Pham is great. Very helpful, very clear, great job of explaining the material. That being said, his tests are TOUGH, but doable. Just be ready and do not memorize. Try to find extra practice problems from the TAs or from resources like the Think Book.

I had to drop this class because I was going to fail it. There is absolutely no reason a professor should have midterms in which the average is not a passing grade. It clearly shows that he is doing something wrong in teaching the material if so many students are doing so horribly. I even hired a tutor for hundreds of dollars and felt that I knew what I was doing and still failed the midterms. This is so disappointing to me because I had Pham for 14C and I did well and enjoyed him. DO NOT take 14D with Pham take it with Nag or literally anyone else.

As a person, Dr. Pham is quite interesting and relatable but as a professor he is horrendous. I understand that remote teaching is an adjustment for everyone but it felt like he was purposefully not trying to be reasonable. Exams were quite long and difficult to complete in the two hour time frame. After students expressed their grievances with the strict time frame, Dr. Pham basically told us to suck it up. The grading scale was also a bit unfair in my opinion with an A starting at 94%. Although there was extra credit available, there weren't many other points available in the class to compensate for a poor exam grade. During lecture, Dr. Pham briefly explains the reactions without giving adequate examples. The best way to get through this class is by doing ALL the TA worksheets and attending ALL the LA review sessions. Without those two tools and my PLF, I would not have done as well in this class. I was genuinely looking forward to this course but I was immensely disappointed. If possible, please avoid taking this class with Pham.

I didn't expect this class to be easy since it's 14D, but it was super difficult in my opinion. However, it's organic chem, so whatever... Dr. Pham, however, made it extremely difficult to do well in the class. He was rude during office hours which always made me scared to ask questions. Our class ended up having an online final due to coronavirus and he sent lots of very rude emails (though he did apologize). He told us that our anxiety having to do with the class was self-inflicted, and if we didn't want to be nervous about our grades, to just try harder. He was arrogant and just rubbed me the wrong way, wouldn't take another class with him for sure.

Dr. Pham was not a good professor whatsoever. He talked down to his students during lectures, frequently made passive aggressive comments about the mistakes we would make on exams, and made us feel dumb instead of trying to encourage our learning. He does not provide curves, even though organic chemistry is known to be one of the most difficult lower division courses. I would never take a course with him again. His previous exams, which we had to scavenge for on our own, do not remotely reflect the difficulty of his exams provided this quarter. He also mades snide comments like, "if you ask for a curve, I will make the exams more difficult." I do not understand why he thinks it's okay or funny to inflict more stress on his students that are already struggling. Dr. Pham further invalidated our feelings by posting on his instagram about "how difficult teaching has been since covid." I found it so disrespectful for him to be complaining about a class that he is fully in control of, when his students have been feeling pressured to do anything possible to somehow make it out of his class without destroying our GPA.

Professor Pham is THE ABSOLUTE BEST! The concepts in this course are naturally very challenging, and over 10 weeks, you go through a TON of material. My biggest advice is to NOT fall behind and to complete each problem set yourself. I found those to be super helpful and challenging. If you can do those, you'll be able to tackle the problems on the exam, as those tend to be a little bit easier.

I think my biggest regret in this class is not going to Pham's office hours and getting to know him better. He does come across a bit condescending at times, but he's genuinely amazing at explaining concepts and wants you to do well. As long as you strive to learn, he'll appreciate you and reciprocate the energy. I personally think I found a huge passion for organic chemistry through this course. He tied a lot of the concepts to real-world applications, making it all worth learning. He's also a super funny guy and really chill. Highly recommend taking this course with him and taking advantage of all he has to offer!

not to be a #hater, but I personally thought he was a tad overrated. and this is coming from someone who scored well on the exams.

Pros
- he gives quite a bit of extra credit to buffer your grade. there's extra credit through surveys, on exams (~2 questions), and the CRYOFF project.
- he's very knowledgeable about the content and answers questions concisely
- he draws mechanisms on the whiteboard using markers to go in more depth (so you should actually come to lecture and not rewatch on Bruincast because they would never zoom on where he was writing)
- I like how he hands back the actual paper exams (what I did was after, I would use a different colored pen to annotate what I got wrong for future mistake-avoiding).
- BACON and Problem Sets provide buffer points to your grade. He also drops 2 of the lowest BACON assignments (just take pictures of each slide on your phone so you can go back) and 1 lowest Problem Set
- Although he doesn't give practice exams, the problem sets are similar to exams (but exams sometimes feel harder since you're in a time crunch).
- Exams were fair in retrospect. Although every time I walked in the lecture hall for each exam, it felt like it was me against the world. As long as you do a lot of practice problems and study days before, you should be fine. For midterm 1, I studied 3-4 days before, and for midterm 2, I studied a week before. I got a 49/50 on midterm 1 and midterm I got a 48.5/50.
- The LAs also hold review sessions and have their own set of practice problems. There's also volunteer tutoring with more practice problems, so yes, he doesn't give past exams, but there's many other resources.
- I also had to rely on Leah4Sci and Chad's Prep just for extra content review because sometimes I feel like Pham went quickly (he's more fast-paced I would say) during lecture
- We finished Week 10 material on Monday (the final was on Saturday), so there wasn't any last minute new content.
- He has a funny, prickly personality ; sometimes he comes off as arrogant, but he does make funny jokes sometimes

Cons
- sometimes he'd be very hung up about class participation. he relies on the energy of the class to keep going, but if the lecture is more quiet, he kinda has a more snarky attitude.
- he doesn't provide practice exams. you either have to find them online or through a friend or just be on your own with the TA/LA worksheets. it's hard to get your hands on an old exam, but I thought it was helpful in terms of understanding how the format of the exams were and to get more practice problems (because sometimes the TA worksheets weren't helpful enough)
- not a con on his part, but definitely the pace really does pick up after midterm 1. weeks 1-3 are just focusing on 4 reactions (sn1, sn2, e1, e2), but afterward until the end of class, it's just reaction after reaction after reaction with different reagents. he says to try not to memorize, but the only reason why I did well on exams was because I learned to do pattern recognition whenever I saw a product, reagent, or reactant.

