Professor Raji screwed the students over this quarter. I was well above average on the final and both midterms yet I received a C+ in the class (unless he ends up curving the grades more). He was incredibly unclear and barely followed any sort of organization or slide shows. Therefore, when students went to discussion, the TAs had no idea what he had gone over in class. He frequently went off on tangents and would teach different concepts to his two different lectures. He made students feel stupid for not understand the complex questions he asked in lectures and on tests. Furthermore, while it is great to encourage in class participation, he would frequently choose 5-10 students to solve practice problems on the board for the whole lecture (which is not an ideal format for a 250 person lecture). I had a 4.0 before taking this class and put A LOT of time into studying. After all this, I still received a C+ so I strongly strongly suggest you take it with another professor if at all possible.

If Dr. Maji is hired again by the chem department, you will basically have to teach yourself the material. He does go over all the concepts in lecture, but he speeds through them and mostly teaches through example problems instead of going through the lecture slides. The Klein book was a lifesaver for me, even more so than in 14C which I took with Anderson. You do still need to go to lecture since he would sometimes put problems from class on the exams and there were some mechanisms and details that he taught that were different from Klein, but it's a great resource for teaching yourself the material.

He only gave us Pham's old exams and problem sets to prepare for the exams, so we had no idea what to expect for them and they actually ended up being quite different. I was also told that the TAs wrote our exams and went based off the lecture slides, but he didn't even teach from the slides so we never knew what was going to be on the exams beforehand.

The most frustrating part of being in Maji's class, though, was how he belittled students during lecture. He frequently asked questions to students to increase engagement and see where the confusions were as he was lecturing, but without fail, he interrupted the students he asked for an answer every single time without fail. If a student did end up saying the correct answer, he would explain why they were wrong and then finish their exact thought while playing it off as the correct answer.

I will say that Maji was very accommodating and understanding with both the protests and the TA strike and how to adapt his course to those external challenges. However, I hope that he doesn't teach this course again and honestly hope he gets fired because his rudeness to students is absolutely unacceptable above any faults he has relating to the structure of the course or the nature of his exams.

He got frustrated that no one went to his class (rightfully so since his lectures were terrible) so he made a couple questions on the midterm impossible to solve with the knowledge he taught and instead gave the answers to these questions in his lecture. He specifically told them to cut the cameras so that only the students that went to lecture would be able to solve the question on the midterm. Kudos to the students who stayed in his lecture, but this professor is incredibly petty and truly believes that failing a class is necessary experience in college. He will not offer any accommodations even with the CAE supported students. It's worth skipping on him and taking this class another quarter.

I mean bro literally admitted to only being here for research and he knows himself that he's a terrible teacher. Why take a class with a prof that doesn't care about his students.. fire this fool.

Rajat Maji is an awful professor. You will pay tuition to teach yourself the class content. He is disorganized, and often goes off on tangents unrelated to his example problems, which he also does wrong half the time. He teaches two completely different lectures in terms of content due to his lack of organization. His TA’s are unable to provide us with relevant practice material for his tests, and rather give you worksheets for Pham’s class, which make much more sense and are much easier. His class averages speak to his abysmal teaching skills. I would rather teach myself with youtube videos than watch his poorly taught lectures. Be prepared to read plenty of the Kleinbook because Rajat could care less about building foundational knowledge of concepts. All in all the worst professor i’ve ever had the displeasure of being “taught” by. UCLA needs to do better because this seriously makes me rethink my choice in even attending “The Number One Public University”. We could never be number one as long as Rajat “teaches” here. Genuinely terrible I wish I took this class last quarter with Pham.

like all the other reviews, i say run as far away from this professor as possible. he belittled students, taught different material in different lectures (and proceeded to include this on the exam!), did not use his slides, rushed through the last few WEEKS of content within 2-3 lectures and gave ridiculously difficult exams.

