Merlic is a good professor. He clearly cares about the success of his students and will explain a process again if a student doesn't understand. He tells you what things you're expected to know and what things you're not expected to know, and his tests reflect what he says to know. He also hosts study sessions before tests so you can get any questions answered, and posts previous years' exams so you can practice and get familiar with the structure of the tests. So if you study and know the material, you should do fine. But don't get me wrong. CHEM 30B can and will consume your soul. It is an extraordinarily fast-paced class that'll only get faster in the later chapters. It'll leave you wondering why 30A didn't cover some of this material so that 30B won't be so packed. And because there's so much info, you can visibly see that Merlic is rushed in his teaching. Oftentimes you won't have enough time to copy what he wrote down before he moves into a new topic. That's where his helpfulness comes in. If you're confused about a topic, make sure you ask the professor as soon as possible. Other than that, his class is pretty straightforward. Would recommend.

I did not like Professor Merlic at all. His grades are given on a bell curve. His averages for tests are very high and other students did well in his class so at first I thought I was just terrible at O-chem rather than him being a bad professor. However, I retook this class with Dr. Pham and got an A- which makes me think that Merlic actually was a bad professor because I did not learn anything at all from his lectures. His lectures are incredibly fast and his handwriting is very difficult to read. His lectures are only audio podcasted which does not help at all because all the important material is written on the board. What annoyed me the most is that he starts writing on the board 10 minutes before class starts so if you get to class on time there is already a ton of material on the board that you have to copy down so you are then unable to pay attention when he starts speaking. Again, other students seemed to do fine in his class, but I had far greater success in Chem 30B with a different professor so I would recommend you avoid him.

I'm writing this because I don't want you to make the same mistakes as I did in this class.
This class with Merlic is actually very easy if you know what to read and how to read. You HAVE to go to Merlic office hours. He's not going to teach more material in the OH but rather he clarifies a lot of concepts. More importantly, PLEASE GO to Rob's office hours. He is the master in teaching you 30B and gives amazing tips. GO TO TEST BANK and COURSE HERO and print the previous exams. In addition to the practice problems he gives you for each test, do the previous tests and you'll find out how similar are the questions. My mistake was that I didn't find out about test bank and course hero website until second midterm and failed my first midterm. But I improved in the next ones. He is very fair and he tells you exactly what to expect on the exam if you ask the right questions. Once you get the material it will become very fun to do the problems. Good luck.

The last comment definitely covered all the bases of how to manage in this class. One thing to recommend is not to get discouraged by Merlic. Often in Office Hours he will give smart ass answers or skip crucial steps in understanding. A good way to compensate for that is going to TA office hours (you'll know very quickly which ones are good and which suck, and can plan around that) and push forward with your questions until you have a full understanding. Also, don't focus on knowing a little bit about all the reactions; technically by the end of this class and 30A you will have learned over 100. There's like 25 that are valuable. If you know those really well you'll succeed.

Alright let's get this out of the way: This man talks way too fast (and also writes way too fast). MGK and Busta Rhymes ain't got nothing on him.

Merlic is a good professor that geninuely cares about the well-beings of his students. And yes, he can be a bit intimidating, but knows how to teach this class, having taught the lower-division chem series multiple times. The first midterm average was a 68%, the second midterm was a 69%, and the final was a 73% (nothing out of the ordinary for an Organic Chemistry class, as I am sure you guys all know by now). The first midterm covered spectroscopy, C NMR, H NMR, Mass spectrometry; the second midterm was mechanisms, reactions, synthesis, much like chem 30A material.

You don't need to know too much from chem 30A, other than a few common synthesis, sterochemistry, and the basics of SN1/SN2 and E1/E2. In order to do well in this class, try to get all the points possible. Study for the quizzes (they keep you 'in check' and 'up-to-date' with the material, especially if you have a good TA); don't rush thru the BACON; his exams are structured exactly like his past exams, just different problems. The last 2 weeks of this class, where he goes from chapter 16.5-18, gets real super quick--there's SOO MUCH content in those last 2 weeks before the final, so get ready.

But the real key to success is just to go over all the problems he posts on CCLE. There is literally hundreds of problems (not all the solutions tho!), and you got to know how to do these like the back of your hand. Don't know how to do them? Go to your TA's office hours (Rob T. is an excellent godly TA that is much better than the professor himself), form a study group. Write down everything Merlic says in class. He writes down everything that you need to on the whiteboard, but the textbook is also a good tool. You can't BS this class, but all in all, Merlic an aight and fair professor here at UCLA.

