Not very much material in the class compared to something like the 153 classes, but the material is scattered and you will spend a lot of time trying to figure out the material and what is expected of you. midterm was easy since he followed his study guide and taught us how to draw mol orbitals. the avg 70, median 85 but since its a small class with a skewed distribution you can see it was hit or miss for people. After this midterm though he moved kind of fast and was confusing jumping between writing on overhead slides and writing on outlines. i guess the final exam had an average of 60 from the poster below and looks like he straight scaled the grades for 93+=A and 90-92=A- since I thought I would get an A based on my midterm and how I felt about the final but got an A- instead. Btw the final covered mostly lecture notes with both key and obscure parts of lecture playing an important role for the final; I could see some people leaving early but many people faces had expressions of struggle and helpless surprise. Overall take this professor only if you feel comfortable resting your entire grade on a single 33% midterm and 67% final. Thats right no second midterm quizzes or hw sets to reduce the final exam weight or help you if you mess up. And richard kaner, not maynard (organic chem professor) like the 2 posts below, teaches this class in the fall. kaner might be harder but at least he curves the average to a B like typical upper div professors not B- like dr. ow. while the material was interesting I am still bitter about the grading scale since it hurt my gpa too (and I have a feeling some students who do not stellar but above average in other science classes did not pass and will have to repeat the course or find another elective). maybe its his last time teaching 171, since I know he doesnt teach at ucla very often. again he is a hit or miss for most people, unlike some other professors who always get praise.

And continuing my rambling about the nature of the course and its grading, the poster who says the class is a joke, based his review mostly on the midterm. and maybe the final which again I thought was fair. professors can and do read these bruinwalk reviews too. maybe the first poster's condescending review might have lead to such a bad scale that caused suffering for many. after all dr ow seemed to emphasize how much he cared about students reviewing him as a professor and reminded us several times to submit official evals to the office of instructional development. but official reviews are withheld until grades are given out, but this poster just had to post his review before any grades were assigned (grades assigned on 3/24/14 or 3/25/14).

Definitely doable class... if you have the time to study a lot for it. Take another upper division Chemistry class!

I received an A in the class NO FUCKS GIVEN.

I took both hardinger and ow for 14D and 14C respectively. Ow is better. Not even a contest. Does a great job teaching the material. He gets the main points across. He is the right level of difficulty. He is also a devoted UCLA football fan! UCLA should really hire this guy full time.

Took 14A with Ow in the summer and so far he's the best south campus professor I've taken a class with. He is a pretty good lecturer and a real nice guy. He used an overhead projector during class and pretty much everything he said was written down, which was nice in case you missed something. A pdf file of the notes he wrote during class were always available online (huge help). I thought all of his exams were fair, but the second midterm was significantly easier than the first. He only tested on material that was explained during lecture. His rule was that any material not mentioned during lecture is not to be worried about. Arguably the best professor to take your first chem class with at UCLA.

I really enjoyed Professor Ow. I was nervous to have any other ochem teacher besides Hardinger, but I think that Prof Ow did a great job.

He is very straightforward and writes his notes out each day as he goes. He doesn't have prepared notes like Hardinger has a powerpoint. Ow tells you from the beginning that he aims to include everything that you need to know for the exam in his notes, so you won't need to learn other material on your own. You do have to practice, of course, as you would with any chem class, but Ow only tells you the relative material for exams and doesn't waste time on information that won't be tested on, which I LOVED. Also, he DOESN'T MAKE YOU REMEMBER AN ABSURD AMOUNT OF EQUATIONS, FORMULAS, ETC. He gives you sheets on the exam with certain number ranges for spectrometry, etc. which is really nice because he said when he took chem at UCLA that his professor made him remember everything. The fact that he went here for his undergrad also makes him super relatable.

He is also very young and energetic and has interesting lectures. I had him at 9am but never fell asleep. He does have an accent, but it's not hard to understand. He tends to talk quickly, but he is normally only elaborating points, and he repeats pertinent information multiple times so that you don't miss anything.

The only thing that is unfortunate about Ow is that he isn't available very often because isn't a full time professor. However I would definitely recommend taking him!! His tests are extremely fair, but the final and second midterm were still challenging. But that will be expected with any organic chemistry class. I feel really lucky to have had him.

This is for 14A - Summer Course edition
Pro's
Doesn't make you memorize formulas
Is very available via email

Con's
Not very many tests. Tests are extremely difficult and highly unpredictable. Expects you to be able to complete every assigned practice problems (literal hundreds of problems). His tests are new every semester so you absolutely cannot rely on his sample exams.
He can also a be a bit of a jerk if you ask him why you got something wrong. Personally, I didn't like him.

I liked Ow as a professor and he often made me laugh during lecture. His grading scale was very generous (an 84-90% was an A-) but the class material and tests often didn't match up. He used Hardinger's lecture slides and encouraged us to use Hardinger's ThinkBook and website, so I studied Hardinger's matierals religiously for the tests. But since all of our study material came from Hardinger and not Ow, we weren't prepared at all for how Ow was going to test us and our 1st midterm and our final were very hard. But overall, I did well in the class and liked Ow a lot as a person.

This class was weird because Ow was using Hardinger's lecture slides, lecture supplement and think book but Ow was the one writing the tests so the problems we would do to practice were nothing like the tests. The first midterm was SO HARD the class average was a 54.5% which he ended up curving because he realized he probably shouldn't fail the whole class. The second midterm was too easy so everyone did well and then the final was in between but again, the types of problems he asks are not like the ones from the think book or the textbook. Wouldn't take this class with him if I were you