This man in a menace to society. He is by far the worst professor I have had at UCLA and anyone that says otherwise is lying. For starters, his lectures are absolutely unbearable. All he does is read his notes off a word document and that is about it. You can ask him questions, but unless you are one of his little pets then expect to get a rude remark back. He is so unengaging that more than 2/3rd of the class decided not to watch his lectures live and just watch the recording. I personally had to watch them in x2 speed because he talks so slow that I could renovate my whole room before he reaches to any meaningful part of the lecture. Now lets go into the course content ( spoiler alert: it's not any better). Okay first and foremost, he makes all the students buy a subscription to Thinkwell. "But surely he has a good reason to do so" you might say, well you would be wrong. All that anyone does with thinkwell is take the four quizzess he assigns, which is something he could just do on CCLE, but no he would rather lock our grades away behind a paywall. If you genuinely want to learn anything in this class, I recommend you get a PLF because Scerri will not be helpful. Let us move on his despicable tests. He has the midterm and final, but I can tell you that no matter how long you study for them, you will still be unprepared. Oh and even you do somehow manage to understand his tests, well good luck even finishing them. He is so intent with making sure student's don't cheat that each question is subdivided into the whole alphabet. So prepared to take on question 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f,... you get the idea, and no just because its subdivided does not mean it is any easier. And while it may sound good on paper, for those of us that cannot write or process almost instantaneously, we end up having to suffer because we now have to submit our test with multiple sections left unanswered. Do not even bother trying to talk to him about it because you will get no sympathy from him. If you want to know how he interacts with students, I'll give you a little anecdote: on week 10 a girl asked him if the review session he was going to have would be recorded. And what did he do? He (very obviously) rolled his eyes and said yes, and then proceeded to interrogate her on why she would not be able to make it to the live viewing. Mind you this was in front of many other students, and even recorded. When I was watching it, I had to replay it because I was in disbelief that he would dare roll his eyes at a student. He has a huge ego and it was apparent since day 1. As a professor, he is horrible, but as a person, he is despicable. So, do not listen to these positive reviews on bruinwalk because I have a sneaking suspicion some are TAs trying to get students to take his class. IF YOU CAN AVOID THIS PROFESSOR, DO SO AT ALL COSTS. Trust me, it is NOT worth it. If you happen to have the misfortune of having him please enroll in a PLF or watch youtube videos on the topics instead because I assure you that you will learn more that way.

This class gave me PTSD (Post Traumatic Scerri Disorder). Professor Scerri is the worst professor I have EVER had. This class left me defeated, confused, and unprepared. This class is so hard, and there is so little support for students. This class is the only reason why my GPA dropped - I was a straight A student until now. We weren't given enough time for exams, and they had parts a-e for every question. Absolute hell. Not to mention that the answer keys weren't even correct and we could barely get clarification or corrections from both the prof and TAs. Grading of the midterm was inconsistent too, and many students reported that their final grades were curved DOWN. Like what even??? Scerri is also a very passive aggressive individual and there were some instances where he was rude and discouraging to students who had genuine questions. Unless you somehow got on his good side, he would treat you with very little respect. I had him for 14A as well (in person) and I wish I learned the first time around to stay far away from his class. Honestly, just get a good tutor or PLF because you'll learn jack from him. I relied on YouTube chemistry tutorials and explanations to get by. If you take this class, Lord have mercy on your soul, because you're going to need it.

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.

I would like to think that Dr. Scerri has turned a new leaf. His exams used to be upwards of six questions with multiple parts, complicated equations, unclear directions, and every other atrocity you could think of. In light of his bad reviews, this quarter he opted to make the exams more organized, succinct, and tolerable.

Our midterm was rather pleasant, actually. Our tests were curved up and I was one of a few students who got 100% (sorry but I hope that gives context as to who's talking here).
The midterm was based on practice exam questions we had gotten during discussion sections, and his previous exams were a great litmus test for what types of questions we would expect.

The final exam, however, was an entirely different story. Because of the TA strike, our exam with multiple-choice on a Scantron. The multiple-choice questions were adulterated from the same online source and Prof Scerri lacked the common sense to supply us with the necessary information to approach these online questions. Because of this fault, 5 of 45 questions on our final exam are being omitted, with a 6th question having answer options from an entirely different question (formatting issue?). Compounding this, students with the CAE were told that they were five questions to omit and not approach, but students in traditional lecture halls are only told about four. For this reason, we are currently running the risk that students with accommodations will have an artificially lower score because they were told to leave another question blank.

Take this as a testament to his communication style: he sucks at it.

As other reviews have indicated, his lecture slides are incredibly unorganized and his style of walking us through lecture slides during class with occasional elaboration does little to aid our comprehension.

While I might not be as direct as the other reviews to "Avoid Scerri at all costs," I would advise that you might want to avoid him if unorganized slides, a lack of communication skills, a snobby personality, and a stark tendency to say "obviously" when trying to explain challenging concepts are a deal breaker to you.

Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.

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 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 WAS SO HARD! Don't take this class. I hated it and struggled so much. I regret taking this class. He was very confusing and the tests were extremely hard! BE WARNED

Do not take this class. This is my second class with this professor and I can officially state that I have retained and understand ZERO information. His slides are so confusing and he runs through 100+ slides in 50 minutes. His lectures consist of him reading off slides and even reading the solutions to practice problems without actually going through the way to get the answer. Chemistry is not supposed to be taught this way! It should be progressive and the professor should work throw the answer, not just read the answer off of two long slides in a few seconds as if anyone would understand that. The TA strike after midterms also meant that there were no sections so any chance of understanding the content outside of his lecture was destroyed and there was zero support given from TAs when it was needed the most. The achieve quizzes are SO long and tedious that it felt like I had numerous final exams for the class. The class is graded in the most confusing way ever that it isn't even possible to know what grade you're at and what the curve is. This is the worst class and professor I've ever encountered.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR LIKE THE REVIEW BEFORE ME SAID HE IS QUITE LITERALLY A MENACE TO SOCIETY. First off, Scerri grades on a bell curve. If that did not scare you off then you should know for this quarter, he refused to make the final online, despite the fact that there were not enough TAs left to proctor the exam because of the strike, and he also did not allow us to ask any questions during the final exam. During the actual final he forgot to add multiple equations onto the equations sheet and literally had to add them onto the board mid-final, and also began throwing random questions out, making the final out of 41 questions instead of 45, thereby increasing our chances of receiving a worse score. When asked about final grades, Scerri left a very passive-aggressive email, literally stating that he "very much doubt[s] that there are errors since I have done this work myself rather than leaving it to TAs who don't have as much experience compiling grades" and then proceeded to blame the entire situation on the TA strike. He also managed to lose my friend's final and then proceeded to accuse her of not even taking the exam, despite the fact that there were multiple witnesses of people who saw her turn it in. Scerri is quite possibly the worst professor I have ever taken a class with at this school and is a disappointment to UCLA.

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