tl;dr: If you aren't comfortable with your study skills, don't take it. It's doable (except for that nasty final that dropped my grade by 6%), but create a schedule to get stuff done and find your support network.

Please note that 2021W was the pilot class, so there might be changes to this class in the future

Easiness: 2/5

I went to a high school that had an AP Chemistry curriculum, so several concepts taught in 14BE were not novel to me. However, each concept builds on each other, so make sure to master the foundations. I struggled with the later concepts largely because I slacked off on learning some earlier concepts.

Workload: 2/5

In any non-midterm/final week, you’ll be expected to complete:

- 1-3 pre-lecture quizzes (along with ppts and videos), with each assignment due before each lecture
- 1 weekly homework assignment
- Learning Catalytics questions during lecture (graded on participation only)
- 1 discussion worksheet, due before next week's discussion

As seen above, the workload for 14BE is largely similar to 14AE's. One major difference is that there are three peer-reviewed essays (aka PRWAs). These assignments are largely straightforward and weighted heavily (40%) on peer evaluations.

Regarding exams, 14BE has three forms of assessments: CMCs, midterms, and the final.
- CMCs: multiple choice tests that ask if you know the basics of concepts. These are not cumulative.
- Midterms are half free response, half multiple choice tests that are also not cumulative and test your application of concepts. 14BE, being a discussion-oriented class, also has group midterms which are worth 20% of your midterm grade.
- The final is a cumulative test like the midterms (I really hope he reworks the final for future classes).

I thought that most of these assessments (except for the final, again) were fair.

I highly recommend that you schedule time to finish this work because when midterms, writing assignments, and finals set in, the content piles up. You will still be assigned content for midterm weeks. I also recommend breaking down work over several days (i.e. reading the ppts first, taking the pre-lecture quiz next, then taking notes during lecture) so that you can digest the content. Go to office hours -- they can be extremely helpful, even if you don't have any specific questions. Find peers and make study groups.

Clarity: 4/5

I felt that Professor Courey is a good lecturer. For me, I generally understood what he was explaining. During lectures, he will read over the slides which he will have posted at the start of the week and solve out Learning Catalytics questions and powerpoint problems. His office hours are also helpful if you are struggling with concepts.

Helpfulness: 4/5

Professor Courey provides office hours throughout the week, and extra office hours before midterms and the final. In addition, he uses Piazza to answer student questions. However, I felt that he expects students to answer Piazza questions first before he adds anything.

One thing I loved about this class were the TAs and LAs, who made this class much more bearable. I found that my TAs’ explanations and suggestions provided a refreshing perspective on the content. Furthermore, the LA workshops are good sources for practice questions. Go visit them when you can.

Overall: 3/5

Would I recommend this class? Yes, but only if you are ready to challenge yourself.

Do not take this class <3

Some reviews are fresh out of the extremely difficult final (of which you have probably read about so far) so I am going to try be as objective as possible. This class is doable, IF you dedicate a good amount of time toward it. The lectures were very clear, the work assigned reflected the course content and strengthened our proficiency in these concepts, and the class was extremely organized. However, you have to know what you're getting yourself into; I took the class just to fulfill the gen chem requirement for a major I'm not even pursuing anymore with no intent on taking any more chemistry after this class, and it became a source for an unnecessary amount of stress for me. If you want to rigorously prepare yourself (perhaps for the MCAT or for biochemistry) with loads of group work, essays (in a chem class?!), and pre-lecture/during-lecture assignments on top of weekly homework and exams, this class may be for you.

The weekly two-hour discussions really drained me since it was two full hours of working on a chemistry worksheet designed to enforce concepts you learned every week in a group of 4 - if you haven't been keeping up with lecture and homework, you will not be able to contribute much to the worksheet. The three peer-reviewed essays were a bit annoying, since they combined a little bit of biology (I had taken none) with chemistry and were occasionally harshly graded by my classmates. The last of the stuff that might make this different from 14B is the pre-lecture quizlets, which were short, multi-attempt quizzes to make sure you read the powerpoints and textbook before lecture.