Final Thoughts
I would say for this class, you really need to put in the time and effort. They don't lie when they say 14D is the hardest course in the series; it's earned that title because it requires memorization and application. You kind of have to be creative when it comes to retrosyntheses (working your way backwards) and to be detailed when it comes to drawing mechanisms/predicting the product. Pham is a good professor, but I honestly think people glazed him too much. Exam averages were in the 70s, but don't worry about your performance compared to other people. It's strictly points, and if the class doesn't do well, then he will scale (do not ask him to curve). I highly recommend just going through as many problems as you can and to familiarize yourself with what he calls the trifecta: 1) reactions 2) mechanisms 3) synthesis

Dr. Pham is a godsend for the organic chemistry department, and he was one of my favorite professors that I have taken at UCLA so far. He is incredibly clear, methodical, engaging, and knowledgable about the material. I learned so much in this class and am thankful to him for his help making the material understandable for students and providing supplemental help during office hours and via email. With that being said, Chem 14D is definitely a very difficult class, and there is a TON of material covered within the 10 week time span; for me, it was certainly the hardest class in the chemistry series, but Dr. Pham alleviates the difficulty with his incredible teaching and quite generous grading scheme.
In terms of grading scheme, there were two midterm exams and one final. The midterms were 50 points each, and the final exam was 100 points. There was 100 other points in the class for submission of biweekly practice problem sets and weekly "BACON" online chemistry quizzes, which were both mainly an easy 100 points to earn. Therefore, the class was out of a total of 300 points, with 200 of those points coming from the 3 exams; Dr. Pham offered around 13 points of extra credit in the form of surveys/forms and an optional extra credit group project at the end of the quarter. Moreover, there was also extra credit on the exams, around 3-4 points on each exam, so in total there was likely around 25-30 points of EC in a 300 point class (almost a 10% grade bump!).
For this reason, I would say that Dr. Pham's grading policy is extremely generous and made it easier to achieve a high grade in this difficult class. As for the material, the first few weeks and corresponding Midterm 1 were quite slow-paced and relatively easier, in order to introduce us to the fundamentals of organic reactivity and how to draw complete mechanisms. After the fundamentals were taught and Midterm 1 was taken, Weeks 4-10 seemed like an absolute sprint to the finish line, as we cover multiple new reactions in lecture every day. For me, Midterm 2 and the final exam were significantly more difficult than MT1, and the pace of the class picks up tremendously fast after the first few weeks. Chem 14D requires a lot of practice and hard work outside of class time in order to keep up with the sheer breadth of the material covered. While there is definitely a lot of memorization in this class, it is also important to understand the reactions and mechanisms because many of them follow the same overall theme; therefore, practice is essential, and it would not be wise to cram/memorize all the reactions a few nights before the exam.
Overall, Chem 14D is definitely a really difficult class because you learn a LOT in a short 10 week span. However, Dr. Pham makes it extremely understandable and manageable by clearly explaining everything in lecture and keeping the class engaged; moreover, his generous grading policy helps students achieve a high grade in what is supposed to be a difficult lower division organic chemistry class. I highly recommend Dr. Pham for Chem 14D; he was the best!

Highly recommend Pham for 14D! Chem 14D is hard but if you practice and strategize, you can succeed. This is not a class you can just read the lectures/take notes and succeed in; be prepared to do a ton of practice problems if you want to do well. He gave a TON of extra credit this quarter as well (like 10+ points, opportunities spread throughout the quarter).

Coming from someone who got a literal F on the first midterm and ended with an A- in the class, I can't stress enough how critical it is to do practice problems. For the first midterm I didn't do a single practice problem. After that, I went to lecture and took notes like normal; I would then rewrite the reactions, mechanisms, key reagants, etc again (active recall) and do practice problems (discussion worksheets, old exams, homework problems). I made my own "cheat sheets" and organized all the information in a way that made sense to me. The biggest thing about this class was honestly getting familiar with what was going on when looking at a reaction; I went to OH for the first time in my life for this class. My biggest tip to prepare for exams is to take old ones.

Grading
Problem Sets (top 4) 60
Midterm Exams (x 2) 100 ~33%
Final Exam 100 ~33%
BACON Tutorials (top 8) 40 ~13%
Total 300

I really liked the format of the class and after I got adjusted, I couldn't have imagined taking this class with anyone else. Pham is an excellent lecturer and explains things very well but you have to practice on your own. Tests and homework assignments are fair.

I was scared to take this class but Pham’s lectures were very engaging and the tests were very well made (not too easy but not insanely difficult). I thought that the class was well structured and very organized. The TA and LA’s were also very helpful in this course. Would definitely recommend taking chem 14D with Pham!