I absolutely hated this class. While the problem sets for homework were light and she recorded her lecture, I really did not feel like I learned anything. The 50-min exams were extremely and impossibly long. You barely have anytime to think so them being open note doesn't help. She does not post the answer key but rather records her doing the questions and the video themselves are 40 minutes long. The final was very doable however. All her lectures were recorded but her lectures are just going over the textbook so you essentially still need to read the textbook to fully understand everything. She isn't the worst professor I've taken at UCLA because I ended with a better grade then I thought. My advice is prepare good notes for your exams, they will save your life.

Grade breakdown: 35% homework, 20% midterm 1, 20% midterm 2, 25% final, and 3% extra credit.
Overall, the class was okay. Not a super fun class that I’d take again but not too bad either.
Lectures are recorded and not mandatory, I found them interesting so I went to all of them anyways. The lectures are very structured with the template pdf files uploaded ahead of time for note taking. Dr. Shao also goes over example problems in class.
Discussion and tutorial session is just the TA going over hw problems which is boring, attendance not mandatory, I still went just to copy down the homework answers.
Both the Professor and TA hold a two-hour long office hours once a week.
The workload is extremely light, with 8 problems a week. Half graded on completion and half on accuracy. The completion based problems are difficult but will be discussed by the TA so these are basically free points, and the accuracy based problems are pretty easy.
Since the required workload is so light, definitely do practice textbook problems own your own, Dr. Shao emphasized that the exam problem would be very similarly structured. I didn’t do any of these and struggled with the exams way too much, so I regret my choices in hindsight.
A curve is applied to raise class average to 80% if the average falls below that.

Avoid taking with this professor, I regret taking this class with her

Great professor, manageable exams. Make sure to do all the practice problems in the textbook as she has a tendency to reuse problems. I think she is a very generous grader and tries to give students as much points as she can. She is also very kind and friendly!

I'm going to be honest- I don't know how to rate this class.

Professor Shao's lectures were, on average, pretty good. Her lectures were sufficient to understand the material upon review (which is perfectly fine, as this is thermodynamics and it can be quite difficult to understand), and she did a good job of explaining the material with examples, and didn't bulldoze her way through the material (she stopped to take questions, and that kind of stuff). The only minor nitpick I have is the example count- although the examples she had were excellent, I would say that having more of them would have been nice. She also gave us a lot of practice exams- they were really helpful for MT/final prep, and honestly she deserves a lot of kudos for having released basically every single one of her previous midterms for us to study.

Logistically, however, this course left a lot to be desired. Of three exams, only one of them (MT1) was administered without any issues- MT2 was outright canceled because half of the exam didn't print, and the Final had an entire question dropped, alongside numerous changes to other problems. These spot changes were, to be honest- quite stressful to deal with, and a lot of people were unhappy with how these unexpected deviations affected their ability to get the grades they wanted, even if Professor Shao dealt with the MT2 disaster in a manner that I would say was quite fair. Additionally, some of the answer keys to the practice midterms and worksheets were kind of sketchy- I'm not sure if all of the answers on those keys were 1000% accurate.

Overall, I want to say that Prof. Shao and her course are great- I definitely see the potential, and I would've said that up until the second midterm. However, it would be inappropriate of me to simply ignore the unmitigated disaster MT2 was, and the partially mitigated disaster the final was. Take at your own risk- if you get a good quarter, you'll have at least a decent time, but if you get a disaster quarter, your opinion on this class might be considerably soured.

General:
Shao is definitely a great professor at UCLA because she genuinely does listen to feedback and tries to correct mistakes that happen during the quarter. I have had her twice at UCLA and I have seen so much improvement and have genuinely just really appreciated her as a professor in the Chemistry Department. It is by no means an easy class, and I don't think that it is fair to judge a professor based solely on this being a hard subject so sometimes I don't necessarily trust other Bruinwalk reviews. Studying for it almost daily/every few days is definitely going to set up a student to do well in the class. The textbook is optional but does help clarify topics, but I found myself reading it less as the quarter went on.

