these worksheets that help me understand how to apply what we were taught in lecture, as well as be prepared for the questions on the exams. Just watch your time on the exams! This class is where I took my first in person exam in college (bc of COVID) and I was nervous, but it was not bad as long as you watched the time and tried to ignore everyone dropping their calculators lol. He even projects the time on the screen so that was super helpful!

Though I really liked this course, I definitely would have liked it more if Dr. Pham were more approachable. In lecture, anytime someone asked a question, he seemed to answer it a little condescendingly. Maybe I am overthinking it, but I talked to a few people and they seemed to agree. Something about his tone made it seem like we should have already known the answer. If you like asking questions in class, hopefully this does not discourage you. I am not sure what he is like in office hours, so I can't speak for that.

Overall, I am glad to have had a chem class where I feel like I learned, but I wish Dr. Pham would be kinder to our questions :)

I thought coming into LS7A that it would be a breeze since I took AP Bio but it wasn't quite a breeze, though I definitely had an advantage. All of the professors, TAs, and LAs definitely want you to succeed and that is evident through the accessible help on Campuswire (which I highly recommend having open throughout the quarter). Also, the class is structured to set students up for success. There is work to be done before the class (reading guides + review questions), during the class (iClicker), after the class (pod assignments), and it really helps ensure that you never fall behind. Of course there are also weekly quizzes (PALs), reflection assignments, and more, all of which contributed to a very easy time studying. Which brings me to my final compliment about the tests themselves: every exam (AoL) has a group phase and individual phase, and we were the first year where they had us take the group phase on the Monday before the individual phase (Thursday). We received our grades back for the group phase before taking the individual phase, and they were essentially identical so if you knew how to solve the group phase and understood any mistakes you made, you were basically guaranteed 100% on the individual phase.

My main criticism regarding the class and Dr. Pham is simply that sometimes lectures moved too quickly in hopes of playing catch up so that our reading guides would still be aligned with the in-class content, but this made it hard sometimes to take notes. I don't agree that Dr. Pham's accent is a problem but I do think when he speaks fast it can sometimes be difficult to decipher what is going on.

Still, I really enjoyed this class and Dr. Pham is definitely one of the best professors to take the class with. He really cares about us and is a funny guy.

P.S. Side note for people who got a 5 on AP bio in high school...apparently you can petition for it to count towards ls7a and thus skip this course. I wish I knew this before taking the class but still I met really awesome people so do with that as you will!

I loved taking this class with Dr. Pham. He did a very good job explaining everything, and the biology was very digestible. He is very funny and brings a lot of humor to his lectures.

The one thing I have against this class is the exams. The way exams are split is that it is a group portion and an individual portion. Honestly, I think that the questions in the group portion are weighted a bit much at 5pts per question. Getting anything wrong is such a detriment to your overall grade. Other than that, I would say the grading scheme is fair, and I deserved the grade I got.

Lectures are clear, organized, and often entertaining - Dr. Pham explained things pretty intuitively and his lectures are definitely worth attending. Attendance isn't counted for lecture or discussion. Exams were challenging, but not unfair - I think the averages were around 70%, generally. Office hours were very helpful. The content of the class is relatively difficult, so I'd recommend keeping up with the textbook if possible. It's definitely a lot but reading and taking notes on it before covering the content in lecture was definitely worth it for me.

I attended office hours and discussions. The test was significantly different from what we went through in lectures and discussion worksheets, much harder than expected. Class average was less than 50%. He doesn't explain clearly when asked a question or provide a straightforward answer to discussion questions. I likes chemistry beforehand, and after every lecture I looked down on the highest floor of my dorm and contemplating sanity or peace.

take with Pham! no complaints