I think Dr. Scerri is a fair and helpful lecturer. He clearly states what material will be covered on exams (i.e. everything in the course reader), and he gives you multiple past exams. He also suggests problems from the book (which is on reserve in Powell) that you can do for extra practice. He offers fifteen minutes of his time after every lecture to answer questions. Also, he holds office hour twice a week. Unlike other professors who try to get rid of you *cough, Lavelle*, Scerri more or less treats his office hour as a small-group review lecture.

A lot of the reviews for him paint him as this unhelpful, sarcastic know-it all who takes pleasure in doling out bad grades. I couldn't disagree more; he puts in a lot of time to aid student learning. If people don't take advantage of such resources, they deserve a poor grade. He is a bit sarcastic at times, but it's lighthearted.

It is also worth noting that his class is more conceptually-based, rather than math-based. Yes, you do need to be able to do various calculations and problems; however, Scerri seems to care a lot about teaching comprehensive understanding rather than plug-n-chug techniques.

Must attend to his lectures, though he doesn't take attendance. Review the course reader, midterms, and the finals multiple times and you can predict the questions he will ask on midterms and finals. There are seemingly tedious details that he discusses during the lectures, but you must know them. I lost points by this mistake. Overall, amazing professor.

This class is the perfect example of "what you put into it is what you get out of it." I worked my ass off for this class but in all honesty I'm not a chem genius at all, I mean I only got a 3 on the AP Chem if that's somewhat of an indicator of where I'm at in the chem spectrum. To succeed in this class you have to take advantage of all the opportunities that are given in front of you, this includes TRYING on homework, quizzes etc. I mean all the little points add up. In regards to the exam the course reader should be your best friend, especially 3-5 days before the midterm and final. Scerri loves concepts and this can definitely be seen in his practice exams which means they'll most likely show up on the real test. Know the course reader inside and out and please take these past two sentences seriously, this was where most of my hours of work took place. (DO A BUNCH OF PRACTICE TESTS) Scerri's a good professor for the most part but the part he lacks is he expects all his students to have some sort of background knowledge on lewis structures, electronic configurations, sig figs etc. but if you do some extra practice and are willing to ask for help you shouldn't be that far behind, for the most part the playing field is even.

I hope this review helps in some way, just know it's college and in order to succeed you're going to need to put into some serious work. This class is only impossible if you make it impossible, if you're willing to put in the work you will see the results!

LECTURES: Don't ditch class!! Simply memorizing the course reader is NOT enough to do well in the class. Scerri goes over the course reader in greater depth during lectures, and you especially do not want to miss class when he goes over conceptual material, since he elaborates on so much more than what is written in the course reader.

DISCUSSION: I stopped going after week 3 because 9 am discussions are killer and personally I didn't find them that beneficial. Do what works for you. Later in the quarter I learned some TAs were more helpful than others, with some even giving out practice worksheets prior to exams.

HOMEWORK: Scerri does not assign busy work #heckyes His homework is either written/typed problems or Thinkwell quizzes. The Thinkwell quizzes were a waste of time, and I wish he would get rid of it. I highly suggest that you attempt the written/typed homework because most of the assigned problems are from his previous exams!! There are no textbook problems, although Scerri provides a list of suggested problems in the syllabus. The textbook is not required but it was somewhat useful to go over concepts.

EXAMS: One midterm and a final. Both are curved. As you will read in other reviews, the final is notoriously harder than the midterm, but it is not impossible. Any material that Scerri covers in the course reader is fair game, so all topics are worth studying

Here are some tips on how to succeed in Scerri's class:
1) Actually go to class
2) Make use of past exams. Scerri provides a couple in the back of the course reader, and there are several more at the test bank. He recycles questions often
3) Put some effort in the written hw. The exam will contain questions of similar difficulty
4) Understand the material. If there was something that I didn't quite grasp during lecture, I'd rewatch parts of the lecture on Bruincast or I'd google it until I understood the concept

My final grade in the class was an A+. Yes, it required some hard work, but you do not have to spend hours upon hours studying to succeed in this class. Do your part, utilize available resources, and you will do fine in this class.

You have to work hard to get a good grade in this class. As stated in many other reviews, his tests are not a surprise. The material comes straight out of the course reader so I recommend that you memorize and understand everything in the course such as the concepts, practice problems, and graphs/charts. I attended every lecture and rewatched them on BruinCast to write down everything I missed. I believed this helped me a lot. I also worked through the practice exams in the back before the midterm and final, which was beneficial since he often takes exam questions from these previous tests. If I needed help on any topic or concept, I could usually watch a YouTube or Khan Academy video to figure it out and also attended TA office hour. I suggest attending TA office hours with your questions way before the final or midterm because towards that time they are usually crowded. I never attended Scerri's office hours, which I sometimes wish I had because maybe they would've helped. There is no need to purchase the textbook or his book for the course.

Overall, the grade you get is reflective of the work you put in. Make sure you just don't memorize the concepts, but understand them.

The hardest part of this class for me was the pace. Scerri goes over every single page in both course readers and only omits maybe two of them. He really just keeps going and going. He is very conceptual so I noticed that when it came to topics that required some math he wouldn't go into that much depth. There were topics that he expected the class to know already, which in my case I didn't. I did not have a good background in chemistry before I took the class but I ended up with a decent grade. You just really need study. Do practice problems. The course readers have past exams in the back and if you want more you can go to the test bank.

