Prof Castillo is the best. She is super nice and tries her best to lecture, although sometimes she is unclear, however, she will always clarify as long as you ask. There are weekly quizzes that are sometimes tricky but are overall fair and can boost your grade. The midterm and final make the majority of the grade so make sure to prepare in advance, they are hard but many students do very well. Make sure to take advantage of the extra credit because it adds up. Good luck!

Selling all graded exams and quizzes. Email me at *************.

This was the first time I ever truly enjoying chemistry. I was very nervous about entering the world of organic chemistry, but Professor Castillo made me fall in love with the world of OChem. She was very engaging in her lectures and provided a lot of extra studying material. She did sometimes mess up the test bank for exams but I personally did not have any problem with her grading rubric so it really depends on the situation for each student. There was a lot of extra credit offered. Exams weren't too hard nor too easy, very fair. Her office hours were very helpful for those who needed more help. The TAs were very nice and well knowledged. The discussion weren't mandatory but helpful. The exams were 2-4 hours during lecture times. Highly recommend this class for those who are seeing organic chemistry for the first time, she was incredibly helpful!

First off, it's organic chemistry so it's going to be challenging no matter who you take it with. That being said, I really feel like I learned a lot by taking this class with Dr. Castillo. Her lectures are very thorough and clear, so you should ABSOLUTELY rewatch the lectures if you find yourself confused on any of the concepts - it's likely that you'll understand it once you watch it again. I failed the first quiz in this class and was thinking I would drop it, but I reached out to Dr. Castillo and she sent me a very thoughtful email filled with words of encouragement. This gave me the strength to give it my all in this class to try to get the best grades I could on the next quizzes and I ended up doing much better after spending more time reviewing! The midterm and final were challenging, but I was grateful that she gave us weekly quizzes because they really helped to prepare me. I have nothing but great things to say about Dr. Castillo, so please take organic chemistry with her if you can!

I feel like Prof Castillo definitely has polarizing reviews, and people either hated her or loved her. She made a disclaimer at the beginning of the quarter saying that she hoped we would forgive her for anything that came off rude, as it was probably due to cultural differences. However, I didn't really think she was rude, and she adequately answered students' questions during class. The stuff she posts on CCLE is super helpful, especially the weekly practice problems and extra links for useful resources. She also structured the lectures in a way that was understandable and easy to digest. If you do enough practice problems, review old exams, and watch some Organic Chemistry Tutor on Youtube, everything will be fine.

I really liked this class. I've found her tests to be moderate in difficulty, but if you pay attention in class and come to office hours then you'll do fine. Professor Castillo is super nice to her students and isn't stingy about grades at all. I also liked how open-minded and accommodating she was, she is always open to ideas that will make the lives of her students easier/less stressful. The only negative thing I found was that her explanations can sometimes be unclear, but the TA's can help you in those situations. Overall, great class.

I came into 14C quite scared because of the reputation organic chemistry has but I was pleasantly surprised to see how the class was set up and the number of resources she gave her students. Professor Castillo has quizzes set up almost weekly which forced you to study each topic and in turn prepare you for her exams. Her midterm was straightforward and as long as you use her practice problems you will be more than prepared. I felt like she made complex topics completely understandable and simple and the main thing I appreciated about her was the transparency of all of her exams because she was genuinely never out to get students. Her lectures and her slides were always helpful and provided the majority of the information you would need and I also found her office hours to be extremely beneficial. I would overall take this class again with her and I wish she could teach 14D.

*TOOK CLASS ONLINE CUZ OF COVID*
If you are scared of taking Chem 14C, please relax. Chem 14C is wayyy easier than Chem 14A and Chem 14B because you don't have to use formulas! Professor Castillo was a very organized professor. I enjoyed her way of teaching because she had the right amount of slides, not to much or to little, and I liked how she had examples in her slides so we can annotate and work together on them. She does have an accent which made things just a tiny bit hard to understand but it wasn't that strong. We had 6 quizzes in total and let me just say, if you understand the examples she does in class and understand her lectures, you shouldn't have any trouble with her quizzes which are about 3 questions each. The quizzes are timed so make sure to know the material well. She gives you 15 mins to complete it but what I loved is that she is willing to accommodate to the students needs so I went right ahead an emailed her if we could have 20 mins instead in the quiz and she granted my wish and it benefitted the whole class. Discussion worksheets were also fairly easy because the LA's are on top of it! The midterm shouldn't be a problem if you attend her lectures, know how to do the practice problems, and are getting good grades on the quizzes. I got a 74.4/80 by doing all of that. She doesn't surprise you with anything you don't know so don't worry. The material is fairly easy till you start learning about stereochem, NMR, IR, etc so make sure you are paying close attention.
After saying all the good things Professor Carrillo does, her weaknesses are that her communication truly sucks. You send her an email, and she won't answer till like a week later when it's to late. Overall though she is a great professor, but just be careful with how her and her TA's check the midterms, quizzes, and finals. If you need recommendations of who is a chill TA, I'd say pick Zeeshan Parvez!! He is so laid back, knows his stuff, and he is soooo fine! GOOD LUCK!!!

Avoid taking 14C with Castillo. She’s the most unorganized Chemistry professor I’ve had so far at UCLA. Those who have had Lavelle before know that he’s incredibly organized. Castillo is nothing like that. She outright refuses the regrade requests. The midterm grading was a mess. She didn’t want to hear students who were graded unfairly. After this, she never put our final grading on gradescope so we would not be able to ask for a regrade. She stopped posting practice questions after week 5. She basically gave up on the class after the midterm. The class does not require attendance, the tests were not terribly difficult but you can still end up with a bad grade bc she does not do partial credit. If you don’t want a professor who does not respond to emails, and is incredibly unorganized with grading I would recommend avoiding her.

I took 14C in the fall with Prof. Castillo and she was great! She seemed like she really cared about our learning and was very flexible with all the assignments and quizzes. She gave a lot of practice material and old tests for us to review.

She was often pretty funny and was always patient with us. Her tests were pretty straight forward— they were a little difficult, but nothing that we didn't cover in class. She took our feedback very well and modified things accordingly given the weird format of this quarter. I really enjoyed this class and I felt like I knew what was going on (which I can't say about most chem classes I have taken). The class had six quizzes, a midterm, and a final. The quizzes were not too bad and honestly I was happy we had them because they basically acted as a buffer in case the exams did not go well. The quizzes totaled to 120 points while the final was 140 points—so they definitely add up.

Anyways, I would highly recommend Castillo for 14C! She is super kind and a good teacher, and does not try to trick you.