I understand that organic chemistry is a challenging class, but professor reilly is nearly unreachable via email, office hours are always packed, and it really felt like she did not care about me as a student. A combination of these things made it difficult to succeed in her class, and for these reasons, I would say DO NOT TAKE HER. Professor Reilly also spent about 3 lectures (one weeks worth) teaching us information we DID NOT NEED for this class (prelude to 14D stuff)! I think spending that time teaching us things we would have been tested on or using those lectures as extra review sessions would have been a better use of student time. She made the class more difficult than it needed to be. The LA's told me that Castillo was much easier, so I would take her instead.

Professor Reilly is a really good professor. I think the way that she taught 14C was very clear and I genuinely feel I learned a lot from her class. She lectures a bit fast but you get used to it after the first few lectures. I also LOVED the Kacey (her dog) pics she would include in her lectures. Professor Reilly is also very helpful she was very active on campus wire and provided many office hours throughout the week. Although professor Reilly is amazing her exams were pretty difficult. Going into the exams I would feel as if I understood the material but would come out feeling like I didn't study hard enough even though I would start studying at least a week in advance :( , luckily she did provide some extra credit here and there. Don't let her exams scare you from taking 14 C with professor Reilly though because she is genuinely a really helpful and understanding professor you will definitely enjoy your time in her class :D

Everyone is out here hating on Amber, and I’m not 100% sure why. Like she is by no means a perfect professor but she is pretty reasonable. First of all she kept exams remote for all of winter quarter. Second while the class was hard, as ochem is, she’s curing the class average up to a B- which is not bad at all. Plus there was plenty of extra credit and she dropped a midterm. Like it’s a hard class, and I spent way to much time on it but Reilly is always happy to take questions after class or in office hours. She’s pretty accommodating but can be hard to contact besides class/office hours since she doesn’t respond to emails. There disorganization in terms of posting problem sets, practice questions etc. But her lecturing kinda worked for me. Like I had to some out side self studying with Kahn academy and other YouTube videos, but overall her lectures were clear. It just took me a while to get used to her notes. Anyways she isn’t a bad as everyone is saying and if you work hard an do ok on exams you’ll be more than fine in this class.

Don’t believe what you read in her Bruin walk reviews. I recently had Reilly for chem 30b and it was probably the worst class I ever took at UCLA. Her lectures are messing and she talks so fast that standing up for a sec will miss a whole chapter. Surprisingly, she is also a very difficult grader and will nick pick on every little mistake. Her test are amazingly hard and she doesn’t prepare you are her test. (Not to mention we had 24 hours and it was still that hard.) Final is also out of this world. Still waiting for final grade but will end up with a A- or B+ depending on how I did on the final. To be honest, I felt like she didn’t care about her students especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, she tries her best to make the classes more difficult than normally. I would recommend taking Professor Hung V Pham for chem. He is awesome and straightforward!

This review is for CHEM 14D. Overall, I really enjoyed taking ochem with Reilly. Even though her lectures go by really fast, she takes time to answer questions and give examples for clarification. This helpfulness also extends beyond class hours, as she uploads some tutorial videos and practice problems to CCLE in order to help you prepare for exams. Her lecture notes and chapter summaries are extremely helpful and easy to follow (especially helpful in making notecards). I found her exams to be difficult, but fair. Exams (2 midterms and a final) make up the bulk of the points in this class, but there are smaller points to earn from BACON exercises and smaller extra credit opportunities. Discussion sections are a hit or miss, depending on which TA's section you are enrolled in, but you can drop into any TA's section if there's space allowing.

for the **times she showed up** professor reilly was a splendid instructor!!!!!! she is good at explaining stuff and good at teaching with examples, her lecture notes are very helpful. and this is where the good stuff ends. is my saltiness abt my grade the main driver that drove me to write this review? yes

firstly there was BARELY ANY partial credit in either midterm (besides like one mechanism question per midterm if im right). there's only a few choices for a specific question, and the questions often feature some of the exceptioniest exceptions, so your score doesn't really reflect how much you studied, i.e. it is possible to do really good or really bad with or without knowing (since it's kind of just guessing). i did above avg (mid 80s) for the first midterm with 2ish days of studying. for the second midterm, i studied for a week and did below avg.

