i would highly recommend anyone who is taking chem 20A to do it with professor shao. you can tell she cares about all of her students and really wants them to understand and succeed in her class. my biggest recommendations is to either print out the blank notes sheets she posts on canvas to take to lecture unless you have an ipad to annotate them because the notes in class go by really fast. it is probably actually better to print however because the midterms and the final are open note so you’ll already have them all printed out to take with you. in terms of the midterms, it is a lot of problems to go through in a very short amount of time so i would recommend going as fast as you can and not worry about small mistakes because the grading is very generous with partial credit. always have a very good understanding of the worksheets done in discussion when you go into the midterms because around half of the questions on the midterms were from worksheets. with the final i had plenty of time. for the final my recommendation is to copy as many practice problems as you can and copy down or print the answer keys from midterm because you will definitely see problems similar come up in the final. overall, i would say this class is not too difficult if you spend a bit of time with it and i would definitely have professor shao as a professor again!

I thought this class was decently challenging, but as time progresses you will definitely feel more confident. The first few lectures were quite intimidating since they felt overwhelmingly fast-paced. There was barely enough time to copy the notes down on a blank sheet of paper, so make sure you either: (1) write very quickly or (2) print out the blank version of the lecture notes. The midterms were also fast-paced but reviewing the lecture notes, worksheet problems, and in-class examples will help you perform well on them. The class averages for them were definitely on the low side, but it was warranted given that this was Shao's and the students' first chemistry class at UCLA. I would say the biggest positive of these midterms are that they are open-note and open-book. Redoing the problems right before the midterms helped me recognize a question when I saw it on the midterms, as most questions are strongly related to them. The midterms felt demoralizing due to the 50-minute constraint, but if you work at a good pace and make sure you clearly read what the questions are asking for, you'll be more than prepared for them. Canvas was extremely useful, as all the resources you need to utilize can be easily found.

The grade distributions were A+ (95-100), A (90-94.9), A- (85-89.9), B+ (80-84.9), B (75-79.9), B- (70-74.9), C+ (65-69.9), C (60-64.9), C- (55-59.9), F (<55). The discussion worksheets and homework were 30% and 20% of the total grade, respectively. I felt like these portions were the "free" portions of your grade, so your overall grade is really only determined by the two midterms, the final, and extra credit surveys. The midterms are each 15% and the final is 20%. Professor Shao was really generous throughout this course with the extra credit opportunities and was a great lecturer that helped chemistry be engaging. Although sometimes you will feel lost when she throws a ton of new topics at you, you will find that if you put in the time to review the practice problems she gives, you will have no trouble succeeding in 20A.

She is a kind teacher, but has high expectations for her students. I would recommend taking this class after a good basis of Chemistry, though you can survive without it, as I did. A lot of work and studying but otherwise a good class! Even though I was below average, I passed.

The bulk of this class is spending time outside of lectures and really engaging with the material in order to best understand it. The best way to do this is to review and redo the example questions in lectures and to really take the time to understand the discussion worksheets. It's these problems that will show up on the midterms and final. With this class it's really important to be consistent and really push yourself to actually practice and do the problems, rather than just glance at the answer and process. All exams are open-note so you could literally walk into an exam with all the possible problems in a notebook. Which is what I did. Also, Professor Shao releases sample questions before each example which literally give you every problem that could be asked.

Professor Shao is a crazy fast lecturer, which isn't her fault because there's so much material to cover. I recommend using an IPad and having the notes pulled up on a pdf editor. If not, printing the notes beforehand works just as well.

Definitely plan on going to her office hours as well as review sessions. She is super accessible through emails and has literally emailed me back like two minutes later. This class is super rigorous and the key to success is consistency.

Professor Shao is a truly fantastic teacher that you would be lucky to have. Chem 20A has a lot of physics and is definitely different than most chem classes, but Professor Shao is always willing to talk after class to answer questions and clarify concepts. Her office hours are also super helpful and her lectures are well organized with clear notes that are always uploaded to Canvas (both blank and annotated versions). Her lectures do an incredible job of making really complicated and abstract concepts in quantum chemistry/physics manageable and understandable for mostly first-year students, which is no small feat.

