The topics in CHEM 14B are harder than CHEM 14A, so you will have to work harder to get the same grade. The first test was pretty chill, but the second test was killer and wrecked my chances of getting an A. Do the homework and chemistry community! They are generous padding for your grade, and you will need them to balance out the L's from the midterm and final. And go to Lyndon's review sessions!

After taking Lavelle for 14A, I was happy to take 14B with him again. Be aware that 14B is harder than 14A, and in order to get through all of the material, the class moves pretty quickly. That leads me to my main gripe about 14B - Professor Lavelle spent little time on some topics that I think could have been covered in greater detail (especially thermodynamics). That being said, the rest of the course was fine. He's a nice guy, and he gives you the resources to do well in his class if you take advantage of them (Chem Community, sessions for people who need help, etc.). The tests, midterm, and final were all doable if you studied all of the concepts and went to a couple of review sessions before the midterm and final. I'd recommend going to those sessions, as the TAs/UAs often go over problems from his old tests.

This class is great, as we gain a strong foundation in general chemistry with both a mathematical and conceptual understanding. Dr. Lavelle goes above and beyond to assist students to the highest possible extent. I attended a few of his office hours; he was super helpful. After lecture, he always answers questions and is a very friendly guy.

*HOW TO SUCCEED IN THIS CLASS*
YOU NEED TO DO ALL THE HOMEWORK QUESTIONS IN ORDER TO GET AN A OR A+ IN THIS CLASS. This is the main thing in order to get an A or A+. The second thing is DO THE OLD MIDTERMS AND FINALS. Combined, these two things are almost everything you need. No matter what people recommend, whether it’s attending lecture or going to any type of review session, the #1 and #2 things you need to do is the HOMEWORK AND OLD EXAMS; everything else pales in comparison. The professor even copies one or two questions from the homework — verbatim, including the same numbers.

UA Sessions - MY THIRD RECOMMENDATION!
HIGHLY recommend Michael Johanis, Sean McCauley, Lindon Bui. Without them, I would have only gotten around a B+, and not an A+ or A (I’m expecting an A+, but at the minimum I’m getting an A). They both do weekly worksheets, which is SO helpful. Michael Johanis’ review session included a bunch of practice questions, and these questions alone constituted literally at least 80% of the entire exam (slight variations in wording and scenarios, but essentially the same thing). This kind of makes me suspicious that all the UAs see the exams well in advance of the midterm. They CLAIM to not see the exam, but how do their weekly sessions and review sessions capture the midterm, test, and final content so accurately; or maybe they’re just experts, I don’t know… Anways, Sean McCauley’s weekly sessions also have a FEW conceptual questions, which I thought were okay/good practice. I went to a few other UAs, but they made me more confused and used weird analogies/stories to explain things; I won’t say names, but I can only vouch for the two guys I previously mentioned. GO TO THESE TWO GUYS. THEY GET A REALLY HIGH VOLUME OF STUDENTS FOR A REASON.

TA Office Hours
Never attended these, because I thought it was smarter to ask UAs for help. TAs sometimes can’t answer questions, and UAs actually took the course and all did very well. UAs also teach you tricks. No offense, but my TA didn’t know anything and simply assigned us practice questions from the textbook; please, I could’ve done that independently in my dorm…

SIDE NOTE 1: Buy old midterms and finals if you can. My friend let me borrow his DECADE of midterms and finals.

SIDE NOTE 2: It’s good to pick a discussion late in the week, so you get more time to study for your quiz. Also, you have to turn in homework, so I dreaded waking up for my 8AM discussion — on a Friday… Try to get a convenient time!

Lavelle was great! Personally, I think thermochem and thermodynamics is fascinating and I really enjoyed taking this class. I had Caram for 14a and switched into Lavelle for 14b and both classes were great. However, I did take AP Chem in high school and know that people who did not take a significant amount of chem had a harder time as they were not as comfortable with the material.

TLDR: At best average, I wasn't a fan, he is overhyped and thinks too much of himself

I don't get the hype for Professor Lavelle. He is one of the worst professors in general that I've had. His lectures are rather boring and not helpful since he spends most of it deriving formulas instead of giving intuitive explanations or going over problems or even relating them to the world. The class is paced extremely slowly at the beginning but then speeds up near the end which is problematic since the beginning is a lot of review or material that is closely related to 14A. Thus material that is somewhat more manageable is dragged on over while new material is pushed through quickly. The largest problem with Professor Lavelle though is the tests. The material tends to be unclear and there are numerous curveball questions designed to stymie students. While the common claim is that it's there to separate the A's from B's, it tends to separate the A's from C's since partial credit is only given only for numerically correct steps. If your method is correct but you carry over a mistake or made a computational error, no partial credit is awarded for the work. One person read the problem wrong and solved using the wrong value with the correct method and received 0 credit. In addition, the TAs have a large influence on your grade since they grade the tests and are the ones you have to go to to try to get back partial credit. During tests, two of the TAs proctored a room and there was a question that was unsolvable without an outside number which they gave. However, the other room with the other 2 TAs refused to give out the number until the last ten minutes when it was extremely clear the value was required.

I despised this class so much. After I breezed through Chem 14A with Lavelle himself, I went into 14B confident that I could do well, but this class reaaaally frustrated me.
The lectures, just like 14A, were quite dry and I just copied notes straight from his slides. Most of the lectures were just deriving formulas that we were already given on tests. In hopes of actually understanding material, I went through the textbook, but the textbook is quite wordy so that wasn't too helpful.
The most frustrating part of this class was the TERRIBLE tests. I had access to last year's tests and ours were significantly harder. He would pull random conceptual questions about things we didn't cover in class, weren't in homework, or were barely linked to the topic at hand. I had MANY points taken off solely for sigfigs or small calculation errors. He would put questions that were worded weirdly just to throw us off, so read the questions carefully!
I pulled through in the final, because two of the challenging questions (adding up to ~30 points of the 200 point test) were WORD for WORD from the homework which I had done the day before the final. So make sure you 1) do the homework and 2) go to the LA review sessions. Good luck!

Lavelle was definitely a better prof for Chem 14A. In 14B, his teaching layouts were at times confusing and didn't follow the order in the textbook. He doesn't provide students any bearing on how the midterm or final will look like through past exams or practise questions from himself, so we must prepare for everything blindly. This makes his course very time consuming because we must redo the textbook questions over again to be prepared. He does have many UAs that offer numerous sessions to help, and it's great to have such accessible guidance. A pattern I have noticed with Lavelle is that his tests and midterm are perfectly reasonable, and then he pulls out a brutal final that also tests on memorization instead of calculation, something that none of his other exams do. So beware of the final, and other than that, Lavelle isn't the worst.

Selling 7th edition pdf version of textbook for 20$ (1/4 the price)! Regular price at UCLA store for ebook is 80$! Text me @ **********
FYI: Starting 2019-2020 school year, Professor Lavelle is using 7th edition of textbook for homework so better get the book!

You will definitely get an A in this class as long as you do all the required textbook problems, go to lecture and take good notes, and do the midterm /final review posted by the TA's for the course.

I am selling PDF's of midterm 1 and 2 with solutions for Li's course (14B material) and the PDF of the chemistry textbook (for 14A and 14B). Prices are very very affordable. Please text me at **********. I reply within 5-80 mins.