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Professor Reilly clearly cares about her students, which includes on making sure her students material. I didn't find her class easy, but with her lectures, notes, and office hours it made the class enjoyable and she took the time to help me personally when I told her I was struggling with the material. Her assessments are hard but a fair judge of how well you are understanding the material. When she gives you specific study tips, like make flashcards of all the reactions and memorize and then retake the practice problems as tests, do it. Her study tips are incredibly helpful to learning the material and succeeding in this class. She is extremely kind so contact her with issues because she understands this isn't an easy subject and will work with you through it. Also no need to buy the textbook, find the PDF. Definitely one of the best professors I've had at UCLA.

I really tried to come into this class with hopes that I would do good, but I'm telling you now, this has definitely been the hardest class I have taken at UCLA. For some, organic chemistry may come easy and at some point in the class some of the material did come easier... after (not exaggerating) spending at least 15-20 hours a week (while working 20 hours on an on-campus job and having two other classes) studying just for this class. (Also, during finals week or midterm season, I definitely spent all my free time studying for this class). I studied so much for this class that I even started falling behind in my other classes. Let me tell you, if you come in this class thinking that if you work very hard, you're guaranteed an A, that may not be the case as it was for me so don't get your hopes up just to be crushed. Amber Reilly. The topic of so many of my Ackerman lunches and BPlate dinners and dorm lounge breakdowns. I would say I naturally try to find the best in people and I didn't want to believe all the reviews that were previously left for Amber, and while I will say some may be a little of an exaggeration, they are not founded on false pretenses. First off, my main fault is with the entire chem department. I really think there is something wrong with this class and how the curriculum is structured. This is a very rigorous topic for some students to be taught in just 10 weeks and if a majority of the students are having mental breakdowns, not getting good grades, or the class has to be curved around 20-25% JUST so the grade distribution doesn't reflect horribly on the professor, then there is obviously a fundamental problem in the way this class is being taught. I will say some fault is saved for Amber, but I really did think that Amber cared for her students to do good and she is very very smart when it comes to ochem, but the slides and notes were messy, she would contradict herself in different lectures, she talked so quick to barely even comprehend the subject cuz you're just trying to fill in the notes, and the exams were just horrid. No class should require as much studying as this class did and leave students in shambles or (as for myself) wanting to drop pre-med because of their soon-to-be drop in GPA or they lost interest or their love for chemistry. I will say though, if you were like me and had to take this class to fulfill requirements, then find a study group and be prepared that this class will be very hard. I don't know what I would have done in this class without my 'cyclopentane' group. Be prepared to devote a lot of time studying, to making a lot of flashcards (flashcards are your friend), to be confused and to cry. Guaranteed this class will make you shed a tear or two. However, you got this. You can make it through and just remember a grade doesn't define who you are as a person and one bad grade to your GPA does NOT mean you can't go to med school or that you're not smart. And if you do naturally good in this class, well then I really envy you. Last thing, if you're NOT like me and you don't even need to take this class to fulfill a requirement or something... run.

Reilly was a much better professor in Spring 2022. She was open to criticism and embraced it. Her tests were very fair, but it requires memorization and understanding. Reilly recommended using flashcards, which I used and turned out very well for me. She was transparent about the final and revealed one of the problems on that final for us to memorize and review. There were lots of extra credit opportunities and an insane curve at the end as well (~3-4%)

Prof. Reilly gets a lot of crap for issues that are really just problems with the class material itself, something that she is not to blame for. The class is incredibly fast paced, and a lot of memorization is required, but these are problems that you would have with any CHEM14D professor. In my opinion, it would be better to cover less material in this course and allow students to actually comprehend each reaction before moving onto the next one... but I digress. This being said, Reilly lectures from her own notes rather than slides and organizes the reactions in a way that definitely aids with memorization. Flash cards will be your best friend in this class. She was also very considerate with the last two exams and narrowed down which things to focus on. Admittedly, instead of providing us with the second problem set in order to help study for the midterm and give examples of problem types, she told us to create our own synthesis problem, probably because she never got around to writing the problem set herself. She is definitely not the most organized person when it comes to assignments (posting them late), emails (simply does not respond), or life (cancelled OH day of exam because she had not finished writing the exam), but she is a good lecturer.

Assignment Breakdown:
Midterm Exams (100 pts x 2) 50%
Problem Sets (16 pts x 3) 12%
Discussion Worksheets (8 pts x 2) 6%
BACON online (28 pts) 7%
Final Exam (100 pts) 25%

TLDR; Reilly is a good lecturer with helpful notes in a class that is incredibly fast-paced but is pretty disorganized.

