Beren is the best. He's a really good teacher and if you don't get it in lecture go to his office hours which are very helpful. What really stands out is how organized he is. All of his lectures are well structured and thorough and he makes the (also very organized) notes available to you online. The homework is helpful and so are the discussion problems because they reflect the midterms well. I highly recommend taking Beren if you can.

Best professor for my first quarter here at UCLA. He was really engaging in lecture and always did a good job of explaining the material. The midterms and final were a reflection of the problems he would give for homework. Honestly, I don't know why I got a C-, cause he was that good. At the end of the day, if you need to take 20A, take it with Beren.

This material of this class is very easy. Be prepared to be curved down. You need to study a lot to get an A. His homework is worded unnecessarily poorly in an attempt to get you to come into office hours. That said, he holds a lot of office hours and is otherwise really helpful if you come in. One of the nicest professors here.

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.

The material is very quantum heavy and can get confusing if you get lost in the math but Beren does a great job of explaining most of the material. Having a good TA (shout out to Jesus) definitely helps out a lot. Although the worksheets are difficult at times they are key to getting a good grade on the exams so I would recommend spending time to understand all the questions and ask for help if you need it.

Christian is a really great professor and I think he cares a lot about his students. To be fair, this was his first time teaching 20A so he was kind of writing the class as he went along which showed in his preparedness with slides and textbook readings. He made the homework really hard so that we would go to office hours, but I think if you know a bit about chemistry and use google, you can do it on your own. I found the discussion sheets the most helpful part of the out of class work because they were a really good way of reviewing the material he gave in lecture. I highly recommend attending his lectures because there is a lot of really good information that is incredibly helpful on the homework.
I found the first midterm to be quite easy, but with the second midterm he touched on topics that we barely saw in class so be careful of that. The final exam was also quite difficult but it was doable with a good amount of studying.
Overall, I would recommend taking Beren over the other professors after reading the reviews on their pages.

Beren tries very hard to help students. I am not sure if it is because this is his first time teaching 20A, but his lectures and homework did a horrible job of preparing students for the exams. Lectures were very boring and he struggled to explain the material during lectures, resulting in long tedious and boring lectures where many students had many questions.

Getting to take Chem 20A with Beren was a stroke of luck as I initially ended up with a notoriously bad professor (y'all know who) but miraculously somehow got Beren. I personally really enjoyed his class, even with it's rather difficult subject matter, and am pretty positive it has to do with having Beren as a teacher. Because this was his first time teaching the class there were some bumps in the road, but overall I think he did a good job. The first midterm and final were fair with the second midterm being a good amount more difficult. The homework for the most part is way more difficult than the tests so don't stress too much if you can't solve them since they're pretty confusing and are graded based on effort not accuracy. I ended up turning in a couple hws late due to forgetting to give them to my TA and still got full credit. If you ever have any questions, definitely go to his office hours as I ended going around once a week (3 times during finals week) and it was immensely helpful for any confusions I had (although plan on coming with your questions ready). Also definitely go to discussion as you learn a lot of the applicable skills to tests and hws during that time. I was pretty bummed about my grade since I actually really enjoyed the course and its subject. By no means is a B+ a bad grade, but it was a little disappointing after getting a 97% on the first midterm and an ok score on the second one to not get my goal score in the class, but it was my mistake since I personally thought the final was very fair but wound up with a C on it which tanked my grade. Overall would highly recommend taking Beren for Chem 20A.

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!