Eric Scerri is knowledgeable about the course material, but he has a biased pedagogy and discriminates against his students. He has mocked and belittled students, including myself, both during class and office hours, which has left me feeling too ashamed to ask for help and wanting to leave STEM altogether. He's made degrading comments about community college students; he perpetuates the idea that a student's worth is correlated with their letter grade; he compares students with vastly different backgrounds and grades them against each other, forcing students to compete and giving those from more privileged backgrounds an automatic advantage; overall, he cultivates a demeaning, inequitable and hostile learning environment, which has left me feeling discouraged and defeated in my academic pursuits.

If you can avoid scerri I would strongly suggest doing so. He is just plain mean. It is clear he has a big ego from the start of the class and expects his students to understand difficult topics with poor explanation. He really just shouldn't be a teacher. It is clear he doesn't care for student's success and makes students feel dumb for asking questions. I stopped going to lecture pretty early on because he covers content so ridiculously fast that there was no way I could keep up. What I found helped is watching the recorded lectures and taking meticulous notes and pausing to look up topics I didn't understand right away. Unfortunately this will not be enough to succeed in this class, especially if you have not taken AP chemistry. It is important you find a good TA, I was stuck with a TA that wasn't very good and so I started going to my friends discussion sections and that was more helpful. FIND A GOOD STUDY GROUP. Scerri's tests are very conceptual and he expects you to memorize the most niche parts of lecture that aren't even relevant to the class or chemistry in general which makes it really hard to study for the tests. He also down curved the first midterm which was pretty upsetting. This is definitely a weeder course so if you are in it good luck. Most of the TA's I talked to said this content was ridiculously hard for an intro course and when he introduces Schrodinger's equation in quantum mechanics it is comical. His slides are full of typos which is frustrating. I even found a mistake in one of his past finals which was super annoying because he doesn't post any type of answer key so you have no idea if you are doing the problems the right way. Scerri also provides very little practice problems in lecture and the OWL homework isn't relevant to the content he tests you on. Overall I hated this class and I hate Scerri and I'm so glad I never have to take one of his classes again.

Scerri is the worst, most unaccommodating professor at UCLA. I didn't think much of him before entering the class and think even less of him now. His class is severely disorganized ( I mean the man had no sense of respect for the stuff he teaches). He is often very arrogant and downright condescending towards those who ask him questions in his classes.
I came into the class with quite a strong background in Chemistry but the way that he and his staff work, it makes it quite difficult to work with. His tests are not bad but the graders make mistakes and as a result one's score is jeopardized in the class.

He is not a good professor and I would stay away from his class -- he might be easy but his class is more disappointing than any other -- in terms of academics and otherwise.

Dr. Scerri is clearly a very knowledgeable in the field of chemistry. That being said, he often times explains concepts as if we already have a strong understanding of this material, making it very difficult at times to follow along. The grading structure consisted of 50% of our grade being 4 quizzes which we had 3 attempts on, 20% our midterm, and 30% our final. The quizzes were fair, however, the midterm and final were both very difficult and rushed. He simply did not give us enough time resulting in poor results on the tests. Though the practice exams were similar to the questions he gave us on the test, they often had wrong answers on the key he provided, leading us wrong for what the correct work and answer should be for the actual exam.

Furthermore in light of COVID-19, he was not accommodating. Not only did he give unfair exams, but he also curved the class down significantly at the end of the quarter. He did not send out any reasoning for this curve nor did he offer the final numbers for the class. Instead, we received our final grades with no explanation which is both disheartening and frustrating. As a whole, the class was one frustrating experience after another and was not a pleasant experience.

This guy wasn't that good for me. He's whatever.

Scerri is a good lecturer and professor. In class, he often goes through the material at a rapid pace so it's hard to learn in class unless the concept is really easy. He doesn't have his lectures recorded which makes you show up to class. Despite general confusion in lecture, this is where discussions bridge the gap between what was taught in class and what you retained. The class was easy if you were able to cover the material after lecture and understand what was going on. You will need to study for the tests, if you don't, expect to fail.