Lastly, the quizzes and exams. The quizzes and exams did a pretty good job of testing your knowledge, and you will do well provided you studied a good amount outside of class. I changed my major around midterm 2 (due to physics, not this class) so I started to slack off and things became much more difficult. Now the final: this was already difficult since I completely put the class on the backburner, but on top of that it was LONG. My 24-hr math and physics exams were shorter than this three-hour exam, and I got around a 38% on it without studying. It was formatted exactly like the midterms, except we had only three hours to complete 12 multiple choice-esque questions and TWENTY-FIVE free response questions. A plurality of students, most of which actually studied, received less than 50% on the 12 multiple choice part, and a vast majority left 2/3 of the free response blank.

Professor Courey is super nice and formatted the class well for what it is (a rigorous gen chem course for those who need some more direction regarding learning and/or have little chemistry experience), but some things could be tweaked (the essays and final). The pandemic made focusing in this class 10x harder than it had to be, so maybe it would have been much better in person.

Here's the thing. Chem 14BE is supposed to be a class that is more heavily focused on participation and interaction with your classmates. I took 14AE the quarter prior and absolutely loved it. HOWEVER, this class is not that. Professor Courey, while a genuinely nice guy, failed the majority of students as a teacher.

His lectures are easy to understand, his examples are simple and that sets your expectations. You would think 2 hour-long Pearson homeworks and weekly online quizzes alongside 3-4 hours dedicated each week to solving lab worksheets would give you an idea of what to expect on the final. NO. Twenty-five free-response calculation questions and a set of 12 CCLE type questions over a 3 hour period. I have never been screwed by a professor this hard in my 4 years at UCLA.

Compared to what I've heard about 14B, this class seems to dish out some hard tests and some assignments which I personally found very time-consuming and unnecessary. Such assignments were the PRWAs which are basically three essays that you have to write based off chemistry topics where your grade depends on whether or not your peers liked the essay (which some people are really harsh about). The final was a complete disaster as you may have read in the other reviews. Supposedly, this class was "enhanced", as another review said, so it's supposed to help people with weak chemistry backgrounds right? Wrong. You're better off taking 14B in short.

This class was reasonable both in workload and difficulty throughout the quarter up until the absolutely brutal final that was borderline cruel. It was not only incredibly difficult but much too long compared to any of his exams he gave all quarter (apparently this version had been shorted per the advise of out TA's !!). Probably about half the class didn't finish it and if anyone did, they felt really rushed. I had an A the entire quarter and after the final exam results came out I fell nearly 10%. The curve that he offered only really benefited those who did very well on the exam already, not helping anyone really impacted by the sheer length of the test and lost around 20+ points for questions answered. He also really did not care that the CCLE portion of the exam had technical issues for a few students, offering no answers on piazza to their concerns. For a pilot class that was supposed to be ENHANCED for students who needed a more thorough approach to learning general chemistry, he is unforgiving.

TLDR: do not take this class

Grade Breakdown:
PTL Quizzes (pretty easy 100%): 8%
Mastering Chemistry weekly hw (pretty easy 100% if you put in some effort): 4%
CMC (there are 3 and all of them are pretty challenging: class avg was around 60-70%): 9%
CPR (there are 2 and it's pretty easy to get an A if you put in some work): 7%
POGIL (group-based worksheets): 8%
Participation (need to attend 2/3 of lecture): 3%
Survey (3 MANDATORY SURVEY): 1%
2 Midterms: 30%
Final: 30%

As you can see, you are self-studying and finishing so many assignments that takes HOURS to complete just for assessments to be almost 70% of your grade. If you do not like to self study please do not take this class because Professor Courey frequently skips slides because he expects you to already know the material beforehand. If you want to get a decent grade, you have to put in so much work into the class. Even though I got an A in this class, I was spending more time with this class than my two other major-required stem classes COMBINED. If you want to do well on the midterms and the finals, I suggest you rewatch the entire lectures on 1.5/2x speed because his midterms and final only cover the material he goes over in lectures. On top of that, review all lecture slides, POGILs, PTLs, and do the practice midterms/final. Do not do the LA workshop worksheets if you don't want to waste your time. I didn't do a single one, and I was fine for all the assessments. His midterms and final are easier than the CMCs because most of them are just plug and chug with some tricky T/F or multiple choices that he went over in lectures (again, rewatch the lecture videos!). Also Professor Courey does not offer extra credit, and I don't think he's going to curve the class. If you mess up on one of the midterms/final, it's hard to recover. A lot of students are not happy with this class, and so am I. You are better off with taking 14B because your life will be so much easier.

