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

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%.

One of the worst classes and professors I've ever taken here at UCLA. Lectures are recorded and honestly not bad to reference if you need to miss a class, unless she decides to start writing on the chalkboard, then good luck trying to find whatever she was writing there anywhere. Unresponsive to emails and while she uploads lectures to Youtube, before the second midterm and before long weekends she has forgotten to post and doesn't reply to emails that ask her to upload the missing lectures until multiple days later. The worksheets are the only homework in the class, worth 35%, and very doable if you go to discussions because 1/2 of the packet will be done during the discussions. Our TA really really improved during discussions after the first couple weeks and made it worth going to discussions/tutorial near the end of the quarter.
Up until the final, the midterms are horrendously long and while she makes it seem like she cares about feedback with surveys and etc, the reality is she doesn't change anything on the future tests. Final was doable, have good notes to bring with you on test day. Not every one is a good teacher, and she's a good example of that. Doesn't answer questions well in class and it's honestly almost funny, until you realize you need to understand fundamental concepts to do well in the test. (Save your questions, just go to the textbook) Her attitude is dismissive (of course, since everything is so easy and "straightforward" to her as she makes sure to remind you) Her 50 minute midterms were both way too long and it's abundantly clear when barely anyone finished her midterms and they averaged in the 50's (yes, both midterms).
With how heavily the class relies on the textbook, I would study the book religiously and dedicate time and effort to those practice problems in the back of the book and take good notes for the open note exams and final. Class was curved after the overall avg grade was a C-

I'm honestly probably just high on my A right now, but I feel like I actually liked this class. Her lectures are clear and straight to the point. Her tests are all based on content she went over(especially the stuff on worksheets/midterm reviews). The worksheets are honestly not that much work, and the TA goes over most of the problems in discussion anyways. The only problem is that she makes the midterms so damn long. It's a 50 minute test, why are there so many derivation problems? The final was alright though.
In general really is just relations between partial derivatives class. Just understand what equations to use and what situations to use them in, and you're pretty much set for the class.

Dr. Shao is a good professor. She records lectures, posts her worked-out notes, and makes herself available to help students during her office hours. The class was painful because of how disjointed and confusing the textbook was, and given that this was Dr. Shao's first quarter teaching 110A, she relied heavily on the textbook to structure her curriculum (she acknowledged this by giving absolute tons of EC). She announced early on in the quarter that the best way to study was to practice end-of-chapter textbook problems, and unsurprisingly many exam questions were derivatives of chapter problems. Exams were fair, and my peers who did more than just memorize assigned homework answers and formulas did relatively well in the course. Do the practice and read the textbook, and you will be chilling. This was not an easy class, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Discussions were a mess though because the TA just scribbled homework solutions on the board without interacting with students and offered very little advice and explanation when asked questions).