Chem 14A with Scerri was definitely not my favorite class. All of his lectures involve him clicking through the same slides that he has used for the last 10+ years. As such, class is very boring. All of the lectures are video taped. In the winter, he held a 12:00 and a 4:00 class (they are the exact same) and you can attend either class. Scerri drones on about various concepts but seldom provides helpful examples. So, you might think you understand a lecture, but by the next class you are lost again. I recommend taking minimal notes in class and mostly listening to try to absorb as much understanding as possible, and after class taking through notes using his posted slides before the next lecture. Sometimes he will attempt to crack a joke, but it is often lost because most students don't understand his dry British sense of humor. You can ask questions in class, but unless you are one of his 'pets', expect to be dismissed. If you ask a stupid question, he will call you out on it and slightly mock you. The only homework is quizzes accessed online via achieve. The quizzes have unlimited attempts, so it is essentially a completion grade. They correspond to weeks 2-7 of material and are all due week 8. I waited till last minute, but in hindsight would have done a little bit each week. They definitely pile up! Discussion sections vary between T.A.'s , but my TA Elijah was great! He basically gave a simplified mini lecture every week that summarized the lecture content.

The grade distribution was:
30% achieve quizzes (easy 100%)
30% midterm
40% final

The midterm and final were fair, but you definitely need a good understanding of the material (and there's a LOT of it). There were many 'why' questions that weren't specifically addressed in the slides and require further inference. There was a sizable curve on the midterm (I got a 67% which ended up being a B with the curve)

Overall, the class is not impossible, but it's not very enjoyable either. To succeed, you definitely need to stay on top of the material, cramming is very difficult!

AVOID HIM
In high school, I had a really poor chemistry class and so I came in with virtually nothing. We completely skipped the basics. The way that Scerri approaches the class is that he assumes everyone has a very good and kind of advanced knowledge of chemistry which he verbally expresses in a very snarky, indifferent, rude manner. When asked questions he a lot of the time just either says "that's easy you should know this", doesn't answer the question, or goes into something more complicated. This really doesn't encourage others to ask questions. His grade is composed of 3 things: Achieve quizzes, midterm, and final. A lot of the time the achieve quizzes and what Scerri was lecturing about did not correlate. And his lectures are him droning on. On the midterm, there were a lot of typos and mistakes on the tests that they were writing down on the board, some of which were hard to read and locate. They completely missed correcting one and kept it that way. The midterm was also regarded 5 times and the rubric was changed as well. My grade fluctuated within 30 points within a day, went up, went down, down lower, and then finally up by one point. There was never an explanation for why. I ended up dropping the course because I felt that I had learned more from my PLF than from Scerri and that was not enough.

These students are on crack. I worked my ass off for this class got a damn B+ that ain't bad but still not ideal. He is funny but when students would ask clarifying questions he would make sly remarks that could easily discourage a student from wanting to engage with him further. There is a lot of room for you to make your own study plan so if you need a lot of check ins this class is not for you. This class is structured to make you responsible for your education and if you don't understand a concept it is up to you to use resources both from class and outside resources. The upside to this course is that there is not a lot of homework, there are these things called sappling quizzes but those are all submitted at the end of the quarter and you have unlimited attempts for every question. He speaks fast but in a monotone voice so if you have difficulties paying attention in lecture...best of luck on staying engage. You have to put in a lot of focus because on second of distractions you went from mole conversions to orbitals really quick.

as for the practice exams he gave us the wrong solutions to some questions and the exams had a few questions drawn from previous exams but not all.

he also doesn't tell you the curve so you don't really know how your grade was determined. i heard students who had gotten A's on the midterm but got a B or B- in the class where as other students failed the exams but got an A in the class. It is subjective and not my favorite class.

I would recommend taking it with a different professor.

TLDR: if you need constant homework assignments to keep you on track this isn't for you. if you are better with less work to allow you to have more time to study then yessss take this class.

The content before the midterm was relatively easy to pick up especially if you took AP chem in high school. The second half of the course introduced new material that, for me, required a little more work to understand, but it was never unbearable.
The only homework we had was Sapling quizzes, which were basically practice problems that gave you unlimited attempts to complete. Some of the material on the quizzes were not taught in lecture, which was annoying, but Dr. Scerri assured us that we were not responsible for knowing it. Dr. Scerri only tested us on material explicitly mentioned in class, so I found that the best way to prep was to rewatch old lectures.
Dr. Scerri doesn't require attendance, and at the end of the quarter only around 60/235 students actually showed up to the live lecture. After each class, he would stay around for 30min-1hr to answer any questions, so that was really nice. He's really good at clarifying topics, so don't be afraid to ask!
The most intimidating thing about the class was his curve, which only benefitted us because he used at-home testing as a justification for giving us a really difficult midterm. For the curve, he takes sets the mean score as the minimum score for a B+ and then bases the curve around that because he "can't give everyone an A."
If you watch the lectures and study his practice exams, you'll do fine.