Discussion and Lecture: Personally, I felt that the discussion worksheets did not help at all. They were often very long and did not really relate to what Shao was talking about, and the TA consistently took off points without explanation. I stopped going to discussion and tutorial because there were quite a few mistakes and things we didn't cover, so I think it'd benefit the TA and the students if the TA had the material to review as well to plan her own reviews based on them. In terms of lectures, Shao has recorded lectures she uploads to her Youtube Channel at a good speed, but she does not have Bruincast so showing up to lectures to write down what she writes on the blackboard can be more helpful. She also uploads her lecture notes in both an annotated and a blank form for students. The lectures can feel rushed, but to be honest most classes do because of how fast we have to go to condense material in 10 weeks, so I think that she does a good job pacing everything and you can tell she has thought out her lesson plans clearly and effectively.

Exams: They are open note, open textbook, etc. In terms of exams, this quarter was definitely harder than others. We had two mistakes, one being a canceled score for the Midterm 2 due to misprinting and some changes to the final as the final was happening. A lot of people were complaining (especially the GroupMe), which I understand because it could end up affecting us but I also do feel really bad for Professor Shao because the things that happened for the midterm were genuinely just mistakes. Mistakes happen. It is how someone responds that really shows their character. She did take the time to address the mistakes immediately and gave us all a game plan for a new grading scheme that took this into consideration. I think that that is extremely important to note: the fact that she responds so quickly and is so considerate to her students. She is not a professor who wants to be malicious and make everyone fail, but she also can't just hand out A's, that's simply not realistic. Her changes were the fairest she could make in the moment, and it did not negatively impact anyone who actually tried in the course. Midterm 1 was completely fair and we had a B- average without a curve, so not many people complained except for the possible lack of a curve at the end of the class. However, we did end up getting a curve due to the difficulty of the final. I think the general rule of thumb for Shao's exams are that the midterms are very doable within the time frame IF you prepared well, but the final is much more difficult. Because it is harder, there likely will be a curve and she grades the exams very quickly and adjusts grades the same.

Hope this helps!

Professor took experience from her previous quarter and adjusted the exams so they are more manageable compared to what I had heard from my friend. Need to do more practice in the book to be able to do well. She listens to students' opinions after every exam which I think is very nice.

Prof Shao definitely listened to the feedback she got her last quarter, as well as the feedback this quarter, and made the class is a lot more manageable. It is hard to make comprehensive 50 minute exams, but I believe her exams were fair and were not too easy/not too hard. She offers 3% extra credit and the class is already pre-curved (a normal A- would be an A, a normal B+ would be an A-, etc.) and she is very very clear with her grading policies (no curving if the class average is at/above a B-). It is a hard subject, but practicing the end of the chapter problems are really helpful in preparation for her exams. However, I often found the discussion worksheets to be unrelated to the material we were learning (they were often far ahead), and they were also usually released late, which made it hard to get help on them. I also did not find the discussion sections to be useful either, as it was mainly just regurgitating the answer key to the worksheets. Overall, the class is what you make out of it and it is not impossible to get a good grade is you are consistent in keeping up with the matieral.

Professor Shao took the feedback from past quarters to heart and actually changed her teaching style and exams to match this quarter (Spring 2024). While she did start off skipping important steps in derivations/conceptual problems and rushed lectures in the beginning, she took our feedback to heart and started explaining concepts more thoroughly and included additional conceptual example problems in each lecture. She also made sure to go over each derivation step as well and overall, was pretty thorough in teaching the material. The midterms (2 in total, each worth 20% of final grade) were quite doable and drastically different than previous quarters in terms of total question content. Answer keys were in the form of a Youtube video walkthrough and they were helpful for reviewing what we did wrong. The final (25% of final grade) was also doable but there were some questions that came up that were barely covered in lecture so do make sure you understand each and every concept covered! The discussion worksheets (35% of final grade) were given and created at the discretion of the TAs - and honestly the TA I had was not very good. He wasn't responsive to emails and not at all transparent about the things related to our discussion worksheets. They were often released late, making it hard to look over the questions, try to solve said questions on our own, and then come to him during office hours/discussion to ask questions before the worksheet deadline. Answer keys for the discussion worksheets were released late, when we barely had any time left before our midterms. Overall, this class is what you make of it: I goofed off quite a bit so I didn't get the grade I wanted but if you put in the time to consistently review lecture/textbook material and do the end of chapter problems and worksheet problems, you'll not have any problem getting a good grade.

This professor was pretty good as chemistry professors go. I appreciate how she posts her lectures on YouTube. The tests were pretty difficult, but they were open note. The homework was 35% of our grade and the final was only 25%.