Scerri is extremely rude, condescending, and unaccommodating. He should not be a professor for an introductory chem class hundreds of students are required to take for their major.
You'll learn more by not attending his lectures and watching YouTube videos instead (though you will have to attend discussions/skim lecture slides to find out what the topics even are since the syllabus does not explicitly state what we need to know). Scerri can't be bothered to record his own lectures and relies on a TA to do so for him. He will often start a minute or two before lecture is officially supposed to start and go over time after lecture should have ended. He refuses to check the chat during lectures, leaving multiple questions unanswered. Scerri is only passionate about his everyday rants to turn cameras on and when he gets a chance to promote the book he wrote. Even though this is an introductory class, he completely skipped over basic chemistry, forcing us to rely on outside sources to learn how to balance reactions. His lectures are extremely disorganized and consist of words and images on a PDF that have no context or explanations. Scerri reads off these slides, sometimes adding vague information, but his meager explanations do not help clear up new and confusing concepts. He tells us to visualize something new without giving examples or showing pictures and seems to think that just showing us the work for a problem will mean that we understand how to solve it. If you have taken AP Chem, you'll be able to rely on past knowledge for the first few weeks, but after the midterm, concepts that aren't taught in AP Chem begin to be introduced.
Grading scale: 30% Sapling (about 8 or 9 quizzes all due at the end of the quarter but they can get time-consuming since most questions have multiple parts and some questions go more in depth than we are expected to know), 30% midterm, 40% final. This doesn't sound bad until you realize Scerri downcurves. His exams are vague and sometimes even the TAs get confused by what the questions are trying to ask. He expects us to fit an entire explanation on one or two given lines and if we go over the line limit, the graders are instructed to not read it. He expects us to magically know how many reasons we should give for questions and takes points off when we don't have enough, but again, even the TAs don't know what to say to reach the expected number of reasons. Scerri does recycle questions though, so try to do as many old exams as possible, but beware that some answer keys he posts are incorrect and/or incomplete.
If you have to take this class, try to get Spencer as your TA. Even if you don't have him (I had a different TA), Spencer posts his discussion recordings so that anyone can watch them and his discussion slides with practice questions and answers. You can attend his office hours even if you aren't in his discussions and before the midterm and final, Spencer hosted review sessions and answered all the questions we had and clarified concepts.
TLDR: Don't take this class with Scerri. Save yourself.
Scerri is a decent guitar player and he should pursue a career teaching the guitar instead since he was much more passionate when playing the guitar than he ever was during any one of the lectures.

SCERRI WAS SO HARD! Don't take this class. I hated it and struggled so much. I regret taking this class. He was very confusing and the tests were extremely hard! BE WARNED

Dr. Scerri is clearly a very knowledgeable in the field of chemistry. That being said, he often times explains concepts as if we already have a strong understanding of this material, making it very difficult at times to follow along. The grading structure consisted of 50% of our grade being 4 quizzes which we had 3 attempts on, 20% our midterm, and 30% our final. The quizzes were fair, however, the midterm and final were both very difficult and rushed. He simply did not give us enough time resulting in poor results on the tests. Though the practice exams were similar to the questions he gave us on the test, they often had wrong answers on the key he provided, leading us wrong for what the correct work and answer should be for the actual exam.

Furthermore in light of COVID-19, he was not accommodating. Not only did he give unfair exams, but he also curved the class down significantly at the end of the quarter. He did not send out any reasoning for this curve nor did he offer the final numbers for the class. Instead, we received our final grades with no explanation which is both disheartening and frustrating. As a whole, the class was one frustrating experience after another and was not a pleasant experience.