there’s pros and cons to this class so ill just list them out:

pros:
- all lectures are recorded; there’s clicker questions during lecture however but you only need to complete 70% of them and they’re only based on participation. if you miss them there’s a way to make up those points every week.
- midterms were pretty easy and straightforward and he gives you two hours to complete them. use discussion worksheets, la workshops, lecture slides, and the practice midterms to study for this. there’s also a group portion of the midterm which can help raise your score.
- students were given 1% extra credit for filling out some surveys which really helped in the end
- overall courey is a really caring professor and very helpful during OH and will listen to student concerns if they’re brought up to him

cons:
- midterms had to be taken at a specific time (for us it was 7-9 pm)
- we had 3 prwa assignments (peer review writing assignments) where we basically had to write short essays on a given chemistry topic. writing these wasn’t too terrible but the professor doesn’t grade these your peers do and then you get graded on how well you graded someone else. i personally found these assignments very tedious and time consuming.
- discussion is 2 hours long and if you didn’t complete the discussion worksheet in section you have to meet with your group outside of section to complete it. they were mostly based on concepts we learned in class but some of these were just so long.
- workload for this class is very high compared to lavelles class. we have ptl quizzes that require you to do a bunch of reading review ppts and watch videos before taking them (theyre not timed and you get three attempts on them so they’re not as bad as they sound) i got away with not doing the reading in this class we also have three cmc quizzes that were sometimes difficult because a lot of it consisted of true/false questions

content wise the course is definitely difficult especially if you hate thermodynamics like I did. but courey did a really good job at doing the best he could at helping us understand the material and providing a lot of resources to study. The final did screw me over very badly but he did end up curving it and curved the class slightly at the end so it ended up working out.
This class is definitely a lot more work than lavelles class but I do think courey is a lot more lenient with grading and less weight is put on our assessments but do not take this class just because you think it’ll be easier because it was definitely not easy will guarantee make you cry once a week.

For a lack of better words..... this class was a hot mess. Given that it was a pilot class, I went in expecting a lot of accommodation and preparation for learning -- but that was certainly not the case at all. My TA was wonderful and super responsive so he was great. I genuinely hated coming to this class' lectures. It consisted of CMC quizzes, Two midterms, POGIL group worksheets, PTL quizzes, Homework, Peer Review Assignments and other small assignments alongside the final. I found the professor to be very elitist and non-accommodating on a personal basis. The CMC quizzes were SO hard. Midterms were pretty doable, and I did fairly decent. The final however, in the words of Rap Queen Nicki Minaj, was "yikes". Genuinely, that final traumatized me. Albert was not very responsive to student concerns, although he did end up curving the class because like 90% dropped letter grades due to the final. This class sounds so nice on paper, but at times I felt like I was at a funeral for my GPA. Prof skips slides a lot and just like expects us to know material on them??? HUH??? The LA workshops were so different from Chem 14AE and threw me off so hard, we would just sit there and review things instead of finishing up worksheets together and learning. I definitely hope the chem department either just discards this chem series or reforms it to make it actually beneficial to students and the same level of difficulty as 14B -- it is not supposed to be 5x harder. The POGILs became longer and longer each week, and one time my group spent 5 hours AFTER 2 hour discussion to finish it. I will give Dr. Courey credit where credit is due, however, as he will try to be somewhat just about assignment deadlines and he is an intelligent guy. We are living through a pandemic -- it is extremely unfortunate that we did not get more support and accommodation. I would genuinely not recommend this class to anyone, it made me reconsider a career in anything remotely-science related.

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.