Professor
Paul Weiss
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - Paul Weiss is a horrible professor, and I say this from the deepest place in my heart that I truly hope he never teaches another Chem 20B class ever again. It is clear from his lecturing style that he should remain behind a desk and continue to do research. His lectures consisted of slide shows that had bullet points with some important sentences, but mostly pictures of him with Nobel Prize winners. He would start on the topic at hand, then always ramble into tangents about a "funny" story of his old teaching days in Chem 20BH or an inventor he met in his free time. He claims that the homework, textbook readings, lectures, and discussion worksheets are "complementary to each other," but they are incompatible as the discussion worksheets were way behind the content we were "learning" in lecture, and the homework was so far ahead of the lecture content that I resorted to learning everything I had to know from the textbook and yet that still wasn't enough. When asked questions, he avoids giving a straightforward answer and is often quite patronizing. He kept saying he was preparing us for standardized tests in the future, like the MCAT, but this is general chemistry, where half the people taking it are engineering majors, who will not go on to take more chemistry or these tests he talks about and "prepares" us for. For the first midterm, we were blazing through topics that should have lasted us until the end of the quarter, and got so far that for the second midterm, we went outside of the scope of Chem 20B. If I wanted to take an organic chemistry class, I would have. Furthermore, my TA was of no use when I asked him questions about the class's structure or the content that would be on the exams; he often said, 'I don't know' or 'I don't know why Paul Weiss does it like that.' Not only was Paul Weiss an inept lecturer, but he also asked the most mind-bending questions on exams that he expected us to know, when he never taught us that content. Although the exams were all open note, that is not an excuse to make the midterms 2 hours long and ask the most ridiculous questions that are all free response. Safe to say that Paul Weiss did NOT prepare us well for any of the exams, and I feel bad for his TAs and LAs who need to pick up the slack for his pathetic excuse of a review day. I would have much preferred to take a normal Chem 20B class where I wasn't constantly being given material from a previous Chem 20B Honors class that he taught in 2017. Lastly, Paul Weiss was so busy with his research that he would often leave town to attend forums and leave us with a sub which would have been a blessing except he left them a set of slides to go off of, which were just as useful as if he were to cancel the lecture all together. Please, UCLA, never ever let him teach Chem 20B again. Instead, I think that the whole class would have preferred to take it in the fall with an actual qualified professor.
Spring 2025 - Paul Weiss is a horrible professor, and I say this from the deepest place in my heart that I truly hope he never teaches another Chem 20B class ever again. It is clear from his lecturing style that he should remain behind a desk and continue to do research. His lectures consisted of slide shows that had bullet points with some important sentences, but mostly pictures of him with Nobel Prize winners. He would start on the topic at hand, then always ramble into tangents about a "funny" story of his old teaching days in Chem 20BH or an inventor he met in his free time. He claims that the homework, textbook readings, lectures, and discussion worksheets are "complementary to each other," but they are incompatible as the discussion worksheets were way behind the content we were "learning" in lecture, and the homework was so far ahead of the lecture content that I resorted to learning everything I had to know from the textbook and yet that still wasn't enough. When asked questions, he avoids giving a straightforward answer and is often quite patronizing. He kept saying he was preparing us for standardized tests in the future, like the MCAT, but this is general chemistry, where half the people taking it are engineering majors, who will not go on to take more chemistry or these tests he talks about and "prepares" us for. For the first midterm, we were blazing through topics that should have lasted us until the end of the quarter, and got so far that for the second midterm, we went outside of the scope of Chem 20B. If I wanted to take an organic chemistry class, I would have. Furthermore, my TA was of no use when I asked him questions about the class's structure or the content that would be on the exams; he often said, 'I don't know' or 'I don't know why Paul Weiss does it like that.' Not only was Paul Weiss an inept lecturer, but he also asked the most mind-bending questions on exams that he expected us to know, when he never taught us that content. Although the exams were all open note, that is not an excuse to make the midterms 2 hours long and ask the most ridiculous questions that are all free response. Safe to say that Paul Weiss did NOT prepare us well for any of the exams, and I feel bad for his TAs and LAs who need to pick up the slack for his pathetic excuse of a review day. I would have much preferred to take a normal Chem 20B class where I wasn't constantly being given material from a previous Chem 20B Honors class that he taught in 2017. Lastly, Paul Weiss was so busy with his research that he would often leave town to attend forums and leave us with a sub which would have been a blessing except he left them a set of slides to go off of, which were just as useful as if he were to cancel the lecture all together. Please, UCLA, never ever let him teach Chem 20B again. Instead, I think that the whole class would have preferred to take it in the fall with an actual qualified professor.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Weiss is super self-absorbed. He spends most of the class bragging about himself and his famous friends. He also likes to give snippets of advice that he thinks are super helpful but are usually just self-aggrandizing anecdotes that don't have practical applications to students' lives. It's not hard to do well in this class, but it is hard to sit through listening to him at lectures.