Dr. Reilly is honestly a great professor for CHEM 30B and one of my favorite professors at UCLA! 30B is definitely a monster compared to 30A, yet she was able to make the class as simple as possible for us and provided us the most resources to succeed. Here's how her class was broken down: 25% Midterm 1, 25% Midterm 2, 37.5% Final, 12.5% BACON
Lectures: My favorite part of Reilly's class was her lectures. Instead of having slides and bombarding us with reactions (there have to be around 100 for this class), she has pre-written lecture notes where she's drawn in her example molecules already, and you follow along with her as she also fills out the notes with arrow pushing, examples, etc.! Reilly's pre-written note style was concise, clear and so good I continued to use her style when writing notes for 30C. Many say she talks way too fast, which I personally disagree with, and she is always open to answering students' questions.
Resources: Reilly's godsend is posting a sheet of the reactions for each chapter that we learned and would even star which ones you'd need to know the arrow-pushing for. Even better is that she would often lessen how many reactions we needed to know the arrows for! She hosted office hours after every lecture and would be so kind to answer every question we had. Before exams and especially when learning NMR, she posted additional worksheets and practice exams for us to do with video solutions.
Exams: Reilly's exams were honestly pretty difficult, which is honestly just a product of how much content there is in the class. Her retrosynthesis questions were particularly difficult, and I had a hard time finishing them in only 50 minutes. One anomaly is that this was the quarter with the TA strikes, so our second midterm and final were moved online, with the final being all MC, so take this with a grain of salt.
Cons: While other students from previous quarters praised Reilly's fast communication, we experienced the exact opposite. She hardly responded to her emails and Campuswire DM, during the quarter went MIA for almost a week with no explanation, and though final grading was affected by the strikes, we didn't receive our final grades until week 1 of Winter.
Overall, I highly recommend taking Reilly for 30B! She is such a kind professor, lenient, and her exams are difficult but fair.

Honestly, this class in general is the worst class youll ever take in your life. When it comes down to it, it is pretty much just memorization and creating a huge puzzle in your head to try and understand how everything works. Everyone gives Riley a bunch of shit and says shes a horrible teacher but she is honestly probably top 2 best chemistry teachers. She gives you the notes and even condenses them for you. She also narrows down what you need to know for the midterm/final. Apart from that she hands out very easy extra credit opportunities. Dont get me wrong, the class is horrible, but she is not a terrible teacher. I would not take this class at all, but if you have too, shes not a terrible option. JUST STUDY!!!! and memorize and begin doing this during week 0 LOL

Professor Reilly is no doubt a very smart and successful researcher, but some people are just not meant to be teachers. Her lectures were confusing and and hard to follow. She would frequently skip around and make mistakes. In addition, she has a very soft and quiet voice which was hard to hear at times. Her exams were challenging and I really struggled with them. Her Phd was in synthesis and it is her favorite topic so there was a lot of synthesis on the tests. In fact, our final exam was almost all synthesis based problems. I do feel for her though, she lost one of her beloved dogs during our quarter and from my understanding her dogs are the love of her life. I hope she is doing better and perhaps people have a better experience with her class now that she has recovered from the loss.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in this class. It was definitely one of the most challenging courses I have taken. The first midterm was a real eye-opener and scored really low, I made it my mission to score higher and recommend the David R. Klein Organic Chemistry textbooks as they provide great and easy-to-understand explanations. The second midterm, unfortunately, did not go as well as I thought it would, she is a tough grader. Despite all of that, she offers a TON of extra credit opportunities and is very lenient to students going through tough times. She is also very enthusiastic during lectures and really cares about students, especially in one-on-one office hours. I recommend her.

Dr. Reilly is engaging and personable. She cares that we've learned the material and shares flowcharts and heuristics that make challenging distinctions more methodical. Organic chemistry is hard, but she does not make it extra challenging. In fact, she probably made the course as straightforward as it could reasonably be. She releases practice exams and hosts Zoom sessions to go over the answers. However, don't be fooled, as even though the questions on the real exams look similar to the practice, they can test quite different concepts, and averages still land around 60. Make sure to do the problems she writes (in the lecture guides, discussion, and extra worksheets), as they are the best indicator of how she will test you (as opposed to the textbook).

The extra credit assignments were either fun/silly or helpful. But you will probably be in the dark as to your grade the whole quarter. She says that the exam averages are the benchmark for a B-, but that's all you get to know. She doesn't tell you how much or little the extra credit will boost your grade. Her lectures were quite fast-paced, especially if you're not following along on her pre-written notes on a tablet.

Dr. Reilly was almost always extremely clear about what was and was not relevant for exams. In my opinion, some of the material on the final was an exception, but the final was worth 100 points, so some conceptual lapses weren't too damaging. Given the chance, I would definitely continue taking the 30 series with her.