The grade I got in her class is by far the lowest I\355ve had at ucla. I got an A in chem 20a and a B- in her class. She has absolutely no teaching skills and no one understands her curve. The TA\355s meant well, but didn\355t really have much influence on anything.
Don\355t take her class unless you have absolutely no other choice. If you have to wait a quarter to take Cherri or someone else, by all means do. I would tell you what you can do to succeed in this class, but honestly, I can\355t think of anything. Good luck!!

The class isnt so bad, if you've taken AP chem last year or if you have a strong background in chem. But if you've never taken chem or you cant remember shit from freshman year in High School, then you're fucked. Go for any other prof cuz she just sucks ass. She doesnt explain shit and just writes a bunch of crap on the board but never shows you how to do any problems. Then, she expects you to apply concepts she never explains onto long tests, all with no curve in the class but instead a regular 90%A scale. Our class is doing so shitty that she made it an 80%A, 70%B, etc. which still doesnt save anyone because it just helps the people on the top, considering our averages were in the 60's. So yeah....gl and if any other prof is teaching, just take the other class, or you're fucked.

I am taking this class now in the winter of 2006, and it is abolutely the most awful class I have ever taken. She just writes notes on the board staright from the book, but she makes it extremely confusing, unless you are one of the few that understand chemistry on your own. Like everyone has said, she sets the curve extremely low, and her tests are almost impossible to finish in the 50 minute time period. I went to her office hours a few times, and one time she even told this kid that she tricked all but a handful of people on a question so few people got points, then she started laughing. Right now probably at least half the class is failing the course when we all passed chem 20A and most did pretty well in it. The only thing that has helped me in the class was finding people in my discussion and lecture that just understood the material to help teach me. Your TA is very important too, mine barely spoke above a whisper and her quizzes were comletely random, one quiz was based on a topic that had one entire sentience dedicated to it in our text. It is a horrible class, I am working the hardest in this class to not pass the tests or some of the quizzes. I cannot compare her to Baugh, but if Dr. Scerri is teaching, definitely take his class! I actually learned the material from his class, and there are actually kids right now signed up for 20B next quarter because he is teaching it and things aren't looking good right now. My opinion: don't take this class, and if you can put it off until Scerri is teaching it, I highly recommend it.

Her lectures are really vague because she uses excessively colloquial language while giving explanations (uses words like "weird" to describe irreversible thermodynamic processes). Her midterms tend to be 4 problems, nonetheless you need to be very, very fluent with the material or otherwise you cannot finish them. Her grading policy is the most ridiculous of all professors I've come across; it fails half the class and the highest score in the entire class came close to an A-.

Professor Raymond is not a very good teacher. Her lectures are not only boring, but she just copies outlines of the chapters and reads what she's copying as she goes along. The examples are general and simple and don't really help with the homework. It's actually like she's just reading and copying somebody else's notes without any real comprehension of the material. A couple times in class she's been asked a question and was unable to satisfactorily answer it, instead just confusing us even more. If you already know and understand the material and do the homework you should be fine in the class-- don't bother with lecture. Her midterms are long, too long for the period, and most of the problems are harder than the homework problems. I'm passing the class, which is more than I can say for a lot of the class because she curves to a 70%. I'm still in the class, though, so we'll see how it turns out.

She believes in curving to the 70% mark, the class average was a 66% so everybody went up about 6 pts (4%) which is totally useless, everyone below the 70% is failing, class isn't too important as she does not do any examples related to the midterm and lectures on things that you could read within 15 minutes.

I'm currently taking Betsy (as she prefers to be called) for Chem 20B. She's very friendly, always available outside of class, and is very organized in lecture. All lectures are straight from book.