I took 14A with Scerri and got an A
I took 14B with Lavelle and got a B

OKAY... To ALL of you people who ALWAYS say "omg Scerri is sooo much easier than Lavelle!!!! blah blah blah..." think of it this way:

When you apply to a graduate school/medical school, they don't look at your professor for elementary chemistry, they look at your GPA. So if you can take Scerri and get the better grade, take him.
Not only that, Scerri better prepares you for the MCAT because he is far more conceptual than Lavelle.
So you are choosing between a workload-intensive class (LAVELLE) that will bore the heck out of you and only prepare you to do hours of tedious studying and book problems
OR, you can take the conceptual route with Scerri. It's easier to get the A and you don't have to waste money on a huge textbook..

Ya, you can get an A in Lavelle if you go to every lecture (or at least watch every lecture) and do all of the book problems and study A LOT...
But you can get an A a lot easier in Scerri's class.

It's your choice!

I had Chemistry 14B with Professor Lavelle.

I really liked him as person, he always had a smile on his face and seemed to really care about his students. However, I found his lectures pretty unhelpful and rarely understood what he was doing. Having never taken calculus, his derivations made NO SENSE to me and I felt as though I was wasting my time in class. I worked really hard and ended up with a B+. The midterm and final were really difficult, in my opinion. But it is possible to succeed, just as long as you put in the time and effort! Lavelle is not bad- take this professor!

Took Lavelle for 14A and 14B

His classes are very organized and follow the coursereader almost page-for-page. This can lead to some monotony and I have some buddies who decided to not bring their coursereaders so that they'd actually pay attention in class.

Quizzes are fair and pretty much straight to the point. Also, your cumulative workbook points replace your lowest quiz grade.

14A is more focused on concepts than math: Periodic table trends, Lewis structures, reaction equilibrium, acids/bases, buffers and titrations(among other stuff)

14B is hell - especially if you hate math. There are tons of formulas that you won't necessarily need to memorize but you'll need to know how to use extensively because they bridge between chapters. 14B reminded me of physics and was totally different from 14A.

Tests: Midterms are fair and if you just do the practice exams in the coursereader you should do fine. [Coursereader includes several past exams (midterms and finals) with detailed solutions]. His finals are very, very difficult and basically separate the boys from the men I guess. He makes "BS" questions that either twist conventionally comfortable problems into convoluted, alien ones or just adds questions that are not represented in the coursereader's practice exams. Just got the Winter 2012 14B Finals results the other day: Final Exam Average: 64%. Total Average: 73%. The midterm average was around 68%. I don't find this shocking anymore: 1) It's not highschool 2) Math 3B/3C looks like this... or worse at least when I took it.

Conclusion: I thought the class was ok. I didn't take AP Chemistry back in high school so I was delighted when he said he structured his class to accommodate the slowpokes like me (I still pulled off an A- in both courses). For some of my AP Chemistry buddies the class was pretty monotonous at times because it was a lot of review, but they still found the finals challenging. The class is fair until it comes to finals but that's too be expected from a college course, right? Well, you can always adopt the tried and true practice of hoping everyone else screwed up just as badly haha. The class is defiitely doable it'll take a lot of effort and self-teaching. Compare with: Professor Scerri

Took 14A and B with Lavelle. He is so helpful that I ended up going to his office hours instead of my discussion session. Who can help you better than the professor himself? He is never condescending, always have a smile on his face.

This is UCLA and this is chemistry. Of course it is going to be hard. You will do fine as long as you put in the work.

There is something very soothing about his voice that will put you to sleep. But there is always the webcast, which is almost better since you can pause and rewind real quick if you didnt get what he was saying the first time around.

His tests are mostly computational which is easier in a way. I wish he was more conceptual though

Dr. Lavelle is a great instructor. He genuinely cares about his students and wants them not only to master the chemistry material but also wants his students to take an interest.
He has so much passion and vigor in his teaching that you cannot help getting interested in the course. I have had him for both Chem 14A and 14B. And now that I will go on to other instructors I will miss him. His homework and practice exams are helpful and relevant to the course material. He is very knowledgeable of chemistry and helps you understanding concepts that are hard to relate to because you can't see them in the naked eye. His exams are FAIR! So all those students who did not do well in his class, it was YOUR own fault. He has so many resources that he is not to blame and has no lacking! He ALWAYS has a smile on his face and is excited even though he has to lecture the same thing four times in a day, 3 days a week! It is a joy to see him talk about chemistry because you know he truly enjoys it. I have SO much admiration and respect for this instructor. Don't take the easy way out, take Lavelle! You will grow so much because of it!