I actually really loved this class. From the students I talked with that were also in the class, this seems to be one of the most polarizing classes I've been in. You either love it or you hate it. But that makes sense, since general chemistry is often a weeder-type class for many pre-med students.
I will say this though: it's possible for anyone, even if you're not "good" at chemistry, to get a good grade in Eric Scerri's Chem 14A and have an appreciation for the material.
40% of your final grade in this class is the final exam, and 30% is the midterm. Dr. Scerri will give you several old exams to study and STUDY THESE!! Even MORE importantly, go to the test bank and search for as many old exams as you can find. Split it up between you and your friends to get literally as many exams as possible. These past exams are very useful because Dr. Scerri has been known to copy and paste pretty much all of his exam questions to his current exams, or he may change a single word or number. Understand how to do problems on as many practice exams as you can find and you'll be golden. I got a 98% on the midterm and a 97% on the final through this method, because as I reviewed more and more practice exams, the problems that I had with the material eventually disappeared. I can guarantee you that people who don't do well in this class don't do this.
20% of your grade is online quizzes, which aren't too difficult, and 10% is homework, which can be quite tedious but is overall manageable. Scerri is very funny at times, but can also be quite dull at other times. However, I would say he's in the better half of professors I've had at UCLA. Don't even bother wasting money on the textbook.
Lastly, going to discussion definitely didn't hurt me either. Some of the more complicated concepts such as molecular orbital theory and hybridization were ironed out for me through my TA's teaching.
Overall, this class is manageable, and the resources for you to do well are definitely there.

I'm usually not someone who is harsh on professors at all, but Scerri is honestly intimidating. Lots of us have bandwidth/connectivity issues, etc, and so we didn't all switch our cameras on, and he always used to blame us for not having them on. Apart from that, he could see-saw from being understanding at times to some students and not at all to other students, so overall everyone was just low-key scared to ask him questions. His lectures are hard to follow and overall caused a lot of confusion, and while the midterm was manageable (I think the average was around an 80 something), the final was rough (many things we did not know showed up and he emailed us in the middle of the test to correct some things -which was definitely distracting). I think our TA said the final average for last quarter was something around a 68%, so be warned. We also had to do Sapling quizzes, which, if you stay on top of it, is quite manageable. However, Sapling did not actually translate to the real exams.

TLDR: Midterms are often recycled, but he makes the final super hard & confusing (as well as too long for the time limit). I would not recommend taking Scerri unless you have to, but if you do, be prepared to do lots of extra studying outside of class to understand the material.

I agree with what people said below. Just make sure to include EVERY detail on the test. That makes all the difference. You may know the problem like the back of your hand, but if you leave out some minor detail, they leave out some major points. Oh, and make sure you have a good TA.

Oh where to start with Professor Scerri. As you can probably tell by the other reviews, Dr. Scerri is not a very good lecturer. His slides are extremely confusing and he often gets confused trying to explain them to us. More often than not, a TA or student has to correct him because he gets confused. Apart from the bad lectures, the tests are not only very difficult but are also a huge time crunch. The practice exams he gives out are so much easier and shorter than the actual tests (they also have incorrect answers on them). The midterm he gave us was 7 free response questions with like 4 or 5 parts each in 2.5 hours. I barely had time to finish despite going fast; I did not have time to check my answers, but Scerri obviously did not take any criticism the class had for him because he did the same thing for the final. He said he would try to make it better by adding multiple choice questions, but those MC questions each had 5 to 7 parts as well. So he ended up giving us 6 free response with parts a,b,c,d,e along with 12 extra questions for multiple choice. He said this was to deter cheating to make sure we couldn't consult anyone else in the class, but many people along with me could barely even finish on time.

In addition, he doesn't seem to actually have much regard for his students, unless you're one of his favorites. One time in lecture, someone asked why he used a certain amount of sig figs when dealing with pH which was a valid question because it was confusing and he answered with "have you been coming to lecture?". This was a completely inappropriate response. I had come to every lecture and he had barely gone over that concept and I found his entire demeanor to be very condescending and smug. On multiple occasions you can literally see him rolling his eyes at some questions also.

Personally, I did not enjoy 14B with Scerri, but it is possible to get a good grade if you commit yourself. Honestly, the best way to study for his tests are to do the exams he gives out as practice (and ignore the incorrect answers he gives), and watch a lot of the Organic Chemistry Tutor on YouTube. If you have to take 14B with Scerri, I wish you the best.

