This class was one of the toughest classes I have taken. I don't honestly know if he was like this previously but he has no mercy. The professor gave us three midterms that were about 6-7 pages long with only 60 min to take scan and submit. The class was doing horrible throughout the whole quarter the average was at a 50-60%. Not only did we have an extra midterm compared to previous quarters but our final was 16 pages/16 question long which not only drains you but mentally challenges you. Not to forget for discussions we had weekly quizzes which were very hard and useless. When we asked the professor how we were doing in the class he told us to trust the curve. And look where that led....
Anyways overall I would say do NOT take this class unless you have no other options. Good luck everyone!

I'm not sure how Merlic is during a usual quarter when things aren't remote. However, if you have the chance to take this class with Merlic during remote learning, do NOT take this class. He was extremely unaccommodating during the pandemic and made the class harder than a usual quarter. Instead of having two midterms, our class had 3 midterms, one of which was the Friday before Week 9. His justification behind this was to give us a "progress report" on how we were doing, but nobody knew what they had in the course since the class was graded on a curve. The averages for each midterm were extremely low, usually around a 50% or a 60%. The exams themselves are already quite challenging to complete on time; however, we were also expected to scan and upload the exam within the given 1 hour time frame, which wasn't required for the in-person class. Merlic also made the exams more difficult and longer due to our ability to "look through our notes", but in reality there isn't any time to skim through your notes since you're rushing to complete the exams. For the final exam, Merlic gave us a sample final with 11 questions on it and ASSURED us that we would have plenty of time compared to the midterms. However, he placed 16 questions on our final, many of which required written responses which consumed a decent amount of time. In addition to his ridiculous exam formats, Merlic is extremely disorganized with his homework schedule. The first few weeks we were given a homework assignment each week; however, near the middle of the quarter we didn't have one for nearly three weeks. Towards the end of the quarter he would assign a homework assignment every 3-4 days under the excuse of trying to fulfill the 10 homework assignments for the class. There are also quizzes in this class during discussion, but those don't mirror Merlic's exams too well. Overall, I would never take this class again and I highly regret having someone as unaccommodating and ridiculous as Merlic for a professor. One last note, Merlic likes to sell himself as a "nice guy", but don't fall for this as he is usually highly sarcastic and lies about his schedule and exam lengths. Good luck to y'all!

I overall had a great time in this class. I think that Merlic is a great professor and truly wants us to learn. I personally went to office hours once a week and thought that he was very accommodating and willing to help his students. My biggest piece of advice is to learn and review the material the day of which will make sure that you will not fall behind.

I wouldn't recommend taking 30B with Professor Merlic. This class was an absolute beast in terms of content, similar to 30A, however Professor Merlic definitely did not make it any easier. The pace of his lectures was incredibly fast, which is understandable due to the sheer amount of material that needed to be covered. Nevertheless, I barely learned anything from his lectures simply because of how fast he went, and my notes were basically useless because I had no idea what I was writing down. I had to spend hours taking notes from the textbook at my own pace and doing problem sets on my own to learn the content. The practice midterms and finals were helpful though, as they were basically identical to the actual tests except with different spectra/molecules.

As a professor, Merlic is pretty funny and wants all of his students to succeed, although he is also very sarcastic and blunt as other reviews have mentioned. I personally found that offputting but I bet if you went in to ask for help he would definitely provide you with the support you need.

If you are okay with learning the content on your own then go ahead and take him. Otherwise, wait for another professor to teach it.

I feel rather conflicted about Dr. Merlic and the class in general. On one hand, 30B (content-wise) is such a weird class. The quarter is divided up into spectroscopy and synthesis, both being very different from each other, and there was an incredible amount of information that was in the synthesis chapters. In that regard, I understand why Dr. Merlic's lectures were ridiculously fast-paced compared to 30A. Nevertheless, I felt so lost during lectures and spent the time mindlessly copying down the reactions on the board, since he would move onto the next topic quickly, leaving me little to no time to digest the material. If he had more time, I feel like his lectures would've been much better, but that isn't really on him.

Examinations are fairly straightforward. He uses the same format as his tests from previous years and only changes the molecules or spectra in question. There are always one or two difficult questions that tend to trip people up, and his tests aren't cakewalks, but you won't see pages and pages of crazy, multi-step syntheses.

Quizzes were nice because they help you stay on track. Without them, I probably would've started slacking off mid-quarter, probably to the point of no return. In addition, do all the synthesis and spectroscopy problem sets. I slacked off a bit during spectroscopy because I thought I got the concepts down, but actually interpreting spectra is a whole other beast in itself.

