Professor Shao is an amazing and super kind, supportive professor, and I'm really glad to have had her as a professor in my first quarter at UCLA. Although the content can be difficult and fast paced at times, the professor truly wants to help students succeed. For instance, she provides a lot of helpful resources (lecture notes, recordings, expectation questions, etc), and her office hours are super helpful and individualized. Another little thing that I noticed was that she responds to student emails quite quickly, so if you have any urgent questions or concerns, definitely don't be afraid to reach out. In terms of the workload, I think the majority of the workload comes from actually studying/reviewing the lecture content, which (for me at least) took up a lot of time since there was so much content covered in each lecture. That's probably just a product of the quarter system though, and again, the professor provides a lot of support to make learning the content more manageable. Overall, I really liked this class, and Professor Shao is a really caring and approachable professor. I wish she taught more chem classes.

Professor Shao is really helpful. Definitely will take her class again.

These reviews are very much sugarcoated…

First note: This class is really, really easy to get at least a B, but gets progressively much harder after that. Homework and worksheets are such a large percentage in the class where if you get 100% on them (which is realistic), you would only need a 10% average on exams to get a C-.

Second Note: I felt that (especially for the first unit or 2), that a physics background helps a lot more than doing something like AP chem. If you haven't taken a physics course in HS, or forgot a lot of info, the beginning may be tough.

As long as you do the work and ask questions, you'll do fine. She is a good lecturer and is amazing during office hours. Super nice. Her midterms are fast paced, but the questions are fair. Overall, would take again.

She is such an understanding professor and truly cares whether her students actually understand the course content. Chem 20A is a very challenging and fast-paced course but her grading scheme and testing methods help students succeed. She is very approachable and stays back after each lecture to answer all doubts and has long office hours as well. She sends surveys after each midterm and final and you can see the feedback being incorporated into the course. Lectures are streamed on zoom as well as recorded so if you are unwell, rest assured that you can always catch up. Her notes are also posted on canvas for reference and before each exam, she posts a sample question/expectations documents which really help with preparation. HIGHLY RECOMMEND Dr Shao for Chem 20A!!

PLEASE TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HER.
I never expected that I would finally get an A with my first midterm grade being 68%, but I did! The material this class covered is VERY HARD for me, but she did well in explaining things. Her class is very helpful, and she is really responsible for her students (as she is the only professor I met who uploads a video explanation that walks through all the previous exam problems). She is one of my favorite teachers now. I would HIGHLY recommend people to take this class with her!!

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PROFESSOR SHAO FOR 20A! As a first year, I had heard from students in the past that 20A is generally pretty tough, but Professor Shao truly made this class as painless as possible. I will admit, Chem 20A is a tough class from a conceptual standpoint and isn't what I expected from my first chem class here at UCLA, but Prof. Shao gives you all the resources you need to succeed and understand the material. She is the type of professor that truly wants to see us succeed, and this is evident in the way she makes resources available to students (open office hours, MULTIPLE review sessions before each exam held by the TA's, notes posted from every lecture with annotations, expectation questions that are aligned with the course material & are posted before the exams, etc)!

Discussions are mandatory if you want the points for the collaborative worksheets that are graded! Discussions were extremely helpful this quarter because it allows you to collaborate with your peers and ask the TA questions about course content (TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS!). There's also homework through the cengage OWLV2 platform which can be pretty time consuming (5ish hours per assignment, 1 assignment every week, or sometimes every other week). I feel like the homework did a decent job at establishing a conceptual foundation, but you need to do also make sure you pay attention to the questions given in the worksheets and in lectures as well.

Exams are challenging, but they are definitely fair! If you put in the effort, go to office hours, and stay on top of the course material, these exams should be manageable. I can easily say that Chem 20A was my favorite class this quarter, despite it being quite challenging.

Professor Shao is a very kind professor. She prepares clear and understandable lecture notes before each lecture, so having a copy of them to follow along and study is super helpful. Although her online homework problems can be long and tedious at times, they are nonetheless helpful and not too hard. Her tests are neither super challenging nor easy, and it is best to learn from mistakes to do well on the next test/final. As long as you pay attention in lecture, review notes, and seek other online resources, then this class will not be too difficult. The grading scale is also quite generous, allocating a large percent of your grade to worksheet scores (which you work on in discussion sections). This is especially helpful if you're not the best test taker (like me).

All around, Professor Shao does a great job introducing chemistry at the college level! I highly recommend taking this course if you can. Here are some key points you should know:

Lectures - Prof. Shao speaks very quickly in class, so it's best to print/write/download the notes beforehand so you can focus more on what she's saying and less on scrambling to get all the notes down before she flips to a different slide . She goes into good enough detail, but sometimes you may need to refer to the textbook and/or chem.libretexts.org to better grasp certain topics (especially quantum theory). Overall, she's a good lecturer (and always got some dope ass yeezys on too).

Homework - For fall 2021, we had 1) a weekly homework assignment during discussion sections where we'd work in groups to solve 5 or so problems related to the course material that week. Not only are these worksheets super helpful for studying, the TAs give sound advice on how to approach any given problem. Also, we had 2) a "Cengage" assignment for each chapter of the textbook, consisting of ~30 online questions per chapter. These took me anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to complete, so be sure to finish them early so you don't have to stress about it later. Overall, the workload is not too bad.

Tests - Our tests (2 midterms, 1 final) were open note, but they were still challenging nonetheless. Each midterm had 7 questions (with parts a), b), c), etc.), so you need to work briskly if you want to finish all the questions on time. If you do get open-note tests, PLEASE come prepared with a concise study guide so you don't have to frantically flip through all your notes - it will make your life way easier. I recommend working through her sample problems (she'll give those out a week or so before each test), discussion worksheets, and in-class examples, especially if you don't have that luxury of open-note tests.

Review Resources - Prof. Shao is EXTREMELY helpful when it comes to midterm and final review. For our class, she had a "buffer" lecture before each test to go over complicated topics the class was struggling with. Also, the TAs hosted last-minute review sessions also going over challenging areas of the class. If you have more specific questions that didn't get answered in those review meetings, Alpha Chi Sigma has tutors available for drop-in sessions from Week 3-9 (visit this link for the in-depth schedule: https://tbp.seas.ucla.edu/#top). Shao is also super flexible, so she will most likely change due dates for certain assignments if you/the class asks or if other circumstances arise.

Shao is a super kind and helpful person - she wants all her students to succeed. Please don't hesitate to take this class!

This was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. Super interesting material, very passionate professor, and very large support group of resources and help for the students. While the content of this class was not the easiest, it was easy to receive a good grade as the grading scale was very generous (85% and up for an A-) and the majority of the grade was made up by the homework. The homework was difficult but through an online program Cengage that gave many tries and worksheets given in discussion sections you could work on with classmates. There were no quizzes, but the midterms and final were directly based off of the worksheets and homework for the class, as well as the many many resources Shao provided as test review (she is an amazing teacher). If you do the work assigned in the class you will be alright, and it’s also very interesting content! I definitely recommend Shao she is passionate about the topic and her students well being and you will have a lot of support in chemistry, especially coming from someone with very little physics and chemistry background. 10/10 professor.