Beren is a the biggest homie in all of the lower division professors.

Beren is nice

Beren is a new teacher and is a very helpful and nice guy you can ask him any questions and he cares about his students, however because he is a new teacher and makes some mistakes on the test and homework problems which can be annoying.

First off the HW solutions he post sometimes have errors in them and the TAs seem to not understand whats going on so can't trust there answers. In addition he is not good a making test. The first midterm was too easy and the second he made one problem very hard but because only 3 problems were on the test it screwed people over who didn't get the hard one. Make sure you get regrades cause he rounds his answers and if you round deferentially or not at all points will be deducted but on regrades he gives them back.

Keys to do well on the test is to assume the test will be harder than the homework (he says it will be the other way around it is not). Do some practice problems in the textbook for extra help after finishing homework and discussion problems and for test almost all problems are computational. Make sure you study thermo a lot for second midterm and should do ok nothing to bad on final if you redo all HW and discussion problems before hand

The only annoying part of class is the test don't reflect chem knowledge so seems as if some smart people get low grades and dumb people high grades at random which will be annoying if you don't score well

My man Beren, loved this guy. Great lectures and all bruincasted as well. Homework not too difficult and he was super helpful in office hours for homework and exam review. Exams not too difficult and practice exams helped. Definitely my favorite professor for prereq math/science classes so far. Curve on exam could have been better, but since everyone does fairly well in his class there isn't much of a curve on your final grade.

Beren is probably my favorite professor at UCLA. After taking Baugh for 20A, I was a little disillusioned by chemistry here, but Beren more than made up for that. Beren gave clear and succinct lectures that explained concepts well. He had office hours 4 times a week (where he was helpful and funny) and hosted CNSI tours for students. He knew my name even though I never told him, which was a pleasant surprise. When I came to him after the course had ended to discuss my final grade, he agreed to look at my final and discovered the TAs had misgraded my final exam and changed my final grade accordingly.

Homework is technically graded, but my TA was very lenient when grading it, so it ended up being a free 10% of my grade. Tests were generally reasonable but didn't offer a ton of partial credit. He curves to a B+ average, and I don't know anyone who got below a B (he asked students to come talk to him if they got outside the standard deviation on the midterms).

One thing to worry about is the curve: because people generally do well in his class, every point counts and even getting one point below the mean can put you below the average in the final grading. I got slightly above the mean on both midterms and (originally) one point below the mean on the final, and got a B. There seemed to be a limit on the number of A's given out, so even though he is ~easy~, you can't slack off if you want an A.

Beren was one of the best prereq chemistry professors I took. He was very approachable for office hours, not only because he made sure everyone didn’t have a time conflict. He was VERY clear when reviewing the class material.

Overall I thought Beren was a good teacher. As this was his 1st quarter teaching 20A the homework was sometimes worded poorly and it was a hassle trying to figure out what he meant when he defined a term in class then used a different one for the homework. I felt that the content was pretty easy and he went very slowly, so studying for midterms/final wasn't bad.

Beren is such a sweet dude. He really treats his students like adults but makes sure he is approachable and helpful. I think the majority of the class scores really high on the exams so watch out--you really can't depend on the curve. The rubric for grading on the midterms is really harsh towards silly mistakes and can really bring down your grade. This quarter, the midterms were kind of unpredictable. I think the solution would to really drill in the material and go to office hours. His lectures are super relaxed/chill so sometimes it's hard to really treat this like an intense course.

Dr. Beren is an excellent professor and one of the kindest professors I had at UCLA. Tests are very fine and I don’t even feel stressed out at any moment in this class. He himself got the school’s teaching award, so I am absolutely confident in recommending him to everyone!

I didn’t have to take chem 20a for my major - so I definitely wasn’t prepared for the workload. If you don’t have to take chem 20a, then don’t. Take it easy. Beren is a fantastic teacher - I just don’t understand chem!