I disagree with the other negative reviews of Courey. For me this class was harder than 14AE and perhaps Dr. Casey set too high a bar for us AE students. But Courey is still miles above many other chem profs like Scerri. He is very helpful in office hours and stayed behind every class to answer questions. He's a super smart guy (went to Harvard!) and his answers to questions were always very clear and math-based/logical. I found his exams to be wayyyy easier than the practice LA workshops/practice tests that he gives. I think they were very reasonable and able to be finished in 2/3 of the time alloted- he overprepared us with the pretty difficult past worksheets. He was very communicative and sent many emails with updates, and very accomodating too- he extended CPR deadlines, dropped our lowest HW grade, and extended deadlines for other homeworks. Honestly the only negative part about this class was the CMC quizzes, which were extremely difficult with very low averages- but this was replaced with our final exam grade (another accomodation from Courey).
Now I'm not saying this class is easy- it's not, especially because I've never taken chemistry in high school and 14AE was my first chem class. I also had 3 other classes to juggle. But I was still able to do well because 1. the hw is very BS-able (I didn't do like half of them because they weren't worth much) and 2. the textbook SAVED me with the concepts + watching his lectures on 2x speed. (also TA Mariah was a godsend.)
All in all Courey is a much better prof than others are making him out to be. The tests were really fair (length-wise and content-wise) and he is very accomodating for a STEM professor.

A lot of the reviews on here are coming off of a long, difficult final that students were not able to finish which negatively impacted grades. So, take these reviews with a grain of salt as Courey really is a fair, great professor that truly cares about his students.
Other than the final, this class is manageable. After taking Chem 14A with Lavelle during the fall quarter, I wanted nothing more than to take a chem class with a different professor. In terms of lectures, Courey was very clear and a really good lecturer. His slides are very comprehensive, so even if you miss something in the lecture, the slides fill in all of the blanks. They also make reading the textbook pretty unnecessary in my opinion (which is totally different than Lavelle's class in which I read every chapter of the textbook and took notes in order to understand concepts).
The workload of this course is honestly heavy, especially compared to what I did in 14A with Lavelle. There are weekly, group discussion worksheets, 3 peer-reviewed essays (hated these, your peers are not nice graders lol), weekly homework, 1-3 per week pre-class quizzes (multiple attempts), 3 concept mastery quizzes (single attempt), 2 midterms, and a final.
Ultimately, this class is more work than Lavelle's class, but if you put in the time, you can do well. The grading is FAR MORE FORGIVING than what I experienced in 14A. And, even though the material is harder, Courey does his best to make it understandable.
This was the first time Courey taught 14BE, so I think he deserves a break. His midterms and quizzes were extremely fair if you studied. His final was pretty bad, but it was manageable, especially after the curve he offered. I would still recommend this class over Lavelle's!

I think a lot of my peers that reviewed this course took to Bruinwalk to vent their frustrations after the final, which would explain Professor Courey's low average rating for the class. However, I think that's very unfair; I also felt that the final was very difficult, but students had given him very little time to both grade and react to exams before dragging his name through the mud.

In regards to the class itself, I found it to have a pretty big workload, but all of the group and writing assignments were very helpful for exams. For the most part, I felt that the peer grading of writing assignments was generally pretty fair. There were some graders that definitely missed the mark, but this was not worse than LS 23L peer grading. Midterms 1 and 2 were fine, and the time limit was reasonable. The final was very difficult in that it was too long and not enough time was given. However, Professor Courey divided all exam scores by 0.88 (some students complained that this benefited those who scored higher much more, but in reality, the difference in score-boosting was pretty marginal), lowered the thresholds for all grades (an A became a 91%), and provided 1% of extra credit (from surveys throughout the quarter). He could have done better to prepare a more suitable final exam, but I'm confident that, should he teach this class again, an issue like this will not pop up again, and given how amazing the rest of the quarter was, I would definitely recommend taking this class.

Despite all of the negative reviews below, I thought that Chem 14BE was one of the better classes I have taken at UCLA. The course logistics are very similar to Chem 14AE: there are 3 quizzes, two midterms, and one final. The midterms have an individual and group portion and you have two hours to complete the individual portion. The final worth 23% of the overall grade and is solely based on individual effort. The midterms were pretty easy if you attended LA workshops or understood the homework. I do agree with the reviews below that the final was tough and long. However, Dr. Courey fully acknowledged the length of the final was unreasonable and curved the final as well as the overall class. Dr. Courey took our grade on the final out of 100 and divided by 0.88. I scored an overall 76% on the final and the curve brought it up to an 88%. He also adjusted the grading scale so that a 91 was an A as opposed to a 93 as stated in the syllabus. Overall, I think Dr. Courey was a very clear professor and his slides were very helpful for studying. If given the opportunity, I would 100% take Dr. Courey for chemistry over Lavelle or Scerri!