To be completely transparent, I hated this class!!! Professor Maji was a nice guy in person, but he tended to be condescending in lecture. He literally went on a rant during one of the lectures talking about how people had no excuse to fail the second midterm because he "gave" us all the answers in class, etc. To be honest, a lot of the problems were reflective of the class material, but the way he was talking was literally disgusting. As someone else mentioned, the BACON is literally useless. Exams were so hard, and I just lost confidence as the quarter progressed. I would recommend taking with someone else if you can, but if you cannot, I highly recommend teaching yourself from Day 1.

This class was incredibly difficult. The amount of information we had to learn and memorize in 10 weeks was so muchhhhhh PLUS having a professor who was not good made this class TERRIBLE. Dr. Maji would frequently stray away from the lecture slides and write purely on the whiteboard. The bruincast would also never follow him around so if you have to watch the lecture later it will be rlly difficult to follow along. Since he strayed away from lecture slides it made it impossible for TAs to know where he is at unless they attended lecture. I hated how he would make students come up and do problems and have them explain the answer like bruh YOU DO IT I NEED TO LEARN FROM U, do this shit in discussion or sum. My TA also told me that none of the TAs would see the exams until the day of when they were printed so they were never able to give him feedback on the difficulty level. I honestly got sick of how he taught and just tried to learn the material on my own. My grades on each exam were M1 36/60, M2 36/60, and final 69/120. The class medians were M1 34/60, 37/60, and final 58/120. I got a D+ in the class but with the curve I ended up with a B woo! I knew there would be a curve but seeing a D grade for the entire quarter was very stressful. The thing I hated most about the exams is how difficult they were and partial credit was like never offered and if you noticed an error in your exam and you wanted a regrade the ENTIRE EXAM would be regraded and just that single question so I never risked it. The bacon tutorials which were homework were so STUPID AND DIDNT HELP. It was purely busy work but at least it was free easy points. Discussion attendance was not mandatory.
Grade Breakdown:
Bacon Tutorial: 40 points (15%)
(8 quizzes total, two lowest scores will be dropped)
Discussion session quiz: 10 points (5%)
(3 quizzes total, the lowest one will be dropped)
Midterm exam 1: 50 points (20%)
Midterm exam 2: 50 points (20%)
Final exam: 100 points (40%)
Extra credits (surveys and activities): * 16 points (8%)
*Extra credits will be added to your letter grade at the end of the quarter.
TLDR: he sucks dont take

I really hope for the sake of students' mental health that professor Maji is never hired again. Not only are his exams the most difficult questions ever beyond our scope of understanding, but even going to office hours or 1 on 1 meetings with him he loves to make his students feel dumb because of how egotistical he is. I highly advise taking 14D with Pham or any other professor because there's no way me or any kid I know would choose to take Maji again after this. 130 kids dropped the class going into the final, fyi. If you get him, even praying won't be enough..

Dr. Maji is such a smart person and a great professor if you are willing to put in the work. I studied but not enough for the first five weeks of class and didnt do well on the tests. The last two weeks of the quarter I was at all his office hours and participated in lecture. It seriously made all the difference. If you are willing to put in the time for this class, Dr. Maji will help you and meet you half way. The content is hard but it’s not Dr. Maji’s fault

Please do not take Professor Maji. If you need to take 14D then just opt for a different professor. His lectures are incredibly disorganized and while he encourages class participation and involvement, this just wastes time in a lecture setting. In fact, because of this teaching style, we had to learn the last 2.5 weeks of material in the week before finals.
14D is a notoriously difficult class and Professor Maji just makes it more difficult. The averages for BOTH midterms and the final were failing grades. He offers little to no partial credit on ANY problem all while many problems are connected (like a. b. c. or a flowchart) so that if you miss one question, you miss credit for any question connected to it. His grading style is inherently polarizing as you essentially need to have perfect mastery of the material to earn a good grade as anything less will likely be a 0 due to the lack of partial credit. I believe this is his first quarter teaching 14D, so perhaps in the future, he will change his teaching methods or offer better study materials in the future that better reflect what will appear on the exams. I would avoid him if possible.