a lot of the reviews here bash scerri and the class but it’s about as hard as you’d expect a college-level (weeder) chem class to be. i studied hard and it was doable. (not easy, doable.)

grade distribution: for my quarter, it was 30% hw (easy 100%), 30% midterm, 40% final. the midterm and final themselves weren’t curved but the final grade was. (iirc it was a downgrade :( ). no extra credit.

lectures: scerri goes really fast in lecture which was def a struggle to keep up with but i HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend going to his office hours. he’ll go over material again and again and you can ask follow up questions, which you can’t really do in lecture. he’s also not that scary. he actually has a sense of humor (i know, how surprising) also, he usually stays behind lecture for a few minutes to answer questions. even if you don’t have questions, i recommend you hang out there so if someone else asks a question, you can benefit from the answer.

homework: the class uses owl for homework assignments, which has lots of attempts and you can keep coming back to it. it’s due at the end of the quarter but don’t fall behind cuz it takes forever. one problem is that the owl questions aren’t even what you’re expected to know for the course, so just speedrun them and you’ll be fine. (it’s an easy 100% so do not mess up. it’ll put you at a huge disadvantage for the final curve). other than owl, there’s no other hw.

exams: for exams, scerri does reuse so many old questions. do as many of his past exams as possible and that’ll set you up really well for the midterm and final. he posts a couple on bruinlearn but see if you can find others (like at the test bank, etc.). don’t start studying too late — there’s so much to study.

your ta will usually have practice questions for you to do. if you want more practice, other tas also sometimes post their questions on bruinlearn, so you can check that out.

also, this course is def not just like ap chem since it does cover some quantum stuff. it is complicated and you will have to work at it, but find a good study group, engage with the material, and you’ll be able to do it.

good luck!!!

The class itself is not that hard, especially after they removed o-chem. I found his thinkwell quizzes to be quite confusing and frustrating but they did help me learn the material before exams. Do all of the recommended homework problems and you'll be fine. Know everything that he talks about in his slides because that is the material that will show up on the exam. I don't consider this class unreasonable at all.

I did not take AP chem in highschool

I would not recommend to take this class with Scerri unless you absolutely have to. The grade is divided 30% for sapling quizzes, 30% for the midterm, and 40% for the final. The class is essentially asynchronous and I ended up watching all of the lectures on 1.5 or 2 speed the next day. The lectures only consisted of him reading through the (already posted) lecture slides but, occasionally, he would add new information or complain about how few people had their cameras on.
There are 5 sapling quizzes, all due at the end of the quarter. The questions come from the textbook and there was some overlap to the class content, but just as much content was never introduced during lecture. I would not recommend reading the textbook or doing the practice problems because there is just too much of a disconnect from the actual, tested class content.
The midterm and the final were excessively long and tedious. If you took AP Chem, the midterm should not be too difficult but towards the end of the course there is a good amount of new material that you will have to study in depth. Thankfully Scerri posted practice tests that were in the same format as both exams which were helpful for studying for the exams. Discussion was not mandatory, but I wish I went more often since the TAs essentially review the material from the past week. You can go to any section so I would recommend asking around to see which TA is the best.

Professor Scerri is horrible. I agree with the people below that like his course reader because you do not have to buy a textbook, but he is a mess. His lectures are all over the place. His office hours are useless. And his finals are ridiculous. Science majors, there is no way to avoid him...sadly! But if a new teacher comes along...take them no matter what!

Eric Scerri is the worst instructor I've ever had the displeasure of having during my time at UCLA, and throughout my entire lifetime of education. He couldn't care less about the success of his students and fails as a teacher in a multitude of ways. 1) His lectures are not only monotonous and boring, but irrelevant to course material and do not, in any way, prepare students for the exams OR homework in the course. 2) the homework on Achieve provides a ridiculous amount of busy work; which could be useful, however, the problems are ALSO irrelevant to the exams given. 3) the exams. Absolutely ridiculous tests, impossible to finish in the slotted time amount, always riddled with mistakes that are only given after Scerri figures them out mid-test and then has proctors write the corrections to the question mistakes on a whiteboard, piece of paper, etc. These exams are not a measure of what is taught in lectures or homework, the only reason I was able to pass them was because I had an angel of a TA (AJ, you are my savior) and had to lean on her immensely to teach the class; something she is certainly not getting paid to do (at least not to the level she should be). 3) Scerri is extremely unprofessional in his communications with students; he is extremely rude and unwelcoming and is extremely inflexible and fails to accommodate his students' needs whatsoever.
I am frankly shocked that UCLA would allow such an awful instructor to step foot in a classroom or lecture hall, much less get paid for what he fails to teach. cannot even fathom how he's kept a job here for 20+ years much less 20 days. I've never had a worse teacher, instructor, lecturer, joke of a professor, whatever you can call him; in my life. And I'm 150% sure that the majority of my classmates would agree, he is astonishingly awful.