I didn't take AP Chem, but I was able to do well in Courey's class by studying his slides, LA worksheets, and discussion worksheets before quizzes/exams. His midterms were very easy (lots of people did very well on them if they studied), and there's a lot of easy points in the class so that exams don't count for as much. The only things that generally sucked were the peer reviews (but they don't count for too much of you grade), and the length of the final. The final was very similar to the practice final exam he gave us and I didn't think it was too difficult if you made sure you understood everything in the course, people's main issue was with length, although I was able to finish since I generally work fast under pressure. Courey was very nice and curved the final by making it out of 88 points instead of 100, and curved the grades by making a 91-98 an A, 88-90 an A-, etc.
If you have the time to put the effort into this class and really study, I would definitely recommend this class.

This class is do-able you just gotta put in tons of effort and time. I never paid attention to live lectures because he would be covering new topics when there was a quiz coming up covering previous topics. I only participated for the learning catalytics, which are based on participation and not accuracy. I only started learning the material a few days before a quiz/test. He has TONS of materials and practice for you. I made sure to utilize everything he gave us.

1. Read over textbook for a general understanding, take notes
2. Watch lecture recordings and annotate on his slides
3. Make notes for each learning objective
4. Re-do his POGIL worksheets on your own
5. GO TO OFFICE HOURS
6. Do LA worksheets
7. Review PTL and Learning Catalytics
8. Do practice exams if there are any

Make sure you understand literally everything he says, all the questions asked in worksheets. Office hours are so so so important for that. I'm so thankful that his curve at the end bumped my final and overall grade up. He's very approachable as well, and Piazza helps so much. Generally, I don't feel comfortable asking questions but piazza came in clutch for me.

I loved Dr. Courey!!!! He was great at lecturing and you can really tell he cared so much about his students. His midterms were very doable if you studied the learning objectives and POGIL worksheets. I highly recommend taking this class with him. Most of these bad reviews are just because of the final. However, everything else went smoothly in his class and he curved the test so much and also curved the grading score to make a 91% an A. He is super considerate and listens to his students. TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HIM HE’S THE SWEETEST PERSON EVER!!!

Dr. Courey is an incredible professor. point blank. He is VERY accommodating and understanding to say the least. Personally, I loved the enhanced series. I thought the structure was very similar to high school in that you have assignments throughout the week and tests every couple of weeks, unlike other classes like Chem 14A, where essentially your test scores are what determine your grade.

Overall, if you are good at keeping track of your assignments, communicating and asking for help, and don't like the idea of a couple of test grades determining your overall grade, I definitely recommend this class.

General chemistry is not supposed to be easy by no means, and there is not an easy way out, so you have to expect that you are going to be doing assignments and putting in many hours outside of class studying the material. However, this professor is very clear and easy to understand and engage with.

This professor was very reasonable except for the final. The final was extremely long and almost nobody finished; however he did curve upwards after the final which was good. He also is very good at explaining things, and although the course material is extremely dense, his office hours are helpful in clarifying everything. Overall, I think I learned a decent amount.

Take most of these reviews with a grain of salt—in my opinion, to be successful in this course, besides learning the content, you really have to get used to the types of questions that are asked on exams vs. quizzes. For me, the quizzes (CMC's) and exam multiple choice questions were harder than the free response portions. This is because they are very conceptual and REALLY try to trick you. This sounds stupid but you kind of have to ask yourself "what concept is the professor trying to test me about?"/"how is this question trying to trick me?". I think a lot of people get confused by the terminology, so you just have to read carefully and check your work. Free response questions were super straightforward if you're allowed to reference your notes—they were mainly plug-and-chug type problems, you just have to recognize what equation to use. To study, I'd suggest focusing on the discussion worksheets especially, slides, learning catalytics, and maybe the PRWA's. I was too lazy to do the LA worksheets and I was fine. For the PRWA's, just make sure you hit all the rubric points and be nice when grading others. The final was a bit of a time crunch, but what helped me was creating an equations sheet with everything on it and the TA's giving partial credit. I took AP chem in high school, so I do know my experience might be different from others, but I don't think anyone should be discouraged from taking this class. I really would suggest this class if you have the time for it!