The midterms are definitely fair and mirror the material covered in the worksheets in discussion section. The only homework is the Cengage assignments, which don't really reflect what the exam will look like but are nice (albeit sometimes tedious) extra practice to get familiar with the concepts.

Overall, if you're going to be taking Chem 20A, I would fully recommend Professor Shao because she really does want her students to succeed, takes student feedback frequently and seriously, and makes herself readily available for student questions. Plus, exams are all open-book/open-note :)

I didn't feel that the class curriculum was organised well and if it fulfills your major reqs, I hear that the chem 14 series is better. You are expected to know most of the standard concepts like stoichiometry and other basic chem stuff.
Overall, a lot of the quantum mechanics part is somewhat confusing but you don't need to fully understand the concepts if you're just in it for the grade. Practicing the cengae problems, the problems she gives in class, and reveiwing her notes will get you a decent grade, whatever your standards are.
For Shao herself, she was a good professor who responded well to questions and had organised notes. I liked her lectures, although a little dry at times. The class overall had a very confusing structure as it went through concepts in what I felt was a pretty random order. I'm honestly not sure what she could've done about the class on that point. The notes were really helpful for understanding what to know for finals and midterms.

Finals and midterms were fair if you studied a decent amount. I felt that the grading was honestly pretty lenient in retrospect. Grade percentages are relatively lenient and she has 3% extra credit.

Conclusively, if you have to take the chem 20 series or you're interested quantum mech, she's a great professor. But if you have the option of chem 14 instead, I hear it's a better class.

Professor Shao is a very kind professor. Although the beginning of this course may be hard, as long as you push through and pay attention to her lecture, it's really not that difficult. Also, the worksheets in the discussion session are very helpful as well, I usually go over them before any exam. The first midterm was tough, but if you are having a hard time in this class you should definitely go talk to Professor Shao in person and she gave out very good suggestions. Go to her office hours and people who go usually help each other a lot as well. This class taught me that college chemistry is definitely different than high school AP chemistry. It is challenging, but as long as you push through and don't give up, things will eventually be paid off. P.S. Prof Shao loves using the smiley face so be on a look out for :)

Honestly one of the nicest and most genuine professors at ucla. Professor Shao is extremely caring of her students and listens to the feedback of student. However, the class is rigorous and you will need to put in the work in order to do well in the class.

Professor Shao is everything you could ask for in a college professor. Yes, this class is really hard because of the difficulty of the subjects and how many are gone over, but she is amazing at teaching. She hosts zoom meetings for students who happen to not be able to go to class in person for whatever reason and posts all recordings on Canvas. She has 6 hours worth of office hours per week to help anyone and makes sure she goes around helping everyone that has questions. Every week, there's a worksheet that you do in discussion and it gives a really good overview of what concepts you should know and how to answer those questions quantitatively. The format of the questions in the worksheets are the same format for questions asked on the midterms and final which meant nothing would be coming as a trick question or anything like that. The midterms/final are open note so you can bring whatever you like--however the midterms are really rough in terms of the amount of time that you had so best to give yourself tips on how to solve a problem instead of content written down. The midterms prepared us very well for the final because since we were so crunched on time before, it gave us a lot of breathing room on the final to check your answers several times. Overall, Professor Shao is an amazing professor, providing several resources for studying and always striving to help students as well as accommodation in the forms of pushing back homework assignments and literally changing the midterms/final to open note for us. 10/10 definitely recommend

Shao is honestly a great professor. She is flexible especially with grades, considering that half of your points are from the worksheets that we do in discussions and the Cengage assignments (where you have 10 attempts per question, so you can easily get 100s on them). The content is pretty difficult though and sometimes it is hard to take it all in since the lectures are all 50 minutes long. However, she records all of the lectures and she gives out structured notes that she uses the lectures. Also, she made the TAs have review sessions that were super helpful. I would recommend definitely looking over the notes a couple of times since the class can be pretty fast-paced and just reviewing the notes is nice on taking in the information. The grading scale is also pretty nice since if you get 85+, you'll get an A. The midterms can be a bit brutal though with the average scores being around 50-70. All in all, Shao is a pretty good professor who is pretty generous with a class with difficult content.