This class is much more difficult than what it should really be. Papazyan makes learning basic highschool chemistry very difficult. Unfortuntately, he is not the best at explaining basic chemistry concepts. Although the course requires a textbook, Papazyan discourages students from learning from the textbook. Instead, he suggest using his slides that he posts on CCLE. However, his slides are extremely confusing. You are better off learning from the textbook. While his weekly quizzes are graded generously, they are far more difficult than what they should be.

This instructor is catastrophically terrible at organizing lectures, which include nothing but reading over the slides, as suggested by other students.

One thing to note: this instructor even sent all students of Chem-17 an email saying that THIS page on Bruin Walk is NOT an objective description of him, meaning that he does fear the students stating what is offered in his classes. If he teaches well, why would he bother to care about unfair comments in the first place?

He is a nice guy I’ll give him that, but I do NOT recommend taking the course with him. He is very unorganized and you have to teach yourself this course because he just reads off the PowerPoint slide that contain little helpful information. YouTube and the internet help more. He made high school chemistry more confusing than it actually was and had me second guessing basic math. He posted the powerpoints on CCLE so lectures were a waste of time. Quizzes were taken during discussion and were much harder than the midterms, the only thing is he curves well. Extra credit was answering the problems you got wrong on the quiz for half points, however you had to answer a similar question correctly during the test if you wanted it to count. Good course for 14A but maybe with another professor.

Here's the truth...Dr. Papazyan was not a good lecturer and was disorganized at several occasions. Attending lecture was not important because you could self-study the slides at home, whereas office hours and discussion were great for comprehension of material. However, he does care a lot about our success in the class and it is a strong understatement to say he curves "generously". The curves on the quizzes and exams are ginormous and the the quizzes are made harder than the exams in order to help prepare us and make us more-than-ready for the exams, which have more weight. As long as you do not slack off and actually put your best effort into this class, you will get a lot out of it and a very good grade despite some obstacles.

Papazyan makes it clear, various times, that your grade in this class will reflect the effort you put in, not the grade you expect. And he was right. I'd say I worked really hard this quarter, and my grade reflected just that. Sooo, if you plan on taking Papazyan, be ready to do the work. Papazyan grades the class as 35% midterm, 35% final, and 30% weekly quizzes. There are 2 midterms, one is dropped. The final is cumulative. There are 7 weekly quizzes, the lowest 2 grades are dropped. The quizzes are based on the homework questions he provides from each chapter. Some quizzes seemed pretty straight forward, some were hard. The quiz method really helps you stay on track and not fall behind... He advances quickly, but his slides are all online and they're very detailed. I did ALL my studying off slides and homework questions, and they did not fail me. Coming from someone who had never taken a chem class and didn't even know the difference between electrons and protons, this class was hard but definitely doable. You'll learn so much, and will even be well prepared for future chem classes!!

The class was very fast paced and hard to get adjusted to in the beginning. However, as long as you review his slides (everything you need is in there), complete the recommended end of chapter questions, and study/go to office hours then you will be fine. I went in his class with a weak chemistry background and I’m confident to say I am knowledgeable of most of the topics he introduced. I do feel that the quizzes were a little more difficult than the actual lesson but it was mainly deciding what they were asking you to do then apply what you know. You get what you put into the class so if you attend office hours and actually study then you will do fine.

I thought this professor was going to be fired at santa monica college for being a horrible professor. I transferred but I cant believe he ended up teaching at ucla

Considering that I had weak background in Chem, this class was very helpful in providing me with the basics of the subject. The professor was highly amiable and fair in his grading. For the midterms, he dropped from one to three questions, so basically your weighed score was much higher than the raw score. Trust me, this helped me obtain a much higher grade than expected. When it came to office hours, Dr. Papazyan was willing to accommodate them a bit for our advantage. One time he offered additional OH the day before our first midterm. Also, he held OH three days a week, right before lecture and you could just come in (probably to ask simple questions...) but he would made sure to address your concerns. During finals week he also offered OH. I'd say OH are intimidating in general, but if you brought a classmate with you, they became more engaging. Overall, the class required a lot of self-learning, but also continuous trips to OH to solidify the material. Make sure that you work on suggested end-of-chapter HW problems to get a sense of what the quizzes look like. Also, don't forget to ask about those Qs you got wrong. The professor will go over entire quizzes with you if you ask politely.

People may say this class is unnecessarily hard, but he's extremely accommodating of your concerns. It's not an easy A as I was lead to believe, but if you read through the slides a couple of times, do the recommended practice problems, and quiz corrections you should be fine. The class may move at a fast pace, but the grading is extremely generous. You always have extra credit available on each quiz, you can submit quiz corrections for half credit, the lowest midterm grade is dropped, and he gives a lot of review sessions if you need it. If you put in the work, you'll be okay.

Honestly, Papazyan's class was a lot more difficult than it should have been, but that may have just been due to it being his first time teaching at UCLA. His slides were pretty useful to learn from, but I found it much better to go through them on my own time rather than attending his lectures sometimes, as he tends to fly through the material as he is afraid to "get behind." There is a quiz every week in discussion, so it's necessary to attend those. I found the quizzes to be pretty difficult, and there should've been a longer amount of time to do them in. However, the curve in this class was incredibly strong, so even when I did poorly on a quiz, it turned out to be an A or B. I personally found the midterms (out of 2) to be like writing the ABCs. They were certainly a lot easier than any quiz he gave us. The homework he assigns is never due, but it's very helpful for understanding the concepts so I highly encourage you to do the problems he gives you. This class is difficult, but it isn't impossible. You may find that it isn't worth it to buy the textbook; I read it initially but he doesn't cover a lot of what's in the chapters, and honestly all you need is the answers in the back of the textbook for clarification on problems you don't understand on the homework, so it may not be worth it for you to buy it. However, I'm still glad I purchased it for times when his lecture slides were a little off (my TA admitted that some information was wrong on his slides a couple times). If you haven't taken AP Chem, this class is definitely better than jumping into the 14 series. You'll get through it; find a study group.