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!

He's a great lecturer. BUT he can be very rude and arrogant. I went to his office hours and he was NOT helpful. He was very cold and unwelcoming and repeatedly said "We went over that in lecture". If I had understood it well enough in lecture, I wouldn't have gone to his office hours in the first place! He answered my questions so quickly that he was basically brushing them off. I could tell that he wasn't really interested in repeating himself or trying to explain things clearer in any case.

So basically, a talented man and an organized lecturer, but an arrogant one who doesn't really make teaching his priority.

Very fair class. Although the material during lecture can feel overwhelming, if you go back and go over the slides you should be fine. His tests are VERY fair, he is not trying to trick you at all. I had Lavelle and felt his class was way more work and his tests more complicated than Scerri. Just put in extra work outside of lecture and you should be fine.

For some reason, people are really going off on Dr. Scerri in these reviews. Please DO NOT BE MISLEAD!!!! Dr. Scerri is an amazing person, period. He is a wonderful lecturer, his workload is minimal, and he encourages questions more than any other professor I've had so far. I've had Dr. Scerri for both 14A and 14B and I was honestly nervous to take him at first because of some of the reviews I've read, but he has blown my expectations out of the water.

First, let me start by saying this: we literally have no homework in this class. Our only workload consists of four Thinkwell quizzes which are not bad at all (you get three tries and unlimited time on each one and you're allowed to collaborate, so you can definitely get 100% on all four and this makes up 50% of your grade) and that is it!! He also has suggested problems that he recommends we do but I didn't do a single one of the suggested problems from the textbook and still ended up fine. My biggest advice is to just study his lecture slides and make a study guide using the problems from lecture. Some people say his slides are confusing, but they're honestly really thorough and they're organized in a super strategic way so you can learn by just reading through the slides and referencing your notes.

One thing that I absolutely love about Dr. Scerri is he is SO OPEN to questions. He stops every ten minutes to ask if students have questions and he will answer ALL questions. Literally there were times when people asked him to repeat a whole entire section from lecture and he did it with no hesitation. Even more so, he'll stay a whole HOUR after lecture to answer questions if they take that long! Lecture ended at 1:50pm for us but after lecture, there would always be like five people who stayed until 2:45 or so. After he was done answering all of our questions, he even cared about getting to know us on a personal level and we would all introduce our pets or he would play guitar for us or we would talk about some deep philosophy on life and the universe. Dr. Scerri is absolutely hilarious and maybe some people mistake his sense of humor with arrogance, but he is genuinely just trying to be funny and he has a golden heart. He really cares about his students. He wants you to succeed and he is there for us to help make sure that happens, so take advantage of the resources he offers!

I'm going to miss Dr. Scerri and I would definitely take a class with him again if I could. Out of all my classes at UCLA so far, Dr. Scerri has created one of the most positive and light-hearted atmospheres, such that I enjoyed coming to lecture every day because I always knew I would get a good laugh out of it.

Also, about his exams: I do agree that there was a time crunch on the first midterm, but he was receptive to our concerns and made the final much more manageable timewise. As for the content of the exams, it is very doable. Just study his problems from lecture, and make a study guide!!! My study guide saved me in both the midterm and the final. I didn't do any of the practice exams he posted, but I spent like 20 hours making my study guides and that was enough to get me through.

Take this class if you have the chance! And get to know Dr. Scerri!! Go to his office hours, ask a ton of questions, and turn your cameras on during lecture. Also, stay after lecture because that's when all the fun times happen and you get to meet Dr. Scerri's cats (: Great professor, great person. Would highly recommend.

Chemistry 14B with professor Scerri was honestly a breeze. He was overall very clear during his lectures and provided multiple practice exams to help prepare students for the midterm and final. I found his exams to be very similar to the practice tests which allowed me to so very well in his class. I took him for 14A as well and can say I truly enjoyed his class and am glad I had the opportunity to take them.

Chem 14B with Scerri was honestly a very enjoyable class. I had him for Chem 14A as well! His tests are pretty much based off of content on his slides, if you are unsure of certain concepts just ask him. He uploads the slides online, so you can TECHNICALLY get away with not attending lecture. My advice is to always attend lecture because he emphasizes what he is going to be putting on the midterm/final. Go to the classes before each big test because he does a quick review and he will leak one or two important concepts on the exams. The discussions are not mandatory, but going to them won't hurt you because the TA will help you. He makes a lot of small jokes in class and he is an overall pretty funny person so this class should be enjoyable :P.

