i cannot recommend professor ow enough!! he is a straightforward and transparent professor. his slides are concise and he doesn’t overcomplicate concepts during lecture. i took ap chem is high school, but i wouldn’t say it was super necessary—some topics overlap, but we go more in depth with the concepts. professor ow’s midterms (both weighed 20% each) were fair and the practice tests were similar to the actual exam. i believe he does an amazing job of giving his students resources; he posts study guides, practice exams, does reviews sessions, and records letures. on top of that, our discussion worksheets (mandatory discussion attendance worth 15% of grade) and weekly online quizzes (weighed 20%, worst 2 quizzes dropped) help you prepare the exams. homework is not graded, but doing the textbook questions definitely reinforced my understanding of the material and helped me succeed on the exams. he also gave ~0.5% extra credit for completing surveys—not sure how useful this was since he down curved my class by 1%. my only complaint is that our midterms were given during lecture time, so we were given only 50 minutes to complete 7-8 free response questions with multiple parts. i personally thought this was not enough time and had to rush through the second midterm. overall, you have to put in the work to get an A in his class, but it is for sure worth it because this class is a foundation for future chem courses and potentially, other lifesci courses.

Prof Ow is clearly very passionate about the subject and that comes across whenever he is teaching. His enthusiasm is truly apparent in the examples he provides and the way he speaks about the content, which I appreciate, and it also makes me more interested in learning.

Also, Prof Ow is an excellent and very fair and structured teacher: the syllabus was provided ahead of time, policies and grading scale were consistent, exam difficulty was quite fair and similar to practice problems, practice exams are given all of which I feel helped me prepare for the class. I liked that the slides were provided before the class, and they were not too heavy or littered with text, they had just the right amount of content/images/explanations.

Professor Ow however wasn't super receptive to questions; in office hours and during class he answered questions with 2 word answers which made students feel hesitant about asking future questions and like I couldn't always approach Prof Ow. Note that to succeed in this class you really need to practice every day (which, credit to Ow, he lays out fairly in the first week) and not fall behind on the content. Overall, Prof Ow is a phenomenal professor and I'm so glad to have him!

This class unironically made me consider switching my major (another life science) over to chemistry multiple times through the quarter. Only chemistry experience going into this class was honors chemistry in 10th grade, which means that I remembered absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, Ow was the best professor I've had so far - great at putting emotions and a few quips into each lecture so you don't get too bored, and he doesn't enforce timeliness or attendance so you can always watch the lecture recordings on your own time if that's your learning style.
Our first midterm was very easy, second one was incredibly difficult (timing-wise, many people didn't finish) but I heard that was to balance out the grades with Lavelle's. The grading doesn't give too much room for error (discussions are mandatory attendance, everything else is just quizzes and tests) but all you really need to do well in this class is to focus on the study guides and discussion questions. Grind those, and then do them a few times over. The textbook problems take a great deal of time, and I only really used them when prepping for the final. IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE, ATTEND THE CLASS RIGHT BEFORE A MIDTERM AND TAKE NOTES ON EVERYTHING HE SAYS. He goes over everything you need to know in an incredibly succinct and helpful manner that I've seen no other teacher do before.
He was really chill on where we got our textbooks from. There's also the solutions manual in Powell Library, but it's on reserve loan (or whatever) so you can't take it out of the library. I personally didn't use it much because I spent most of my time taking notes and doing the aforementioned problems, but it's helpful to know if you need it.
Overall a fantastic person and fantastic teacher. Wish he taught the other 14 series classes because I'd take his class again in a heartbeat.

Not bad at all. 2 midterms worth 45% total, final is 35. Exams averaged like over 80% I think. Lectures are recorded but doing the hw and discussion problems are more helpful. Didn't feel the need to go to office hours really. Make sure to redo hw, quiz, and exam problems. Overall the course is alright and prof ow is sufficient.

As someone who did AP chemistry and IB chem HL in high school, this class was nothing like high school. The materials covered before the first midterm were really basics chemistry, like stoichometry and balance equation, but after the first midterm everything just spiraled downwards. We started getting to quantum mechanics and other quantum theory. It felt more like a physics than a chemistry class and it took a while for me to understand everything. I took this class for GE and my love for this class and chemistry slowly diminished after week 5. Professor Ow is a straight-forward lecturer. Most of the times he simply introduced the topics and guided us through an easy example and left us pondering on the the harder problems. The recommended textbook problems helped to some extents, but some answers in the back were incorrect so…

This prof is GREAT! But honestly, 20A is more like a physics class than a chemistry class for the bigger portion of the class. Professor Ow is really skilled at explaining concepts. He's great at teaching and you can catch on quickly. However, towards the end of the quarter when things got tougher, he seemed to struggle a bit and was rushing to cover everything. Luckily, his classes are recorded, which helps.

Attendance in discussions was mandatory, and they counted for 10% of our grade. We had to complete a worksheet in groups and we were graded on completion not accuracy.

He has no homework but he had weekly quizzes online (he drop the lowest 2) - however, you cant see your grade for the quiz until after the deadline.

The midterms were mostly straightforward with lots of calculation questions, but one small mistake could really hurt your grade. No cheat sheets were allowed, but he provided all the necessary equations. The final was different—it was all multiple-choice, 27 questions worth 25% of our grade, covering all the chapters equally. This equal distribution made studying harder since we couldn't focus on specific topics. Plus, with multiple-choice questions, a couple of errors could drastically lower your grade.

Professor Ow doesn't round grades, so if you end up with an 89.9, it stays as B+ and won't be rounded up to an A-. (I know it hurts)

Overall, the class was manageable IF you're not taking more than two difficult classes at once with it at once. (don't repeat my mistake)

loved the class but some of the textbook problems took forever bc prof ow only gave examples of simple problems & didn't always explain the more complicated concepts (esp at the end of the quarter)

This professor kinda sucks at lecturing ngl. If you want to actually gain a good understanding of organic chemistry, look elsewhere. He gets visibly annoyed every time you ask a question (even if it's a simple yes/no), and on the off chance that he does try provide clarification or deeper insight into the content, it's never satisfying or clear. He doesn't have passion for the material he teaches and often acts like he doesn't want to be there. Sometimes he is a little funny and entertaining but I never felt like this was someone who cared about chemistry or student learning to a significant degree.

One thing I will give him credit on is that he gives us printed lecture notes that are pretty decent (they are the same as the ones he uses for the 14 series though, which is slightly concerning). The homework is also very manageable and he does give us some practice materials. However, these practice materials tend to be easier than what's actually on the test. Even so, the exams are still pretty fair. Overall, I liked CHEM 30B as a class, but this professor wasn't really anything special.

I would avoid taking this class, especially with Ow. He did the bare minimum, rarely gave examples and never explained how to solve problems. The work was very manageable because it was only suggested to do the questions in the book not required. He is very passionate about the material but not really about teaching it.

Dr. Ow is an incredible professor. I wasn't terrible at organic chemistry coming into the class, but I hadn't had the best experience in 30A and was very cautious of 30B in the beginning. Dr. Ow completely changed my view of organic chemistry and now I think it's one of my favorite courses. He is incredibly organized and thorough with his lectures. Most professors I've had usually go over time or have to push back material to fit the time frame, but Dr. Ow rarely did this. He went through all the course topics and really emphasized each topic's connection to another. His emphasis on patterns and practice is the reason I passed the course. His exams are completely fair and don't contain anything unexpected. He also left a ton of time to review in class and offered really good review materials on the course website.