This class is difficult compared with other professor. Go to test bank and you will find half of the questions are similar. Scerri is not that good but okay.
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Scerri is kind of a smug guy. He is too smart for his own good and doesn't respond well to questions asked in his class. Rely heavily on your TA's.

Professor Scerri's class was honestly a struggle for me, but I ended up getting a lot out of it. It took me a while to get used to his lecture style because his power points are pretty confusing to look at, but he explains them extremely well and in great detail. Each lecture is packed with information and sometimes it's hard to follow along because as you're wrapping your head around one concept, he's already moved on to the next one. Therefore, I would really recommend rewatching lectures on bruincast (something that I didn't do, but would have probably helped me understand the material a lot better if I had). Office hours are also really great if you have no idea what's going on in class and going to the review sessions that he and the TAs put together near midterms and finals. For the midterm and final, do as many old tests as you can find (he always reuses questions) and review the types of problems that Professor Scerri puts on his slideshows. Good luck!

Scerri is a very thorough lecturer. His class is very much introductory, and compared to the other professors who taught it this quarter, he covered much more information, including topics of spectroscopy and organic chemistry. Some of the information such as spectroscopy is very complicated but Scerri and the TA's did an excellent job of introducing the basics while avoiding the more complex information that might confuse students. For Chem and Biochem majors who will be taking this class, he'll prove very useful for introducing these concepts early on. If you're a physics, EE, or whatever other major that requires ONLY Chem 20A, I would steer clear of him simply because of the huge breadth of information he covers.

He is extremely fair in his exams and everything that is mentioned in lecture has the potential to be tested on. As many have noted, he loves to use past midterms and finals so study those. He stopped using course readers but he still uploads them online as PDF's. Also go out of your way to study midterms and finals from the testbank at SAC because he prefers the more recent exams.

That being said, the tests are fairly difficult simply because of all the possible information that could covered, so make sure to be incredibly thorough with studying and know the details.

Office hours are open and are not a scary thing to go to as a freshman because it isn't a one on one, rather, he'll be at a whiteboard with a group of 10-15 kids and its an open discussion where you pepper him with questions.

He does curve the class which means you might be downcurved but if you stay on top of all the information, study powerpoints, attend lecture, go to office hours (including TA office hours), all the usual jazz you'll be fine.

Lectures: I really liked Scerri’s lecture style. He puts up a power point and goes over it. He’s very clear, and he adds a lot of material on the whiteboard (which is sometimes hard to follow on Bruincast, so I would definitely recommend actually going to class. I do admit that I sometimes didn’t really understand the material upon first being introduced to it, like with quantum mechanics. Sometimes it just flew over my head, but upon rewatching the lectures on Bruincast, I realized that Scerri was very clear, and I was just kind of initially shocked by the material so I was lost for the entire lecture. Basically, Bruincast will be your friend.

Exams: There is one midterm worth 30% of your grade and the final is worth 40% of your grade. I know that past reviews said just memorize the course reader, but it’s totally different this year – there is no course reader this year. Instead, you have to memorize all of his lectures and slides, which is significantly harder. Still, the tests are definitely fair. Everything on the exams were covered at some point in lecture. He also introduced a new derivation part to his exams where you have to show something like the derivation of Black Body Radiation or Schrodinger’s Equation. The best prep is to just do lots and lots of past exams. The past midterms from the SAC were not helpful, as the actual midterm was totally different. The past finals were extremely helpful though. When you do past exams and find something you don’t know, go look at the notes you took in lecture again or rewatch it on Bruincast! Then you'll remember it for the exam and you should be fine.

The midterm and final weren’t too bad. You definitely need to put in a lot of work to make sure you do well, but if you rewatch the lectures while you do a bunch of practice tests, you should probably be fine. This won’t be an easy A, but if you put in a good amount of work, you should do alright. If you don’t study, you will do poorly.

Homework: Homework is 30% of your grade, which is really nice and generous. 10% of your grade comes from online OWL assignments and then then other 20% comes from 2 assignments you hand in. The OWL assignments are not fun and take a good amount of time, but they’re due only at the very end of the quarter, so you can do them at your leisure which is nice. You get about a week each to do the homework assignments which are good prep for the exams and come from actual past exams. It depends on how you want to spread out your homework, but you can make the homework load pretty light for this class.

Extra Help: I never went to Scerri’s office hours because they weren’t at a good time for my schedule, but he had really good TA’s. I had Kris, who was really, really top notch. I went to his office hours a lot, and he cleared up so much material. Chem 20A can be confusing, so going to office hours is really key to doing well in this class. Also, I found my discussion section to be very valuable and really reinforced a lot of learning, so there’s definitely plenty of help available for success.

Overall: While there is overlap in material with AP Chemistry, this course teaches it very conceptually and in a different manner than AP Chemistry did, so almost everything is new. Overall, this was a moderately difficult chemistry course, but I would definitely take his class again. I feel that I have greater mastery of the material than I would have if I hadn’t had Scerri. His class was very fair, as he only tested on material he covered in class, and although it was difficult, I feel more prepared for future chemistry courses than if I hadn’t had him. If you have a choice to take him or not, I would say take him! It’ll be difficult, but you’ll be a better student because of it. I’m very glad that I took his class.

TL;DR Scerri is a good professor. He doesn’t use the course reader anymore, but his lectures are podcasted. If you put in a good amount of work and studying, you should be able to do fine. It’s mostly conceptually-based, and it’s difficult enough to be good for your first quarter of college chemistry. Overall, TAKE HIM!

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Scerri is a decent lecturer, explaining concepts in a manageable way, and gave help to those who needed it on the CCLE forums. However, this is where the good qualities stop.

He is highly arrogant and self-indulgent, and is prone to going completely beyond the scope of 20A and teaching whatever he feels like at whatever time he wants, rather than following the course structure or textbook. The course reader was full of errors and obscure facts/derivations that one must memorize to get a good grade; simply knowing the concepts unfortunately isn't enough. The midterm had people derive the formula for black-body radiation, which he SPECIFICALLY said during lecture would not be examined, and involves a non-intuitive assumption that essentially had to be memorized. Points are also seemingly taken off arbitrarily for no real justification, and far too many points are removed for small errors.

After getting a 70% on the midterm, I realized what was necessary to succeed and blatantly memorized everything in the course readers without bothering to slow down and understand the concepts, and pulled 95% on the final. Despite this, I still got a B+, and came out of the class feeling like I learned nothing relevant except the medical applications of some drug that was mentioned once in lecture. Overall, I do not recommend that you take this class, for it is fundamentally very unfair and will just leave you $200 short.

It seems like Scerri is a mixed bag- you either like him or you don't, and I definitely don't. For one, I had to spend $150 on an OWL access code + his course reader, which was full of errors by the way and was probably only minimally proofread. His arrogant attitude completely discouraged me from asking questions, and he would often ridicule the students who did. "But he's a great lecturer!" you may say. Yes, he's entertaining and a good public speaker, but as far as actually explaining the material goes he left a lot to be desired. His lectures were far too conceptual and he didn't even explain many concepts well. I essentially had to learn everything on my own because my TA was no help either. The final and midterm were not structured around how well you understood the subject but rather how well you memorized the shitty, error-ridden course reader. Maybe I just have a different learning style than my friends who liked him, but I barely learned a single thing from his lectures and overall the class was a nightmare that left my wallet and GPA crying. If you learn through examples rather than concepts like me, or if you value professors who actually respect their students, do not take him and enroll in Li instead who is the best prof ever.

Great lecturer. His tests aren't the easiest, but homework is worth a significant fraction of the grade, so it's not too hard to get an A. Strongly recommend.