His office hours were okay. I started going about mid-quarter. He tended to go a bit ahead. I found office hours the most helpful the last two weeks which probably sounds weird but he started going over past exam questions and reviewing all topics. Scerri is intimidating but he is less during office hours. I think the helpfulness of discussion sections varies by TA's. My TA was okay and so were all the TA's of the second lecture the one I was in. Most people that I knew who were in the first lecture did not like most of those TA's. My favorites were Piera and Blanton. You're basically allowed to go to any TA for help.

Overall the class required a lot studying. We did have homework assignments in two forms: online tests and written hw. We were basically given about a week to complete them so it wasn't that bad. One week was the online test and about a week and a half later was a written assignment. He would alternate between the two. Some TA's were more harsh than others when grading the written hws.

There is not element of surprise in this class. Everything that he goes over in the course readers is fair game for the midterm and final so study. Some people say you have to memorize the course readers front to back and I don't think you do. Just make sure you know the topics. Formulas are given in the exams, just know what to do with them.

The exams are curved but many people still scored below the average for the midterm so study. That's the best advice I could give for this class. STUDY.

This class was alright. I'm not a chem person, so I thought it was pretty hard, but from what I heard Scerri was a lot easier than Lavelle. This class is quite a lot of physics and if you took AP Chem, it's not useful at all. It was pretty interesting though and I liked his course readers, so you have all of your notes bound nicely. Study more than just the week before the tests!

First of all, I was extremely worried to take this class reading all the reviews on Bruinwalk and hearing the horror stories from other chem students at UCLA. I did not take AP Chemistry in high school, so I didn't have a strong chemistry background coming into this Chemistry 14A class. There are many premed students in this class, so I knew I had to work diligently to receive the grade I want for my first quarter of college.

The material I learned with Scerri was mostly new to me, and I reviewed the course reader after every lecture to make sure I fully understood the concept. Like the reviews below me have already stated, Scerri does seem to focus more on the conceptual parts of chemistry, and Lavelle teaches the mathematical functions of chemistry. However, I think it's difficult to measure which professor is "easier" because they seem to be difficult in they're own ways (life science students need to suffer through one of them lol). Overall, I'm glad I took my first chem class with Scerri because he explained the concepts well and always made himself available to the students for questions.

I'm not going to lie; I put A LOT of effort to receive an A in this class. First, I attended all of the lectures, rewatched the recorded podcasts to review, memorized the course reader, solved all the practice midterms and finals, attended review sessions, and even formed study groups with my classmates. Looking back, the most important things you need to do to receive a good grade in this class is to review the course reader, attend lectures, and solve the practice problems in the back of the course readers. Honestly, you can do well without reading the textbook or solving the suggested problems written in the syllabus. Also, make sure you get most of the points on the homework assignments to boost your grade a little. If you have a tight budget, don't buy the textbook... I never really used it.

The final was definitely harder than the midterm, but Scerri didn't test us on anything he never mentioned in class. He's a fair, straightforward professor, so the test questions are ones he have taught the students during lecture. That being said, it's important to pay attention in class and review the course reader. The answers are all in there! Also, most of the students took the entire 3 hours to finish the final, so be prepared to sit in your chair for 3 hours. Scerri actually recycled some of the past final questions on this final, so it's a good idea to review the old tests before taking the actual one.

To the future students of Scerri's Chemistry 14A class, good luck! I was nervous about taking this class, but as long as you do your work, you will do fine. I do not regret choosing Scerri as my first chem teacher because I really learned a lot from him.

The Final destroyed me. Studied hours for it only to be bombarded with questions that he didn't go over. There were questions that we've never seen before and some asked about ridiculous details that he commented on once in a lecture. His course reader is messy and disorganized. He has typos that he never fixes. One generous thing he does is give solutions to 1-2 out of the 3-4 practice exams he includes in the back of the course reader. But the answers are extremely brief and you can't read half the answers because it's so messy. Some questions he doesn't even bother answering and just scribbles a bunch of lines
Chemistry is no joke and neither is this class. I'm very excited to be taking chem again in the future I just can't wait...
Overall Grade: B-

This class was the one I feared the most coming into my 1st quarter as a 1st year to UCLA. All the negative reviews on Bruinwalk really made me take the course very seriously. I came in with NO chem background at all from high school making it even more terrifying.
Let me be clear about one thing: If you do not have a strong chem background be prepared to study A LOT. Now what do I mean by a lot? I don't mean just read your course reader until you can recite it verbatim or read the textbook for 10,000 hours. You really have to understand all the fundamentals of chemistry. When Scerri lectures he assumes you know many basic ideas of chemistry when many students actually don't. If you took AP Chem you can follow along easily but for me, I was lost half the time wondering "when did we ever learn this?" Anyways here's a brief overview of Scary Scerri's class
The Workload:
Very light. Just 2-3 homework assignments and online quizzes that you can retake up to 3 times. No textbook required or needed in my opinion.
Exams:
So this year we got the amazing chance to take a combined midterm/final with Lavelle's class YAY making the midterm longer and slightly different from previous years. I studied a good 6 hours of nonstop chem just for this midterm and got a solid A on it. The Final however really knocked me out. Only a few questions were the same format as the ones in the course reader while the other questions asked about extremely minor details and material that Scerri said not to worry about. The final was def. more difficult than the midterm.
Scerri: Quite snarky and easily irritated. He explains things fairly well (I think I would've understand him better if I had a chem background) but a lot of the times I was confused.
Overall, this class is DIFFICULT and you must dedicate a good chunk of your week to study.
Homework: 100% Quiz: 83% Midterm:A Final: N/A Overall Grade: B