I’ve taken him for 14A and 14B, and he just might be my favorite professor so far at UCLA. Scerri is a straightforward lecturer. He gets straight to the point, and doesn’t waste time talking about things you don’t need to know on his tests. Because of this, some people might think he’s “rushing” through his lectures. His past exams are useful. Study those. He also does not curve down, as many people claim. They just don’t know how to calculate their grades correctly.

Scerri is the worst professor I have had thus far. His slides are organized horribly and he doesn't like it when people ask clarifying questions in class. He also assigned homework that was much harder than anything we did in class and was mostly unrelated to the exams. The breakdown of the grades is horrible and very harsh for a class at this level. The exams were so conceptual it was unfair because he mentioned it for 0.002 seconds in lecture yet I have to write a whole explanation for it. CALCULUS IS NOT A PRE-REC so we shouldn't be expected to know who to integrate and derive. I have not taken a calculus class and the description and syllabus did not mention needing it. Scerri needs to seriously look at his class structure and learn how to care about his students or he should quit. He has a horrible reputation as an unfair and bad professor for a good reason. I didn't think he could be as bad as the reviews and that was true - he's worse.

I would do anything to go back in time and tell myself to not take this class. The material isn't the problem. I had high school credit from IB chem HL for this class, so this was all material I already knew. The issue was professor Scerri. By far the most unaccommodating, rude, and downright evil professor I've ever had at UCLA. He clearly HATES teaching. He hates answering questions and will go off on students who ask them, even if the questions are completely reasonable. I don't understand why he's a professor. I wouldn't walk near this class again with a ten foot pole. There's a reason why his nickname on campus is Scary Scerri.

I'm a disabled student and he argued with my CAE advisor on why I didn't need an accommodation, which is bordering on illegal. If I wasn't majoring in the chem&biochem department I'd consider reporting him. So yeah. It's fair to say I'll be avoiding his classes in the future.

Honestly, I feel this class gets a lot more shit than it deserves. I, 100%, believe that I would be more peeved if I did not receive an A, so take this review with a grain of salt, since knowing my grade will give it a more positive skew. I went into this class utterly terrified due to past reviews, but left feeling... okay

Firstly, the categories and weights that make up your grade are: Achieve (30%), Midterm (30%) and Final (40%). Unfortunately, you are graded on a bell curve, it didn't seem to make much of an impact this quarter (for better or for worse). It seems like many of the complaints regarding down curving stemmed from COVID quarters where averages were far higher than they were in person. I'm not arguing that this justifies down-curving, but it doesn't seem like it's as common when there are in person exams.

The most important thing to know about Scerri's exams is that questions are often times pulled from previous exams (he posts around 3 each for the midterm and final). The amount of time allotted felt very reasonable. Some of the multiple choice questions were a little finicky, but overall not awful. This was definitely the case with the midterm for this quarter.

The final this quarter was... odd to say the least. Because of the TA strike, Scerri was forced to make the exam fully multiple choice (45 questions). While most questions were solvable (or at least, were solvable considering what we were taught), there were a few problems that we were not equipped to solve. These questions, luckily, were removed from the final entirely, so our exam was out of 41 instead of out of 45. We were not given the results of the final unfortunately, I do understand however that distributing final results may have been made difficult because of the strike, but it obviously would've been very helpful to know, especially for students who didn't do as well as they expected or hoped. I do not think making this exam online would've been a good idea. Because this class is curved, going online would only punish students who decide not to cheat on the exam. Overall, the questions on the final weren't awful. I hated the electrochemistry questions, but granted electrochemistry just sucks in general.

In terms of achieve, it's horrible if you leave it until the last minute. My final score could've been far better if I didn't have to spend hours upon hours finishing achieve during week 10. Scerri did extend the deadline multiple times, which was nice, however I did just end up putting achieve off to the new deadline. If you manage your time throughout the quarter, achieve is very doable, and serves as a free 100% to your overall grade.

This class does require a lot of self studying outside of class, but I do believe Scerri is very straightforward about what you need to know for exams. Solved examples during lecture are often times 1:1 parallels (both conceptually and word for word) to exams seen on the exam. He is pretty responsive to emails, so that's nice. The TA strike did make post midterm content harder to understand and fully comprehend, but the curved nature of grades makes accommodations (like online exams or 24 hour exams) difficult to implement without unintended side effects.

Overall, 6/10 class. I barely have HS chem experience, so if I could do ok, I'd wager anyone could.