Lectures: Attend every lecture because if you don't you will have to learn the concepts on your own from the slides and it will be much harder. Scerri is able to explain the concepts well and, lacking this, will make it much harder to learn.

Discussion: It really doesn't matter which discussion you go to. If your TA sucks, go to the other TA's. The more TA's you go to, the more practice you will have before the midterm/final. Each TA will give you a deeper understanding of the concepts and from a different perspective. I went to every TA discussion in the week and found that even if I already understood what was going on, it was beneficial.

Office Hours: I never went, but I've heard they're helpful.

Tests:
The tests are relatively difficult and you should prepare by using the test bank, reading the book, and doing the owl questions(BEFORE the test). From what I've gathered, he likes to ask at least one extra challenging question on the test. The tests aren't impossible but if you've never encountered the question before it's going to be difficult to figure out the correct answer. The formula sheet he gives doesn't cover all the questions as some you have to memorize to get correct (derivations or recall). The content comes from what he's discussed in lecture so really no surprise there, you just have to understand what was going on. There was only one midterm this quarter and I think the average was a B/B-. Studying for 2 days straight going over the released midterms and memorizing them until the early hours of the morning paid off and that was enough to succeed on the test.

For the Final: Thoroughly go over as many finals as you can get your hands on. Most of the questions are small revisions if not the exact same question from other finals. If you know how to run through a question, you will be able to do so on the final. I noticed he liked to repeat rather challenging questions that students often got a 0 or partial on. Study those challenging ones so you will be able to answer them if they appear.

Grading: He grades the class on a curve. You can't do average and expect to get an A. You have to work harder than 90% of the class if you want to score as such. You won't find out how well you did on the final until the next quarter. The grade you see is the curved grade, not the grade on your final.

This class is so hard for no reason!! The grade for this class is made up of Thinkwell quizzes, the midterm, and the final. Thinkwell doesn't take up too much time, but we were not given enough time for the midterm or the final. For the midterm, we got 2 hours and 30 minutes to submit, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't when you have almost 30 questions. By the end, I was scrambling to finish. The final wasn't any better. We were given 3 hours and then another 30 minutes to submit. Eric is horrible at communicating, and at the end, we breezed through electrolysis and we had so many problems about it on our final. The grading of our midterm was inconsistent, and it was very difficult trying to communicate to either the TAs or Eric. The answer keys Eric gave to us to study with were wrong!! Honestly, going over homework problems helps a lot but not even that was able to save me from the inconsistencies of the tests. Overall, I would recommend this class with Eric because he allows open notes during his tests and Thinkwell makes up a decent enough portion of your grade.

Scerri is extremely rude, condescending, and unaccommodating. He should not be a professor for an introductory chem class hundreds of students are required to take for their major.
You'll learn more by not attending his lectures and watching YouTube videos instead (though you will have to attend discussions/skim lecture slides to find out what the topics even are since the syllabus does not explicitly state what we need to know). Scerri can't be bothered to record his own lectures and relies on a TA to do so for him. He will often start a minute or two before lecture is officially supposed to start and go over time after lecture should have ended. He refuses to check the chat during lectures, leaving multiple questions unanswered. Scerri is only passionate about his everyday rants to turn cameras on and when he gets a chance to promote the book he wrote. Even though this is an introductory class, he completely skipped over basic chemistry, forcing us to rely on outside sources to learn how to balance reactions. His lectures are extremely disorganized and consist of words and images on a PDF that have no context or explanations. Scerri reads off these slides, sometimes adding vague information, but his meager explanations do not help clear up new and confusing concepts. He tells us to visualize something new without giving examples or showing pictures and seems to think that just showing us the work for a problem will mean that we understand how to solve it. If you have taken AP Chem, you'll be able to rely on past knowledge for the first few weeks, but after the midterm, concepts that aren't taught in AP Chem begin to be introduced.
Grading scale: 30% Sapling (about 8 or 9 quizzes all due at the end of the quarter but they can get time-consuming since most questions have multiple parts and some questions go more in depth than we are expected to know), 30% midterm, 40% final. This doesn't sound bad until you realize Scerri downcurves. His exams are vague and sometimes even the TAs get confused by what the questions are trying to ask. He expects us to fit an entire explanation on one or two given lines and if we go over the line limit, the graders are instructed to not read it. He expects us to magically know how many reasons we should give for questions and takes points off when we don't have enough, but again, even the TAs don't know what to say to reach the expected number of reasons. Scerri does recycle questions though, so try to do as many old exams as possible, but beware that some answer keys he posts are incorrect and/or incomplete.
If you have to take this class, try to get Spencer as your TA. Even if you don't have him (I had a different TA), Spencer posts his discussion recordings so that anyone can watch them and his discussion slides with practice questions and answers. You can attend his office hours even if you aren't in his discussions and before the midterm and final, Spencer hosted review sessions and answered all the questions we had and clarified concepts.
TLDR: Don't take this class with Scerri. Save yourself.
Scerri is a decent guitar player and he should pursue a career teaching the guitar instead since he was much more passionate when playing the guitar than he ever was during any one of the lectures.

