I loved this class so much. The professor was very knowledgable of the subject and expanded the content we learned to other interesting things. Harran made jokes here and there and you could tell he really loved the subject. His lectures were pretty good because he does a demonstration mostly on the whiteboard to explain concepts while the slides were there to lay out organized and detailed tables that are helpful to review. The class was engaging and the TAs were wonderful and they busted their butts off to help all of the students. I really liked how direct the grading and exams were. The scores came out pretty fast as well. Despite the gnarly averages, the curves helped a lot. I ended up getting a 90 and then a 70 on the midterms and ended up getting an A. As long as you score over the average by a margin of 15-25 I don't think you do not have to worry about getting below an A. There were many resources and helpful resources, the best being the professors and TAs themselves. The textbook is genuinely the best thing to study if you want to understand the content well. It takes a lot of time and effort to really understand the material. This class is a reflection of how if you really want it, you can have it, but you need to work hard for it.

Some advice would be to not fall behind. Always stay on top of the class and read ahead of time. Ask your TA or professor for help. Practicing problems and doing the textbook problems were very helpful, too. It's all about repetition and understanding how things worked.

While I was a bit terrified going into this course (I last took Gen Chem over a year ago), Dr. Harran is an incredible lecturer and made me interested in organic chemistry. He often brought up connections of what we were learning to real world topics (such as drug development), and managed to make this really hard topic pretty interesting. I would recommend taking this class with Dr. Harran! He makes the lectures fun, is approachable, and includes a lot of real-life examples to make what we're learning interesting!
Chem 30A will always be a difficult course; there's no real way around that. The lectures are bruincasted, and a lot of question types on the exams are directly related to examples shown in lecture. I felt that the exams were difficult, but the questions asked were usually pretty reasonable.
The grading was out of 450 points. There were two midterms worth 100 points each (averages were about 61% and 51%, respectively), a final worth 200 points, and 50 points from the discussion section quizzes (which I'm not sure if were graded based on participation or correctness). I scored in the ballpark of 20% above the average on both midterms and ended up with an A in the class, and I think the class is curved to make a B- the average grade.
My advice I guess is to enter this class with an open mind (the material is difficult, but doable), do a lot of practice problems, watch YouTube videos explaining the concepts, and practice it a lot! One of the TAs (shoutout Morris and Alek!) told us during a midterm review session that a lot of organic chemistry is applying simple-ish concepts to difficult applications, and I think that that is kinda the way to approach it. Learn the concepts and then practice doing some of the more difficult applications/problems, and you will do well!

I took this class during the intensive summer session. I love Prof. Harran! He's super passionate about his field and often spices up the course content with applications and stories from his research or the real world. He's very knowledgeable as well, and he always breaks things down very clearly. His quizzes/tests are not super difficult, as they're based on the content of the lecturers. However, you have to practise a lot, as they do extend the skills and knowledge needed considerably.

I don't write reviews on bruinwalk. But I shall make an exception for professor Harran's class. His lectures ares very interesting and his tests are fair. I would recommend attending his lectures (although I quite often didn't). He adds perspective to seemingly banal aspects of organic chemistry. He will often relate what you'd think as elementary organic reactions to something that happens in real life and will make you realize that what you are learning is not just some practically useless fundamental organic chemistry, but something of profound practical value. He is funny too, and I enjoyed talking to him, in general. I got by just fine by studying directly from the textbook, but I don't think that was the case for everybody. The only thing about this class that I didn't like was my TA (and the fact that Prof Harran gives quizzes in some discussion sections as extra credit to jump up your grade higher if you have a borderline grade- bear in mind that doing poorly on the tests has NO negative impact on your score at all)
Take this class.

He is a great professor. Tests based only on lecture materials. You only need the book for practice problems. His tests are pretty doable as long as you study!

Dr. Harran is a pretty good professor. He explains the material well, has a decent sense of humor, and tries to make Organic Chemistry as painless/enjoyable as possible, which he did a fairly good job in doing.

Although his lectures are usually not overwhelming, his first midterm was very time constrained. However, his exams in general are fair. In order to get an A, make sure you are in the top 30 of the students and you should be fine. He also cranks out grades quickly, which is good. I recommend him.

Midterm 1- Average:60
Midterm 2-59
Final-70

Selling the Textbook and Solutions Manual for cheap. I got it brand new like three months ago and its the newest edition. Contact **********.

Selling the Textbook and Solutions Manual for cheap. I got it brand new like three months ago and its the newest edition.

If anyone is looking to SELL any of organic chemistry 30A's course material such as the book, notes, midterms final and ... Please email me at ************* thanks

I did a lot worse than I expected, but I still got a B. In all honesty, though, if you miss a day, you miss a week, so don't fall behind. I did while taking two lab classes, which really sucks. Oh yeah, since there are a lot of try hards in the class waiting to suck that A, it's hard to get an A unless you dedicate your whole time.