the avg. for the first midterm was 71% and the second 66%, neither were curved (they i.e. Reilly+ Ow said if the class avg. at the end is below a B- they will curve but the average ended up being an 84 so they didn't)

secondly the final was EIGHTEEN MULTIPLE CHOICE questions. was it light work and basic? yes! but the amount of points you would lose per question was just so high and for what? i think literally everyone finished the final in 30 minutes...

thirdly and most importantly, everything was so insanely last minute....I'm grateful that she promised us stuff and then delivered some of it but it was just so so late like a day before the exam kinda late....

at the end, some grading adjustments were made: we all got 0.25% for filling out the la feedback (they gave it to everyone cos hard to check, tumultuous times blah blah, the grading scheme that applied was whatever gave you the best grade out of these three: a. original (50 points both midterms, 100 points final, 25 points hw), b. 50 points less from final (no other change) c. one midterm drop (no other change)

my problem with everything is that yes, the class avg. is decently "high (84)"... but i genuinely don't think the scores reflect anything...

firstly it was all highkey just guessing...there was no explanation or anything involved in any of her exams...ig the final had some reasoning mcqs so that was nice but you can always just guess...

secondly because the individual midterms weren't curved, so say you did really bad on the first one (which had a higher class avg., and is the main class avg. booster) and decently good on the second one (with a lower class avg.), since neither midterm was individually curved and the overall curve depends on the overall class grade (which was high so the curve doesn't exist), you are now fucked.

what's even more fucked up is that an A in this class was a 94 not a 93..like what do u want from me dawg....the grade i got was higher than what i thought i would get but i guess the grass is never green in the present

she is so disorganized and she makes her tests ridiculously hard. her disorganization affects your grade and she's lazy. i'm not kidding

Everything you have heard about ochem is true and this class proved no different. Coming into this class, I thought it was going to be relatively easy and something I wouldn't have to struggle too hard at because the professor was sympathetic and understood that ochem was a tough subject. However, it was hard, draining, painful, and has made me have a dislike for chemistry. For some reason I passed even after failing both midterms and completely bombing the final (which I think everyone did). I would say that she is a relatable and funny person and gives thorough lectures but ochem is such a difficult subject because there are many details and exceptions to the rules. Although she gave practice midterms that replicated the format of the actual midterm, there was a huge discrepancy in the content from both and I often found myself doing fine on the practice but completely bombing the actual midterm. The discussion was also no help because my section just did their work individually without any interactions and I usually learned nothing and sat in silence. The final was also horrible because we all felt like we were prepared but it crushed me and any fiber of confidence I had. Overall, if you take this class, heavily concentrate on the practice midterms/final she offers and understand every question on there, do the discussion worksheets, additional problems, spend time understanding hard chapters on your own, do extra credit, and befriend people who are smarter than you.

Dr. Reilly is engaging and personable. She cares that we've learned the material and shares flowcharts and heuristics that make challenging distinctions more methodical. Organic chemistry is hard, but she does not make it extra challenging. In fact, she probably made the course as straightforward as it could reasonably be. She releases practice exams and hosts Zoom sessions to go over the answers. However, don't be fooled, as even though the questions on the real exams look similar to the practice, they can test quite different concepts, and averages still land around 60. Make sure to do the problems she writes (in the lecture guides, discussion, and extra worksheets), as they are the best indicator of how she will test you (as opposed to the textbook).

The extra credit assignments were either fun/silly or helpful. But you will probably be in the dark as to your grade the whole quarter. She says that the exam averages are the benchmark for a B-, but that's all you get to know. She doesn't tell you how much or little the extra credit will boost your grade. Her lectures were quite fast-paced, especially if you're not following along on her pre-written notes on a tablet.

Dr. Reilly was almost always extremely clear about what was and was not relevant for exams. In my opinion, some of the material on the final was an exception, but the final was worth 100 points, so some conceptual lapses weren't too damaging. Given the chance, I would definitely continue taking the 30 series with her.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in this class. It was definitely one of the most challenging courses I have taken. The first midterm was a real eye-opener and scored really low, I made it my mission to score higher and recommend the David R. Klein Organic Chemistry textbooks as they provide great and easy-to-understand explanations. The second midterm, unfortunately, did not go as well as I thought it would, she is a tough grader. Despite all of that, she offers a TON of extra credit opportunities and is very lenient to students going through tough times. She is also very enthusiastic during lectures and really cares about students, especially in one-on-one office hours. I recommend her.