Professor Scerri is too smart to be teaching this class. The material makes much more sense once you learn it on your own and then go over it with Scerri. Thankfully, his lectures are recorded, and it isn't necessary to go to your lecture live. He gives out practice tests and problems, which actually help out a lot. The tests are very similar to the practice exams. The TAs are fantastic, and I was able to learn much more from the TA than Scerri because the TA explained it in simpler terms. There are extra quizzes that you take on Thinkwell, but those are pretty easy and give you easy points. The homework isn't mandatory but doing it and reading the textbook help a lot for this class.

I feel that Dr. Scerri often gets a bad reputation, and that may be because some of his jokes are insensitive. I think that that is just his personality, and once you can get past that, he is great professor that knows a lot about the material and is well versed in teaching it to students. His jokes are even funny sometimes. His method of teaching you the concepts of chemistry is more important than any practice problem you could do.

Dr. Scerri was such a great professor. His lectures are very well organized and clear, and he does a lot for his students- he spends an additional thirty minutes after every lecture to answer questions and gives students multiple opportunities to ask questions throughout lecture. He even gives us time to think of questions while reviewing that day's material briefly after lecture. He encourages us that there's no such thing as a dumb question and he really shows that he cares about our learning and wants us to succeed. I found him to be incredibly approachable and very generous when it came to providing resources - he posts multiple practice exams that are almost identical to his actual exams. Additionally, he is really funny and cracks jokes during lecture to make it more enjoyable. I loved this class with Scerri and would definitely take a class with him again.

Professor Scerri is a nice enough guy, and he did actually end up being very accommodating with our final exam, making it optional because of the protests that are happening around the country. He doesn't assign any mandatory homework, and grade is made up of these online, open note quizzes for each unit, on Thinkwell (30%), the midterm (30%), and the final (40%). All of our assignments were open note because of Covid and online classes. My TA, Gail, was awesome, very helpful and better at explaining concepts than Scerri was. My main problem with this class is that Scerri goes over only very basic problem examples in lecture and it is really up to you to self study and teach yourself enough material to do well on the exams. Also a lot of the time he didn't explain new concepts very clearly and especially for the second half of the course I found learning the material difficult. If you're good at being self motivated and teaching yourself, you'll be fine, but personally this was difficult for me and I wouldn't take him again if I could avoid it.

Edit: I TAKE IT BACK. He is not a very nice guy, and only pretended to be accommodating about the final. Based on everything he told us, I should have received an A in the course. I ended up with an A-, after he specifically told us on multiple occasions that he wouldn't curve down. So I guess know, that no matter what he says, he will indeed curve down if he feels like it. I chose not to take the final, and I think he ended up punishing me for it. Those who took the final had that test curved up pretty heavily which helped their class standing and overall grade, which ok, fair, but it seems like those of us who did not take the final are being punished for their success and when emailed about it Scerri basically said yeah I did do that, what are you going to do about it. I guess the answer is nothing, but at least I can rant about his questionable morals and integrity here on Bruinwalk.

Professor Scerri is one of those stereotypical professors in movies. He uses the board more often than not, but he still has slides that go along with what he writes on the board. He uses the board as a way to explain the topics that are on the slides, I think it does the trick.

When it comes to his tests, he really focuses on the previous exams that he gives and going to discussion section. Discussion is mostly the TA just going over previous years exam questions. It is not mandatory to attend discussion. but helpful. Professor Scerri likes to go over the history of chemistry and the scientific discoveries that helped the discovery of the concepts taught in class, so expect easy questions like "What discovery led to the idea of [blank]?" But, once again, refer to past exams (given by the professor) for reference.

Scerri is a great professor IF you have a strong background in chemistry from taking a good AP Chemistry class. I emphasize this point heavily because I know I did well in the class mostly because I was familiar with the content from taking honors and AP chem in high school and didn't rely heavily on Scerri's lectures. I've heard from friends and from reviews that without this background, Scerri can be a difficult person to learn from and his demeanor often makes asking questions in lecture and office hours intimidating. I did find his office hours helpful, and had good experiences with my TA Unal. The most helpful things to do well in this class by far were using the practice tests he posts, using the SAC test bank to look at his old tests, and reviewing his slides. I never bought the textbook and didn't feel like I ever needed to use it once. Overall, I would recommend Scerri as long as you know what you're getting into ahead of time.