Dr. Merlic makes this class very fair. It isn't easy, but he makes it as doable as possible for everyone to do well in this class. He posts a lot of helpful practice problems, and provides you with practice exams for the midterms and final that are often VERY similar to the real tests. He has reasonable expectations and while he tends to go over the material kind of fast, he is very clear and very organized and repeats the important points, emphasizes what he wants you to know, offers extra office hours and review sessions before exams, and his TA's are very on top of it. They have all the midterms graded by the next class session.
Familiarize yourself with his testing style based off of his practice exams and do lots of problems, read the book as it often helps with some of the points that he sprints over in class. Everything is podcasted although I never utilized that; I took thorough notes in class which ended up being very helpful.

Throughout the quarter I thought I was dying. I'm not sure how I did on the final, but I felt that it was really difficult. Strangely, our class average was highest on the final, at 72% while our midterms were 68% and 70%. Still, I managed to pull an A minus somehow. The first midterm is spectroscopy so analyzing spectral data, and the second midterm is all synthesis. Merlic is kind of intimidating but if you talk to him genuinely he will return the sincerity. My advice to people taking Merlic for 30B would be to study as much as possible from the textbook and problem sets. Don't worry about the quizzes impacting your overall grade; they don't really make a difference. (But you should still go to discussion to take them)

I feel very neutral about Merlic. He definitely wasn’t the best professor that I’ve ever had, but he seems like a very nice guy and is pretty fun. However, his lectures are tough because he goes so fast and covers so much material and it is sometimes hard to keep up with him. You really have to look at the material a second time to get it all to sink in. However, he gives very fair exams, and they don’t try to trick you, but rather test solely to see if you got the material. I would probably take the course with him again. I liked the beginning of the course with his powerpoints better than the reaction sections. The powerpoints were clear and easy to follow. Sometimes he starts a mechanism and arrows are all over the place and it’s easy to be confused. It’s easy to get lost and scattered in the class, but at least the material is fun! Merlic is a solid choice for 30B. If you get an A on the final you get an A in the class, and the final isn't that hard as long as you cram reactions in the week before. You know what you’re getting into and as long as you put in the work you should be fine.

He doesn't take any time to actually teach you the material. He writes and speaks very quickly, so the whole class you are frantically trying to catch up and aren't able to pay attention. I felt as though I was having to teach myself everything on my own which is nearly impossible for O chem. I would NOT recommend taking this class with him. He also tests you on material he has not covered or taught.

Merlic is an extremely reliable, straightforward, and helpful teacher. By that I mean he's taught this class for YEARS and has so much experience with common student troubles that he'll be able to predict your question even though you haven't finished asking it yet. He is however, extremely sarcastic, so much to the point that he might seem like an asshole, but he's really not. Just engage with him and don't be too terrified during office hours.

If you want to succeed in this class, you need to put in the effort. He gives you so many practice problems, DO THEM. Do them twice, maybe 3 times. I can't even begin to say how many students just refused to even open the PDFs or look at everything he gives you, if you're coming in from Chem 30A, you should already know what to expect, unless you didn't do so good and aren't even trying to figure out why. I noticed most of the students in the summer class were transfers. His tests are just basically different versions of the practice problems, going to testbank helps, but isn't terribly necessary since the practice exams he gives you are extremely similar to what you see on the real thing.

I honestly thought his tests were extremely easy, and he provides 18 points extra credit on the final. If you want an A, you need to be able to handle the meat of the material, so identifying a molecule through NMR data, reactions, and synthesis. BUT, you need to also pay attention to the theoretical details he gives you, or some nomenclature details he gives you. His tests are so straightforward, BUT, the final had one challenge problem that I'm sure fucked over most people because they didn't go back through their notes. The question was a very difficult NMR identification problem, but if you paid attention in lecture to him talking about the nomenclature of oxidized sulfurs, half of the question was just given away to you then.

I honestly don't think Organic Chemistry is hard at all. And the TA's and Merlic agree. People struggle because they don't put in the requisite work, don't pace themselves, and think they can master the logic behind synthesis problems in a couple hours. If people were disciplined better, sat down and practiced, everyone could ace Merlic's class. But they don't and the averages are always around 66%.

Hopefully if you're reading this, you can put in the requisite work. Beware of the time frame between the 2nd midterm and the final though, it's only a week and isn't that much time. My brain was fried the night before and I didn't go over absolutely everything I wanted to, but I still did ok, but I got lucky.