Ok the scale does not allow for .5 so it should be 3.5 overall, which should be good news for you, the reader, whoever you may be. This is a class that can be confusing at times but generally understandable and FOCUSED. That's the keyword. No bs in her class about obscure research or personal interests. 95% of the class is straight up chem. No slides, but she writes on thr board quite a bit. Get ready to copy, because she will test the stuff that you thought was not important or too hard to copy down. No joke. Happened at least twice. Copy. Everything. That said, watch out for errors in HER notes. Yep. She makes mistakes, more than handful, but less than a dozen, so that's good i guess. Go to her office hours if you are not sure about something she said. She has a Russian accent. Not too thick, but you should pay attention when she speaks or you will miss what she said. She is a bit quieter than other teachers. In terms of tests, they are fair, mostly based on notes stuff. But beware. Some stuff does come from the book that she may not have talked too much about. Read the book and do practice problems to familiarize yourself with certain thought processes rather than question types. She knows how to make diverse questions. So your best bet is to know how to apply concepts quickly and accurately. And do the owl hw. They are easy points.
Bottom line is she is a traditional professor who doesnt rely on technology to teach her material. I cant say she is tough or easy. Thats different from person to person. But if you want a solid learning experience, she is a good choice.
She is also kinda bad with computers. Grades dont get updated until last minute, and she makes errors when posting grades. I did say she is old fashioned.

I really appreciate this class and out of all the options for Chem 20A (at least for this quarter) Professor Alexandrova was far and away the best and most generous.

I don't think her Russian accent was really that distracting or difficult to understand. For me, I think she was so intelligent that she struggled at times to communicate effectively to her class. Nevertheless, important concepts she reiterates across multiple classes, which makes it easier to understand and office hours help clarify as well. To thrive in this class I recommend reviewing ALL the concepts by studying the notes carefully, reviewing owl problems and using the book as a guide to clarify anything in lecture (no need to understand everything in the book, a lot is just background info). If you put in some time here and there it is completely manageable and you will do well.

The test questions were a little wonky. Her first test was pretty easy, because it resembled her old test and covered fairly simple concepts (the average was mid-high B's). However, she quickly learned that students were studying off of old tests. The second midterm was harder but generally not too bad (average was a low C). I think most people were upset and will claim the class to have gotten "really hard" because they expected it to be the same question types as her old 2nd midterm. However, literally everything on all her tests were based off of problems emphasized in lecture. Nothing is unfair about her tests and by reviewing all her lecture notes and owl problems, you should have all the necessary knowledge to succeed. I struggled more with stupid mistakes than knowing how to answer the questions, because little errors can cost you a good amount of points. The class was generally really fair, though, especially compared to other professors who occassionally test on random concepts that weren't covered in lecture.

Overall, I feel like I am prepared to succeed in future chemistry classes even though she didn't emphasize the quantitive aspect of chem. Oh and one last note: she applies a generous curve at the end where the average student (hitting the average grades on all tests) will end up with a B-/B as opposed to a C or C+ in some other classes! Good luck y'all

I'm a physics major, so chemistry is not really my thing. However, since half of course is quantum chemistry / quantum physics, my physics background really helped me and gave me an advantage. I didn't study very hard for this course, mainly reviewing the very easy homework sets and summarizing the pretty dense notes that I take during lectures.
The 2 midterms were on Wednesdays, and I studied for them during the weekend before and scored very high. I probably studied the same amount for the final since it wasn't cumulative and was essentially a 3 hour midterm on the last ⅓ of the course. If you take this course with Alexandrova, make sure you have a strong physics foundation or else it will be a challenge - her lectures are physics-heavy.

Alexandrova's class was really hard lol I had to watch MIT open courseware lectures to understand what was going on in class. I think she was easier than the other Chem 20A teachers though. Her accent was hard for me to understand and her office hours get really crowded if you go late. Her first midterm was much like the old ones, but her second midterm was NOTHING like the old ones. My advice for this class is to rely on your TAs for help and other online resources.

Truly amazing professor. I personally really enjoyed the lecture content; they were fairly challenging and there were definitely times where I just mindlessly copied down her board notes without processing anything, but I'm glad I was exposed to information that I normally wouldn't know as an undergraduate. Like many other reviewers have noted, the content of this class had absolutely nothing to do with AP Chemistry. The textbook was honestly not that helpful either, so make sure you actually pay attention in class and show up to office hours.
At the beginning of the class, she let us choose between open book and closed book tests. Our class chose closed book. I thought the tests were reasonably challenging, plus the TA graded very leniently (I don't know how much this will be true for future TAs though since my TA finished his PHD), so I wouldn't be too stressed about them.
One advice I would give is to work with your classmates. Because it is an honors class, the class size is significantly smaller than other lower div courses and I would definitely take advantage of that. My class made a group chat and we tried to do study sessions for homework and midterms, and this is probably the only reason I was actually able to understand the material. Plus, you will likely meet some genuinely amazing peers given that they all willingly chose an honors course instead of the regular one.
Overall, I would highly recommend taking this class. It was definitely my favorite class freshman year.

Overall she is a good lecturer. Her lectures are really helpful, workload is not so large, and the exams are not very hard. However, her Russian accent is sometimes quite hard for me to understand what she says. Most importantly, her curve is not good. It's extremely hard to get an A in her class. I believe I deserve an A but finally I got an A-.

Great prof. If you want an A the first thing you need to do is read the book! Literally you could read the book and not go to lecture and be fine for he exam. Her lectures are really good but are trash unless you read the book. Seriously read the book or you will get rekt. Go to the test bank. First midterm and final were very similar to her previous exams. However don't rely too much on the bank because the second midterm wasn't on the bank and screwed everyone. If you want to do well in this class study an hour a day from the book and look over you notes after each lecture. Do the Owl, adn go to the test bank and you'll get an A.

I didn't care for Alexandrova. Went to a few office hours which were helpful. She would snap at students in class sometimes if they asked questions that she thought were dumb.

Alexandrova was my first professor here at UCLA. To my surprise, I managed to pull off an A- in this class; overall, the class was pretty fair when it came to grading and tests. Would highly recommend to always check out the bruin test bank, because her final and midterms USUALLY have incredibly similar questions, just different numbers. The textbook reading is dense (especially when you hit quantum mechanics), and not really helpful. I'm not really the type of person who goes to a professor's office hours, but I did benefit going to the office hours of some of the TA (if Derrick still TA's I would highly recommend him!).
Make sure to attend discussion and write down EVERYTHING from lectures. Someone on bruinwalk already mentioned how it's pretty important to catch the small details she mentions in the passing in lecture, and I can attest to that. She also definitely has an accent, but knows the material well and can teach well enough. That being said, realize you are going to have to put in work to yield good results. I always felt like I was too stupid, or one step behind everyone, and, well, I managed to pull off an A-.
Oh and the homework is something you should just do and get over with, not really useful to study off of for the exam.

Alexandrova was an excellent and solid chemistry professor. She often would make sure that the most if not all of the class was on the same page during lecture before she would move on to another topic, and always paused for questions and engaged the class. Exams were of average difficulty. Very approachable and good chemistry professor overall.