This was my first ever chemistry class and I have left this class absolutely hating chemistry. I read all the reviews beforehand and thought to myself that this class can't be that bad and is probably manageable but I could not be more wrong. Scerri has ZERO organization on his CCLE site and his lectures make absolutely no sense and consist of him jumping from one topic to another back and forth. I did not even know what the topics were so I can study on my own since there is no OUTLINE. The exams were extremely long for the duration and I have not learned one topic in this entire class which will harm me going forward in the course as he is the only professor teaching 14B next quarter too. This class was so bad that I almost dropped and changed to a non-stem major every week. DO NOT EXPECT TO LEARN ANYTHING.

Chem 17 offers a lot of help for first timers in Chemistry, but also is insanely quick. Scerri covered 11-12 topics in the 10 weeks and, in truth, missing a class or dropping out of focus for a minute can put you behind. I heavily recommend attending his office hours (the ones he holds in the morning I found work best for 1 on 1 time with the professor). The classwork is light, with four online quizzes that are open everything (book, professor, classmate, internet, and can be taken three times with the highest score being in the gradebook) and two graded homework assignments from the textbook. There is one midterm. If the pace scares you, I still recommend taking this class. It absolutely helps with understanding the subject and opens doors for attending professor and TA office hours.

I'm usually not someone who is harsh on professors at all, but Scerri is honestly intimidating. Lots of us have bandwidth/connectivity issues, etc, and so we didn't all switch our cameras on, and he always used to blame us for not having them on. Apart from that, he could see-saw from being understanding at times to some students and not at all to other students, so overall everyone was just low-key scared to ask him questions. His lectures are hard to follow and overall caused a lot of confusion, and while the midterm was manageable (I think the average was around an 80 something), the final was rough (many things we did not know showed up and he emailed us in the middle of the test to correct some things -which was definitely distracting). I think our TA said the final average for last quarter was something around a 68%, so be warned. We also had to do Sapling quizzes, which, if you stay on top of it, is quite manageable. However, Sapling did not actually translate to the real exams.

TLDR: Midterms are often recycled, but he makes the final super hard & confusing (as well as too long for the time limit). I would not recommend taking Scerri unless you have to, but if you do, be prepared to do lots of extra studying outside of class to understand the material.

I hated this class and only did well out of spite for Scerri

*Grading/Curve*
Dr. Scerri is probably one of the most polarizing professors I have heard about. I think a lot of people dislike his classes because he is not very clear about the "curve." He stated on the first day/his syllabus states something about not wanting too many people to get A's so some people do get curved down. This did happen to some of my friends unfortunately who had about an A and were given an A-. He is not transparent at all about how much he is curving people down or what the class average is etc. Additionally, your final grade may not accurately reflect how you performed on the assignments since Dr. Scerri does make mistakes when inputting final grades. This happened to me and my friends, but I emailed him and went through some back and forth, but he eventually changed my grade. Your grade is 30% midterm, 30% Achieve (homework), and 40% final. No extra credit, syllabus quiz, discussion, participation, etc. -- just those three assignments.

*Homework*
Achieve is a pain since it is graded on accuracy and some of the problems require sm time and are too extensive for what we are tested on. DO NOT LEAVE THIS TO THE LAST DAY. I think it is manageable to do in the last week, but this can be VERY stressful when studying for other finals, so I highly do not recommend doing the whole thing the last week either. The numbers will also vary from student to student so you cannot "divide and conquer."

*Exams*
Personally, I am very bad at chemistry and only took one regular chem class early in high school so everything I learned in 14A and 14B was new. However, I did some of the old midterms and finals Scerri posted and they were highly similar to the actual exams since he reuses his exams. I definitely recommend doing the old exams before studying your notes because it will help you narrow down what you need to study. The answer key for these exams are usually wrong though so you have to check with a TA for the right answers. He does not use the textbook at all and all the concepts/problem types can be found on his lecture slides. Study his slides if you have time!!

*Lecture/Content*
Lecture attendance was optional since they were recorded, but I actually really loved attending lecture. Dr. Scerri is a very amusing lecturer and I found the content very interesting. His slideshows are unorganized since everything is in different colors and fonts for no reason, but his slides have a lot of useful information and diagrams (some of which you will have to draw on exams!!) Honestly, if you put in a decent amount of effort, the slides aren't as hard to understand as other reviews state. People say that Dr. Scerri is a confusing professor, but I think that's just the content in general. He really does try to thoroughly explain the material and pauses to ask if we have questions. He even makes jokes and takes a break every now and then.

*Professor/TAs*
I had Dr. Scerri for both 14A and 14B and I had very low expectations because of the previous reviews, but after finishing both classes with him, I actually really liked him and his classes! I wouldn't say he's the nicest professor, but in both quarters, I have never heard him be rude to a student. He is very open to answering questions and usually is responsive to emails. He definitely gets a bit confused from time to time during lecture, but he will correct himself after a couple of minutes. Your understanding of the content is definitely reinforced/enhanced by the TA. I had Hootan, who I 1000000% recommend, but I've heard Spencer and Kodi are also amazing.