I definitely did not learn anything in this class, which will most likely hurt me going forward. Because this class was online, the class, as a whole, did extremely well and it was almost too easy, so I would take the grade distribution for the Spring 2020 quarter with a grain of salt, because they do not match the absorption of content.

Scerri is very smart but his lectures are super boring and fairly disorganized, despite having slides. Especially on Zoom it became increasingly difficult to pay attention. I would not take another class with Scerri, not because he's a bad or unfair professor (his tests are extremely fair and easy to do well on), but because I don't feel like I learn enough in his classes (I had him for both 14A and 14B and have almost no knowledge about chemistry).

Rough class, but I think it's reflective of what weeder prerequisite college classes are like. If you took a ton of AP classes in high school, it's definitely possible to get an A. I pretty much ignored my other classes and solely studied for this one which was how I managed to get an A.

Lectures: VERY FAST. It might feel discouraging, but TAKE NOTES. Even if they're sloppy or not perfect get a pen to paper and try to follow. If you don't take notes, you're going to have a lot harder of time trying to grasp concepts later on. Also---the things Scerri verbally mentions during the lecture are often the minute details he expects you to remember during exams.

Slides: Straight up memorize these. However, take note of the slides/concepts you don't need to know (he just adds them for curiosity sake lmao). For everything else though, if it's on the slides it will probably be on the exams.

Owl Quizzes: These are just problems he assigns online. They're an awesome grade booster, but aside from that completely useless. Scerri himself told us that they're not reflective of what's on the exam and are usually harder than the exam content. Complete them periodically so you don't fall behind.

Exams: Two midterms + one final. Half problems were free response and half were multiple choice. Exams seem difficult at first, but are possible to master. Ask around for test banks/past exams from classmates. I did 4 full practice exams before each midterm and the same for the final and got good scores (in the A- and B+ range). For problems you don't understand, STOP and spend as long as you need to understand them; it's worth it. By the time I took the exam I predicted basically all of the problems so there were no surprises. TAs were also super graceful with the free response and give generous partial credit. Also---our final had absolutely no spectroscopy, if that's helpful.

TAs: I had Dimitri, and he was a God send. These TAs know exactly what's on the exam, and they're willing to tell you if something is on the exam or not (just ask).

Office Hours: Scerri's office hours were always so packed; people were sitting on the floor and in the doorway. TA office hours are better.

Scerri himself is an extremely knowledgable scientist---not quite a skillful professor. I think the reason why he has such awful ratings is because fall quarter freshmen are taking this class and aren't used to the difficulty/pace/dynamic of college courses. Don't expect your hand to be held. Once you get the hang of how college classes work you'll be fine. Sit near the front at the beginning and find a study group; they'll be a lifesaver. Good luck, you'll need it.