Winter 2019 - Weiss is super self-absorbed. He spends most of the class bragging about himself and his famous friends. He also likes to give snippets of advice that he thinks are super helpful but are usually just self-aggrandizing anecdotes that don't have practical applications to students' lives. It's not hard to do well in this class, but it is hard to sit through listening to him at lectures.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Paul is definitely a GREAT professor for Chem 20BH! First of all, I believe all of you who are viewing this page must have noticed the difference between Paul's rating for Chem 20B and Chem 20BH. This arises from the different nature of these two: If you just want to learn some chemistry and pass 20B(H) as easily as possible, stay away from Paul's class; if you want to really learn SCIENCE, including chemistry and involving all aspects of science (research skills, analytic skills, etc.), you can hardly find a better professor than Paul. Second, I acknowledge that the workload is heavy, but it is well manageable. In the quarter I took this Paul's class (winter quarter of my first year ---- as most of you who will take this course will most probably take at this time of the year), I took 5 courses including 2 maths and a cluster and I survived. Other comments have talked about what to expect, and they are all precise. However, if you are very academic, you will definitely handle all this. Last but not least, Paul is pretty chill. Just think about how many 60-year-old professor would like their students to call them by their first name instead of Prof. X or Dr. X. His class is extremely interesting, where Paul would occasionally tell jokes and personal experience. And again, if you are a very science guy and want to get into a lab, Paul is extremely helpful. He knows who to turn to regarding every aspect of chemistry or materials science if he can't answer himself. The only minor problem with this course is that the exams are very comprehensive. As other comments have said, many of the materials are complementary, which results in a heavy workload. It will be great if you command them all, but since most of us can't, you should be wise at telling the most important points from others (as I did). Other than that, Paul's course is very amazing.
Winter 2019 - Paul is definitely a GREAT professor for Chem 20BH! First of all, I believe all of you who are viewing this page must have noticed the difference between Paul's rating for Chem 20B and Chem 20BH. This arises from the different nature of these two: If you just want to learn some chemistry and pass 20B(H) as easily as possible, stay away from Paul's class; if you want to really learn SCIENCE, including chemistry and involving all aspects of science (research skills, analytic skills, etc.), you can hardly find a better professor than Paul. Second, I acknowledge that the workload is heavy, but it is well manageable. In the quarter I took this Paul's class (winter quarter of my first year ---- as most of you who will take this course will most probably take at this time of the year), I took 5 courses including 2 maths and a cluster and I survived. Other comments have talked about what to expect, and they are all precise. However, if you are very academic, you will definitely handle all this. Last but not least, Paul is pretty chill. Just think about how many 60-year-old professor would like their students to call them by their first name instead of Prof. X or Dr. X. His class is extremely interesting, where Paul would occasionally tell jokes and personal experience. And again, if you are a very science guy and want to get into a lab, Paul is extremely helpful. He knows who to turn to regarding every aspect of chemistry or materials science if he can't answer himself. The only minor problem with this course is that the exams are very comprehensive. As other comments have said, many of the materials are complementary, which results in a heavy workload. It will be great if you command them all, but since most of us can't, you should be wise at telling the most important points from others (as I did). Other than that, Paul's course is very amazing.
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