Before I took 14A, I read the reviews on Bruinwalk for Professor Lavelle and became extremely intimidated by the class. I hadn't taken AP Chemistry in high school (only Chem Honors) and felt that this class was going to be impossible considering what the reviewers said.

The class was not that bad. Seriously. You do have to put in the work by either going to lecture, podcasting it, or just reading the course reader (since that's basically what Lavelle does anyways) AND doing the homework problems that he assigns. Yes, there's a ton of them and the ones at the end are ridiculous so just skip those. He does not lie when he tells you that there will be homework problems on the exams, so just stay on top of the assignments and get them done. You won't be sorry if you do. Doing the past exams is the best way to study for his class, so make sure you start on those ahead of time since they do take a while to go through.

Don't be intimidated by this class. The quizzes that he gives (and the workbook) are designed to help you. They are a good transition from high school since the exams aren't weighted as heavily (wait till you get to Chem 14C with Hardinger where the exams comprise the entire grade). So don't panic, just be prepared to work. His exams are definitely reasonable and even though I had a very weak background in Chemistry coming into UCLA, I ended up getting an A- in both 14A and 14B.

I took Chem 14A & 14B with Lavelle.
Teacher description:
-He makes people fall asleep during lecture.
-Bring your course reader during lecture. You don't need to bring the book to lecture. Follow along & take notes.
-His tests are centered around calculation. Rarely do you get a problem that is "explain why ____ happens when you do ___". And even if you do, it's only like 6~8 points out of a 110 pt (midterm) or 170 pt (final) test. The calculation problems are around 10~20 points.

Helpful(?)tips for both classes:
-DO THE TEXTBOOK PROBLEMS HE ASSIGNS. Similar problems will be on the Quizzes.
-DO THE PRACTICE MIDTERMS/FINALS IN THE BACK OF THE COURSE READER. Rather than going back and re-doing the textbook problems, this is more beneficial because you'll get used to...everything. The format, the font, the space he gives you to write your response, the WORDING, etc. Similar problems will be on the actual midterm/final. He sometimes gets lazy and repeats the same exact questions and announces this in class after the test to hear everybody groan.
-DO THE WORKBOOK PROBLEMS THOROUGHLY. Lavelle will replace your lowest quiz score with your cumulative workbook grade if it is higher. This will save your ass if you screw up on a quiz.
-There is a separate softcover book for O-chem you need for the later half of 14B that is sold with the course reader when you buy it from the place in Westwood. I dunno, some of my friends were missing it, so...
-Make use of VOH (the website). You can ask non-administrative questions on his VOH website. It's actually really helpful. Like "How do you get 0.0034 M for question #67 on page whatever?" and he (or his TAs) will answer to the best of their ability.
-[This is what worked for me] There's a LOT of problems in both the course reader and the book, and you can't redo all of them to get freshened up for a test. Keep track of problems you THINK might be on the test, AND problems you don't know how to do/you don't know how they got the answer. I always made a "iffy problems" sheet and did those before a quiz/midterm/final, and that helped me out a lot.
-[Another thing that worked for me] Keep track of the concepts/formulas you think are important. This was ESPECIALLY beneficial for thermodynamics in 14B when the question would go "closed adiabatic system" and you automatically had to know "oh, that means it's q=0". Or "bomb calorimeter" = "no volume change & w=0". I've found that outlining the entire chapter doesn't really help. Bookmark the important pages with post-its, HIGHLIGHT mercilessly(don't worry you can sell back your book even if it's highlighted...), and make notes of the different types of problems. (This can only be done if you actually do the textbook problems...)