Dr. Merlic is a character, and I feel like you either love him or you don't. He can be intimidating due to his frequent sarcasm and blunt answers. I personally didn't really like that, but that's just me.

Dr. Merlic is a rock solid professor, with engaging and informative lectures. Lectures are highly useful, and teach stuff that isn't in the book. They also tell you what will be important for examinations. Merlic talks and writes very quickly, but that's becuase there is so much information to cover in 30B. You learn about 100 reactions in 30B alongside spectroscopy here, while in 30A, you only learned around 30, so in terms of content, this class is harder.

There is NO mandatory homework, but to survive in class, doing ALL assigned problems in the textbook and ALL the worksheets is mandatory to survive this class. The book is easily pirateable, alongside with a solution manual that can also be found online.

Tests are relatively straightforward however; synthesis examination problems are far easier here than in Chen's 30A class. They're still hard due to the amount of memorization required; around 100 reactions and spectroscopy values. By the way, don't be intimidated by spectroscopy, you only need to be able to recognize compounds from spectroscopy and no hard math is needed. Quizzes are more memorization based than anything, and there's about 2% extra credit from BACON, a free online program.

While not as good as Dr. Chen's 30A class, Merlic's 30B class is still very good, but hard. Then of course, organic chemistry is an inherently hard class.

Merlic is a good professor but he goes through the reactions too fast, he includes unnecessary information and has a huge ego. That being said his exams are very and this is a really enjoyable class. For the NMR and spec portion of the beginning of the class, ignore everything that has nothing to do with the study questions. You don't need to know how NMR works or the equations. Don't get intimidated by his slides because he only uses them in the beginning with spec. Rather focus on being able to identify molecules from spectra because that is all you need to know. Pretty much if it's not in the study questions, it won't be tested. You do not need a conceptual understanding of how spec works for this class so don't be scared!
Just review your lecture notes, get your hands on previous exams (this helps so much), and most importantly do all the problem sets. It is a lot of reactions and very synthesis heavy after spec but everything is fair and makes sense. Merlic is a good grader and he understands that hard work deserves good grades. Just make sure you keep up with everything and go to office hours if what he says doesn't make sense. My TA's Rob the God (now professor Tobolowsky because he was such a great TA) but Carl was a dumbass. Take 30B and 30C with merlic if you can. Chocolate frosted covered sugar bombs 4 lyfe

This class was really interesting and I enjoyed learning the content. The first third of the quarter was mainly on reading/interpreting different graphs and the rest of the quarter focuses on reactions. It involves a lot of memorization even though the tests were open notes/open book. Despite this, having open notes wasn't really helpful because all the exams were timed (3 midterms 60 mins and 1 final 3 hours) where I either had to leave some questions blank or just barely finished the exam. The midterms were all pretty difficult with the average grades being around 50% so studying the material is highly recommended. There were quizzes each week given by the TAs but the grading is based off the averages of each discussion section. Overall Prof Merlic is a pretty nice guy, teaches well, and has fun with the class but the exams and material are really hard.

I'm not 100% sure how to feel about Merlic - I thought he was a good professor in terms of content. He taught well, his slides were clear, and he gave a lot of practice problems and old exams. On the other hand, I found this class to be insanely stressful; there were 3 midterms (one more than regular quarters) and a final (which was really long, but overall okay). Personally, I found the exams to be relatively doable, but the time constraint was a bit too short given that he made the exams harder this quarter and we were online. There were also weekly graded quizzes, which added additional stress, but in hindsight, they prevented me from falling behind. Also, spectroscopy will be the first part of the class, and also the hardest part of the class. Once you start reactions and synthesis, it might get slightly better. Even though I got an A, I still felt that this class drained me almost completely. I personally wouldn't recommend taking him on an online format given he could have been just slightly more accommodating; but if you had to, it's definitely possible to do well :)

Professor Merlic is a good teacher for 30B. The class is difficult, and his lectures are very fast paced especially as compared to 30A. He is, however, a very engaged professor who definitely cares about his students. I highly highly recommend attending his office hours, as he will happily re-cover material from the lectures which helps a lot with the fast pace of the class. At the beginning of the quarter, he straight up gave the only student in the class who hadn't acquired the textbook in one way or another a free copy of the book.
this class is super fast paced and so going to lecture is a must and even then it's really difficult to keep up in the synthesis parts so keep on it lol.
For the spec section, just focus on learning to read the spec and piece together molecules from it as that's what you'll be tested on; for the synthesis part Go To Office Hours and do as much of the problem sets as you can.

Also ngl I recommend him for 30C even more than for 30B as his 30C class is really solid.