Wow this class was something else. merlic was a fantastic lecturer and the content was so interesting but the grades were so all over the place? There were weekly quizzes (STARTING WEEK 1?!) and he did not explicitly have a grading scale so he would just curve individually. The class average was always an F or a D- which was kinda funny, but even though I scored higher or equal to the class average on every exam I ended up getting a B-?.... also I know someone who got below the average on every exam but ended up with an A- so I'm really confused. I guess he grades on how drastically your score increases not on how high your score actually is compared to the average.

I really enjoyed taking 30C with Professor Merlic. Now, this is a hard class. There's no way around that. But I found that Professor Merlic's lectures were always engaging, and he had a lot of knowledge of the material to pass on to us students. There are 3 midterms for this class, which wasn't my favorite, but it does mean that your grade is pretty spread out in case you perform poorly on an exam. I thought that each of the exams were fair, so long as you really took the time to study the material. The final was much longer than I expected, but not insanely difficult. Overall, I would definitely recommend Professor Merlic for 30C.

If you’re taking this class, you’ve probably already taken 30B and 30A. Perhaps you thought to yourself, “Man, 30B is so much harder than 30A, I hope 30C isn’t even harder.” While 30C no longer has spectroscopy, which was hard, it is not easier than 30B. Not only is a very good understanding of 30B required (if you forgot carboxylic acid or amide reactions you better get on that), there are quite a few completely new concepts and topics introduced. That being said, all of this is more of a review of 30C and not Merlic. If you’re here for that, here you go:
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Dr. Merlic is a pretty good professor, quite engaging in lecture, and helpful in office hours. He doesn’t assign any homework, and your grade is completely based on weekly quizzes, three midterms, and one final exam (which could be a pro if you hate problem sets but is probably a con). He does assign plenty of practice problems of all types and difficulties, which is extremely helpful. They are often much more difficult than exams, which is good, and he also gives practice exams that are practically copies of the real exams. Expect questions on both memorizing reactions/reagents and conceptual synthesis questions. Exams are difficult due to the subject, but extremely fair and straightforward to prepare for since you know what to expect. Quizzes are given weekly in discussion, and depend on the TA. They end up being scaled so each TA and section has similar averages, so don’t worry too much about certain TA quizzes being easier than others. As for grading, apparently the class is graded on a curve (as in there are a limited number of As) but I wasn’t aware of this while taking the class. Finally, lectures are recorded but the quality is really bad and he often forgets to record, plus you can’t see what is going on on the whiteboard, only the slides. Just come to lecture or be prepared to learn yourself from the slides (which are actually quite good in terms of content, though they are a bit messy).