Point breakdown:
3x 40 pt quizzes (for 14B, 1 "quiz" is actually an O-chem worksheet turned in at the end of the quarter)
110 pt midterm(in week 6ish? At night. Usually a Thursday)
170 pt final (he likes to have it on Sundays 3-6 pm, but that's subject to change)

I would recommend taking 14A & B with Lavelle because my friend has Scerri and she was REALLY agonizing over online Thinkwell quizzes that Scerri assigned. Lavelle does not give you homework to turn in.
Chemistry AP knowledge is highly recommended. If you're iffy about your chem, buy the book early and start reviewing concepts. The outlines of what chapters to read in the book + what problems to do are provided on the class web page for both 14A&B. It really helped me to review the "lettered" (ABCDEFGHIJKLM..?) concepts at the beginning of the book before stepping into lecture for 14A. It's basic stuff -- unit conversion, stoichiometry, percent composition, percent yield, molarity, etc. but it's REALLY good to review this because Lavelle will jump into Ch.1 (quantum mechanics), leaving you completely behind if you don't know how to, say, convert grams into moles. -shrug- If you're not doing anything at the end of the summer, take a few weeks to do the introductory problems.

He's nice & respectful during office hours, but the grade is MOSTLY up to you. You can't not read the textbook/not do textbook problems AND hope to get a good grade in the class. There's no way around it.

Grade for 14A: A+ (Legit percentage = 96%) <-I guess I didn't need the curve.
Grade for 14B: A- (Legit percentage = 88%) <-I guess the curve helped me out a little bit. Would've been a B+ without it.
^As you can see, there's not MUCH of a curve even if there is one. Don't count on it boosting your grade!

I took Chem 14A and Chem 14B with Lavelle. If you want to get a headstart on chemistry courses, Lavelle is the only professor who teaches it during Fall quarter. Of course, you can wait until Winter to take it with Scerri (who is known to be slightly easier). Nonetheless, I'd rather have straight-laced, thorough Lavelle than unpredictable Scerri before I take OChem with Hardinger.

Overall: Most of the time, half the class was asleep. I think it was a combination of the room and Lavelle's voice/accent. I'm not going to hold that against Lavelle though; at least he knew his stuff well. He doesn't collect HW, so you have to hold yourself accountable. HW is mainly there to cement concepts and apply techniques until you're familiar with them. If possible, break the practice problems into sections and do a bit every day instead of doing them all in one big chunk the night before the quiz or midterm. If you REALLY don't have time to do the HW problems, just have the solutions manual open and go through the questions. Write out how you'd do the problem (but don't actually plug the calculations into the calculator), and check your process using the solutions manual. This method isn't as good as actually doing the work, but at least it's something. Lastly, YAY FOR BRUINCAST! :D

Chem 14A: With no AP Chemistry background, I still managed to pull off an A- in this class. All those other reviewers who say you're screwed if you didn't take AP Chemistry obviously underestimate the power of hard work and determination. And trust me, if you've never seen some of this stuff before, it IS hard work. Be warned. If the midterm curve is too high, Lavelle will purposely make the final extremely hard (as he did when I took the class). I think our final average was a D-. This class is 65% conceptual theory and 35% calculations (but the calculations are the ones that worth the most points on the exams).

Chem 14B: CHEM 14B starts out easier than 14A, but quickly gets tricky. During 14A, I could manage to finish a quiz in 40 minutes, but in 14B, i was struggling to finish. All I can say is that you NEED to know which equation to apply right away (HW will help with that). This class is calculation upon calculation upon calculation, thus it becomes 80% calculation and 20% conceptual theory (for the thermodynamics and kinetics sections). It's no surprise that most of the class is centered around proofs of equations. The introductory organic chemistry unit is 95% conceptual (and memorization) and 5% calculation. I advise any of you to work on the Organic Chemistry Molecules Worksheet with a friend so that you don't end up shanking the computer.

very boring professor, had trouble staying awake in class. His course reader is very hard to understand sometimes because he uses a lot of strange syntax that you dont understand unless you really pay attention in lecture. I recommend attending lecture and not just following along in the course reader (the lectures are right off the reader) but marking what stuff means otherwise when you look back to study it, you wont understand anything.
Quizzes were no too difficult, but all the examples he goes over in class are very simple and nothing like what are on the quizzes or final( or even the homework). The final was very difficult. I ended up getting a B, probably could have been a B+ or A- if I had studied the hell out of the homework problems.

Dr. Lavelle is a great professor and really cares about his students. I wish I was still in his class. He always takes office hours seriously and when students come he drops whatever he is working on to help them.