I don't recommend this class to anyone who wants to maintain an interest in chemistry. If you have to take this class with him here is the rundown:
HOMEWORK: As of Winter 2020 he uses OWL for homework. It 's like 10 online "quizzes". All the homework is due at the end of the quarter and it's free points basically because they give you 10 tries on the same with different numbers/elements and tell you how to get the answer if you get it wrong. Unlimited time on every "quiz".
TEXTBOOK: There is a textbook that comes with OWL. I never used it.
LECTURES: Possibly the worst part of the class. Not bruincasted, and he posts the Powerpoints but they make no sense. Like actually ZERO sense. Worst formatting on earth, barely any insightful content. When he goes through them in class, there is slightly more clarity. Slightly. He is not a great explainer for complex topics, moves rather fast for no reason, and does not answer questions well. After the first midterm (Week 3), I stopped taking notes and attended intermittently.
TESTS: These are his only saving grace LMAO. Purely based on previous tests. Your TAs should give you a packet of his previous exams. LITERALLY just do these and memorize them and tests are a breeze. Only caveat is most of them do not have the answers so check with someone or ask your TAs if you want.
TAs: I believe this is where you'll get the most actual learning. My TA was not that great, so I attended other TA sections. They can be pretty helpful and are usually better teachers than Scerri himself. If you don't life your TA, DEFINITELY try the others. Attendance didn't really matter at all.

TLDR; don't take this class. if you have to just make sure you go to TA sections and do the past exams.

Scerri is the worst teacher I've ever had. He's a MESS and very unorganized. During lecture, the only material he uses are powerpoint slides, which are some of the ugliest and longest slides I've ever seen, that have a lot mistakes. Even though he only reads from the slides as his "lecture," he somehow confuses and contradicts himself throughout the lecture (this happened on multiple occasions). When students ask him questions about the content on the slides, all he does is respond by repeating what's on the slide and doesn't actually respond to their question. Also, the practice problems are elementary questions that aren't even close to the difficulty of the exams. In order to learn the material, Khan Academy, the Organic Chemistry tutor, and your TA (if you can get Kevin, GET HIM, literally the best TA.) will be your best friend.

As for exams, they are really LONG (midterm was 6 questions with 3+ parts and the final was 7 questions with 4+ parts). The questions can be really tricky because they aren't like the ones on his slides or on Achieve. The best way to prep for them is to use practice exams because he does recycle questions.

At the beginning of the quarter, Scerri assigns a bunch of Achieve/Sapling quizzes (worth 30% of your grade) that's due at the end of the quarter. Achieve is probably almost as bad as Scerri ngl. The man even said that some of the content covered in Achieve are out of the scope of the course, but of course he still assigns it. Literally the only good thing about Achieve is that there's unlimited attempts.

Finally, the worse thing about Scerri and his class is the way he grades. THIS MAN STILL GRADES ON A BELL CURVE. Like what other professor still grades on a bell curve. It doesn't help him or students, like it's even more work for him to do the math. It also forces us to compete against each other rather than help and feel for one another. Although the curve can help you, it can also SCREW you over like me 🤡. Before adding the curve I had a solid A, but after the curve HE CURVED ME DOWN TO AN A-. Never think your grade is fine in this class.

IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO SKIP SCERRI, SKIP SCERRI. TAKE 14B WITH ANOTHER PROFESSOR OR WAIT FOR THE NEXT QUARTER TO TAKE IT. AVOID THE PTSD (POST TRAUMATIC SCERRI DISORDER).

This was my first ever chemistry class and I have left this class absolutely hating chemistry. I read all the reviews beforehand and thought to myself that this class can't be that bad and is probably manageable but I could not be more wrong. Scerri has ZERO organization on his CCLE site and his lectures make absolutely no sense and consist of him jumping from one topic to another back and forth. I did not even know what the topics were so I can study on my own since there is no OUTLINE. The exams were extremely long for the duration and I have not learned one topic in this entire class which will harm me going forward in the course as he is the only professor teaching 14B next quarter too. This class was so bad that I almost dropped and changed to a non-stem major every week. DO NOT EXPECT TO LEARN ANYTHING.