Lavelle provides a lot of resources and organizes a lot of review sessions and I found them rather helpful. He clearly cares about helping his students and goes above and beyond to do it. I also appreciate how, when he lectures, he'll often pause at the end of a slide to give people time to write everything down. In conclusion, would definitely recommend.

I did not have a chemistry background coming into this class, so it’s not impossible to get a decent grade with Lavelle. HOWEVER, I hated this class with a burning passion.
Yes, Lavelle organizes a ton of review sessions (which he brags about constantly during lectures and emails), BUT many of them are unhelpful, especially because most of his TAs are disorganized and super flustered when put on the spot. There were only 2-3 UAs’ review sessions that I trusted to go to that were helpful, but it took me a while to figure that out, and by that time the quarter was almost over. Most of the ones I ended up going to were a waste of time, or repeated information that didn’t challenge you/prepare you for the difficulty of the tests.
The tests were poorly written and vague, because like I said the TAs were largely unorganized and lazy. And Lavelle never checked their work, or clarified how they should grade. On one midterm, I literally received zero partial credit on the questions that I missed due to one single calculation error, so I complained to my TA and he basically agreed that I deserved the points, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
Lavelle’s lectures and wording are not helpful and unclear. I copied down very word he said and still i could not understand what he was teaching. Yes, I didn’t take AP chem so I wasn’t as prepared as a lot of people in the class were, but I still don’t think Lavelle should have just assumed that everybody did. He basically taught (and tested) the material as if it were already review, which I thought was completely unfair coming from very little chem background.
With regards to grading, I thought it was pretty generous, considering that I got a few C’s on my exams. As much as I despised chem community, it did give me a good grade cushion. So as long as you do everything he asks you can pass his class, but probably at the expense of actually learning something.

I read bruinwalk reviews before taking this class and actually kind of disagreed with most of the ones I read. I liked Lavelle a lot, I thought he was a really straightforward professor, his lectures were fast-paced but made sense, and he gave us tons of resources and opportunities to study. The homework wasn't hard at all you only had to do 5 problems a week and 5 reviews on chemistry community which was easy and basically a free 100 points in the class. The tests weren't really surprises either I also thought they were really straightforward and we covered the material pretty well. I took chem and ap chem in high school so I had some experience in chemistry but overall just show up and study regularly you should be fine.

DJ Lavelle, an absolute icon, but he teaches an absolutely tough class.

I had almost 0 chemistry background -- last time I took chemistry was high school sophomore year. That said, this class was HARD as I was relearning a bunch of high school topics before the first lecture (recommended through his modules on his website). These topics are tested within the first few weeks, so make sure to learn them.

Professor Lavelle loves his baby Chemistry Community and will boast about them on his exams, which honestly makes the class a bit more bearable. Otherwise, his tests are often times not worded the best and are unclear of what he's asking. Although frustrating to lose many points by not understanding what's being asked to do, the class only requires a 50% to pass (250/500 points).

The homework load itself isn't terrible -- only 5 problems from the textbook and 5 posts on Chemistry Community per week. BUT, be sure to go through each homework question he assigns as 1-2 of them will appear on exams.

Be sure to attend workshops and review sessions that you need help with, but don't attend all. It won't do you any good to just mindlessly copy notes on topics that you just need to review on your own time (I learned this the hard way!)

Otherwise, okay but difficult class. Hopefully 14B gets easier :')

I loved this class. Lavelle is amazing and goes above and beyond to provide help outside of the classroom. His lectures are engaging, most of the TAs and UAs are awesome, there is very little I could complain about.

Biggest problem? The tests are sloppy. There are always mistakes, and a lot of people end up going to get regrades because the questions can be pretty vague.

I probably should've taken Chem 17 first, because my chemistry background was really weak. Lavelle does cover fundamentals, so you can start here and be fine, but my lack of chemistry knowledge combined with my first quarter and awful time-management made this one a close call for me.

I have heard that there are easier chemistry professors (Caram gets mentioned a lot) but in my opinion, Lavelle's the best if you really want to understand chemistry. I'm taking him for the rest of the 14 series, and would encourage STEM majors to do the same. However, if you're only taking this to fulfill a requirement and chem doesn't interest you, you should find an easier professor.

Don't let this class trick you; the tests are deceivingly easy and there's a light workload however the midterm and final are very hard. Grades are out of a total of 500 points consisting of 2 tests, a midterm, final, weekly homework, and weekly online forum participation. I thought I was doing fine in the class because I had gotten A's on the 2 tests and a B - on the midterm along with turning in all the homework however I bombed the final and ended with a B- in the class. The class itself isn't super engaging as it seems like a lot of review from high school and the homework problems themselves aren't difficult either but the questions on the midterm and final tend to be way way harder than any of the practice problems given during lecture. For the final we had to know stuff Lavelle didn't really emphasize and all the stuff the TA's swore would be on the test because he emphasized it a lot didn't really take up a significant percentage of the test. I will say he offers a lot of additonal help and I recommend going to the one's held by Lyndon Bui or any standout TA's at the time, even if you don't think you need it (this was my mistake). It seems like having a good TA had a major impact on final grades; my TA wasn't the best at providing additional help and just gave us problems from the textbook (which we had to do for homework anyway) but I heard that people who had a good TA did well on the final. Honestly I think if you have a strong chemistry background and good TA you'll be fine.

Selling past tests, midterms, and finals. Text me at ********** if you're interested.

He really is a nice nice nice nice guy. He’s such a dad with his jokes and his DJing skills. I also like that you could attend a different lecture time since attendance isn’t mandatory. I probably wouldn’t take him again though. I just didn’t like how he would slam slides on the projected board while trying to explain a concept on the white board. It made it harder to focus in class. I also thought it kind of dragged in sometimes because his voice was just very soft .. so soft I could probably fall asleep. Tests are straight forward but simply practicing homework problems isn’t enough, really gotta memorize the conceptual part too. In addition, chemistry community was also mandatory but I found that helpful.

Dr. Lavelle is such a lovely man and he offers so many resources for his students. His midterm and final were pretty difficult, and there aren't really practice problems in class, so it's pretty much up to you to do practice problems outside of class whether that's on your own or through OH and review sessions. A lot of self-studying with this one. The class (at least the way Lavelle teaches it and 14B) is definitely very geared towards pre-med students, which is pretty clear by the test questions and references to biological applications of chemistry concepts he makes in lecture that might sound obscure but end up being really important. He's said he wants to prep his chem students for taking the MCAT in the future with these types of questions.

I'd recommend doing ALL the homework problems (you're only required to do 5 a week but I did all of the problems in the book and it helped a ton).

otherwise, enjoy this legend's presence. and don't forget to post in Chemistry community.

This review is going to be coming from someone who neither loved nor hated the professor (unlike the majority of reviews on Bruinwalk). Overall, professor Lavelle is definitely a good lecturer and makes sure his class is taught correctly as he is well organized and always making sure that the TAs are up to standard. That being said, the tests are not easy. The tests require a deep understanding of rather conceptual material, and you must not only know why something occurs but be prepared to explain it in detail. Office hours are a huge plus because such conceptual matters are mostly discussed and he provides clear explanations for material that can be on the tests but was not thoroughly gone over in slides. If there is any suggestions I can give it is to do as much of the homework problems as possible including the ones at the end of the chapter as these are frequently on tests and when understanding material to learn all rules and especially their exceptions. This class is definitely doable but will require lots of effort and analysis.