I actually liked the professor herself, she seems nice as a person, and while in person lecture might be a bit fast paced, I always just watched the recordings so I could go at my own speed. She has these pre made notes that you should fill in as you watch lectures, and then gives you reaction summaries that are really helpful. I would usually add notes and mechanisms to these reaction summary sheets to kind of condense all the information in one place, since the exam is open book.
However, despite doing notes of EVERYTHING, really taking my time to digest them, doing all the practice problems and midterms, going to OH to watch her or TAs work through the practice problems, doing discussion section worksheets, I could not do her exams... THEY ARE HARD. It's open note, but you literally have no time to even breathe.... After I finished the exam I would spend like 20 minutes looking it over and would catch so many errors and figure things out, which makes me pissed off because if we weren't as rushed to work through them I could have down much better... the final is the only exam where I felt like I had time to really work on it well and go back to my doubts, and I got a much better grade compared to the midterms. However, none of my grades were amazing and I ended up with a B despite working my ass off... I got straight A's in all my other classes that quarter and the quarter before, so I really think it's the class that's just way too damn hard. I could keep up with all the lectures and practice stuff, I understood it and really spent hours on it, but it wouldn't matter bc I'd get to the exam and it would be insane. I wish I had some magical advice on how to work harder to get an A, but the truth is, I don't think I could have worked any harder at this class... She just asks you way harder stuff on tests compared to what we go over in class, so I'm not sure where you're supposed to obtain that extra knowledge to solve her exams...
My advice to at least get a B is:
- watch the recordings spread out in time so you can digest them, and fill in the annotated notes as you go.
- After you finish a chapter, either make your own condensed notes on it (esp for M1), or if it's a chapter with a reaction summary sheet, make like an extra page on it where you outline the mechanism or add any comment to each reaction based on the info from lecture. Just try to have really well organised notes with everything so you can locate it during exams
- Do all the practice stuff, and add any relevant exercises to your notes
- I really liked using notability for notes, so that I could copy and paste stuff around as the class evolved - makes note making easier
- Discussion section was hit or miss... but try to be good about going as a way to keep yourself on top of stuff
- Go to the exam review sessions or watch the videos of them solving problems to try and catch the strategies they use
- To actually score well on the exams, tbh try and get her to give you more time on midterms at least, and hopefully she sees all these reviews and either makes the questions easier or actually teaches questions of that difficulty during class so that you learn how to solve them

Professor Reilly was for sure one of my more favorite Professors in the Chem series.

She is engaging, clear, an excellent lecturer, very helpful, etc. However, one thing in her class (this was also in Chem 14D and 153A) was that the exams were a bit more difficult than our lecture material. Even our supplemental materials (worksheets) were a bit easier, so in order to do well on the exams, you would have to go the extra mile to get more practice problems from Google or something that was harder.

This issue of exams being harder than lectures and our worksheets is something that seems to be a staple to the chem department. Work hard, go to office hours, try to look up difficult problems online that you can practice from, and you should be good to go.

The material was super interesting to learn (people say you either like 14C or 14D), but the exams would always give us anxiety.

She prepares you really well for 14D and beyond, so TAKE THIS CLASS WITH PROFESSOR REILLY!

I got a 65% on first midterm, 68% of second midterm, and 88% on final. Ended with a B+ and honestly I'm not mad. This class was so hard, definitely the hardest class I've ever had to take at this school. Never had studied harder for an exam I'm still kind of dead inside :) this class is def easier in person (she gave us in person exams and I was able to do them with no problem) but b/c it was online, she made the exams so hard

hey, pre-meds. I know you are all mad because you're probably gonna end up with something not an A, but seriously calm down. I truly think Reilly is a great, engaging, and funny professor; and her only flaw really is just being disorganized and the answer keys (but seriously a great lecturer). I mean, just look at her reviews for the 30 series and look at the 14 series. see the difference? it's because the 14 series is full of entitled pre-meds who can't stand getting anything below a 4.0 (I am a pre-med too btw). I don't think I'm gonna get an A, but I've already accepted that. Yes, exams are tough and the material is draining, but that's ochem. ask any chem/biochem major. calm down, y'all are just taking your anger out on Reilly. downvote me all you want. i've made my point.

This woman was not the worst lecturer. However, her exams were extremely difficult and did not match the practice material difficulty. It almost felt like she was trying to come up with the most difficult and confusing questions. Also, on the first midterm almost everyone got a question wrong and instead of self reflecting on her own teaching she blamed us and did nothing. She never curved anything tried to fix her mistake by making the next midterm easier to bring up the class average; however, no one recieved any retribution for the collective unpreparedness for it. Also, the final was brutal and she again just said "sorry!". Don't take her unless you want to take challenging exams and see pics of a dog that looks like its a corpse.

i usually don't leave reviews because organic chemistry as a topic itself is hard. but it's because she was the one teaching it, that it was so bad. she made everything unclear. she gave keys out wrong and way too late. don't go to bed before 11pm before a test day because you'll probably miss 10 of her emails. don't recommend

Worst class ever, trust the awful reviews of her and avoid taking this class with her! I found it impossible to memorize so many reactions/mechanisms for this class in person and wish I could go back in time and save my gpa :(

Dr. Reilly was incredibly kind and offered a bunch of extra credit as well as a completion for all our problem sets rather than being graded for correctness. She made everything open book and compiled all the reactions but somehow still managed to make the tests hard which is honestly probably good for learning because you still had to spend time studying rather than just using everything she gave you. I did most of the practice problems in the book and flashcards and that helped me a ton! However, I'm not sure if this applies to her other classes, but since it was summer, the information was PACKED. Like, I used to watch my math lectures at 2x speed but here I barely managed 1.5 and had to stop a lot because the information was so incredibly dense and with little breaks, making the 2 hour lectures straight a bit rough. Overall, awesome class and good prof, but definitely still hard, good luck!

This was a great class and I feel like I really learned a lot even though we only took it in six weeks. the information was very organized and professor Reilly gives her students a lot of resources to help them succeed. I feel like I learned everything I needed to know and even though ochem is not one of my best subjects Professor Reilly made it possible to succeed in her class. My recommendation to anyone taking the class is to at least do all the worksheets and write the reaction sheets yourself, and be really meticulous on exams. It was also really fun and she likes jokes and stuff which made the lectures enjoyable to go to and we got to make our own problems and memes which made me really happy. 100% recommend Reilly.

Professor Reilly is amazing. She is very clear and articulate in her office hours about what she is looking for in her pre-lab and post-lab assignments, and she's really engaging with topics that expand out of CHEM 30CL to relate concepts to outside applications i.e. industry, pharmaceuticals, etc. Additionally, Professor Reilly is very empathetic, accommodating, and a pretty chill professor to strike a conversation with. Although I was unable to take this class in a practical laboratory setting due to pandemic reasons, this course was very enriching with cooler and more exciting organic chemistry concepts and lab knowledge compared to CHEM 30BL (...no offense). In all, there are some things that are less appealing in virtual CHEM 30CL such as troubleshooting issues that come from TopSpin (yea... still as annoying as in CHEM 30BL) and virtual lab sections, which is slightly less exciting and engaging compared to practical lab sections. However, if you ever have the chance to take CHEM 30CL with Professor Reilly, please do!

Side note: If you want to see a ton of dog pics especially greyhounds to motivate your spirits, this is probably the course for you!