definitely take this class with her. her grading scale is super generous in that most of your grade is allotted to your worksheets during your discussions and your homework. both are really useful and i recommend doing them. the cengage assignments aren't that time consuming if you do four or five questions a day out of the week. she is really willing to help and had her lectures broadcasted or recorded so you can either watch them in your dorm during your lecture time or later. your final isnt worth almost half of your grade so don't worry about it, although her final is a lot easier than her midterms if you review the midterms and her sample questions. she's really caring and i would definitely take this class with her again.

Honestly this class and Professor Shao were both pretty great. The class moves fast and you probably won't understand everything in lecture but if you try your best and ask questions you'll do fine. The tests are mostly like homework and Prof Shao/the TAs are very helpful and great at explaining the content.

Shao is honestly a great professor. She is flexible especially with grades, considering that half of your points are from the worksheets that we do in discussions and the Cengage assignments (where you have 10 attempts per question, so you can easily get 100s on them). The content is pretty difficult though and sometimes it is hard to take it all in since the lectures are all 50 minutes long. However, she records all of the lectures and she gives out structured notes that she uses the lectures. Also, she made the TAs have review sessions that were super helpful. I would recommend definitely looking over the notes a couple of times since the class can be pretty fast-paced and just reviewing the notes is nice on taking in the information. The grading scale is also pretty nice since if you get 85+, you'll get an A. The midterms can be a bit brutal though with the average scores being around 50-70. All in all, Shao is a pretty good professor who is pretty generous with a class with difficult content.

Professor Shao is everything you could ask for in a college professor. Yes, this class is really hard because of the difficulty of the subjects and how many are gone over, but she is amazing at teaching. She hosts zoom meetings for students who happen to not be able to go to class in person for whatever reason and posts all recordings on Canvas. She has 6 hours worth of office hours per week to help anyone and makes sure she goes around helping everyone that has questions. Every week, there's a worksheet that you do in discussion and it gives a really good overview of what concepts you should know and how to answer those questions quantitatively. The format of the questions in the worksheets are the same format for questions asked on the midterms and final which meant nothing would be coming as a trick question or anything like that. The midterms/final are open note so you can bring whatever you like--however the midterms are really rough in terms of the amount of time that you had so best to give yourself tips on how to solve a problem instead of content written down. The midterms prepared us very well for the final because since we were so crunched on time before, it gave us a lot of breathing room on the final to check your answers several times. Overall, Professor Shao is an amazing professor, providing several resources for studying and always striving to help students as well as accommodation in the forms of pushing back homework assignments and literally changing the midterms/final to open note for us. 10/10 definitely recommend

Honestly one of the nicest and most genuine professors at ucla. Professor Shao is extremely caring of her students and listens to the feedback of student. However, the class is rigorous and you will need to put in the work in order to do well in the class.

I didn't feel that the class curriculum was organised well and if it fulfills your major reqs, I hear that the chem 14 series is better. You are expected to know most of the standard concepts like stoichiometry and other basic chem stuff.
Overall, a lot of the quantum mechanics part is somewhat confusing but you don't need to fully understand the concepts if you're just in it for the grade. Practicing the cengae problems, the problems she gives in class, and reveiwing her notes will get you a decent grade, whatever your standards are.
For Shao herself, she was a good professor who responded well to questions and had organised notes. I liked her lectures, although a little dry at times. The class overall had a very confusing structure as it went through concepts in what I felt was a pretty random order. I'm honestly not sure what she could've done about the class on that point. The notes were really helpful for understanding what to know for finals and midterms.

Finals and midterms were fair if you studied a decent amount. I felt that the grading was honestly pretty lenient in retrospect. Grade percentages are relatively lenient and she has 3% extra credit.

Conclusively, if you have to take the chem 20 series or you're interested quantum mech, she's a great professor. But if you have the option of chem 14 instead, I hear it's a better class.

This was Professor Shao's first quarter teaching and she did pretty well. The textbook that she had us buy was not very useful as it included too much information rather it's more useful for you to get more familiar with her notes and watch a video to familiarize yourself with the content rather than read the textbook. the cengage assignments did not reflect what was being taught in the course most of the time, except the stoichiometry ones, but that was because stoichiometry has a universal practice/question format. The midterms and final were based off of the worksheets which had one to two questions and the issue with the class was the lack of practice problems. Overall the TAs and support system were great. She offered lots of review session for the midterm, she tried to have office hours and the TAs did as well. It was a great environment and I would take the class again.

This professor is the best professor you should take for chem 20A. I passed AP chem at a (competitive) nor cal high school with an A-, and in this class the excessive EASY homework and 30 points EXTRA CREDIT helped me get an A+ in chemistry, for putting in a day to 2 days before studying for exams. I completely recommend this professor for those who are not the best or suck at chem or even are great at chem. The material is rich and extensive, across all the chem classes, but atleast you will not have to worry about your grade in this class. She also grades very generously on tests, giving partial credit and even takes regrade requests if you want higher points where deserved. She is super nice, and very responsive when need be.

If you're entering 20A with little in-depth chemistry knowledge (as I did), I would highly (highly!) recommend Professor Shao. She provides so many resources (well-organized notes, practice problems, exam study guides, review lectures) and is sincerely dedicated to helping students succeed. The online homework is relatively light and the discussion session worksheets act as a helpful (and often necessary) review. Exams are more difficult in terms of content, but doable if you review the discussion worksheets and practice problems. She doesn't curve them, but the letter grade itself is buffered a bit and there are plenty of extra credit opportunities. Overall, I would definitely take this class again and recommend to other students.

I low-key thought this class was fine. As a freshman, it does hit you pretty hard in the face because this class isn't easy as the other reviews suggest. Due to some wrong advising from my NSA in orientation, I took chem 17 before this class so I took this class with professor Shao and not Kvaner like most did in the fall. I do not regret this at all. Even though all those who took 20A got easy As, they learned absolutely nothing and had no idea what anything was about. With Shao, you will definitely need to work for that grade, but at the end you do learn a lot which help A LOT for the classes after, notably 20B... Anyways, I thought Shao was a nice professor. She went REALLY quick in lecture because there is a lot of material to cover in 10 weeks. So bonus if you have an iPad, otherwise hope you know how to write quick. There was weekly discussion sheets to fill out which were not easy but so helpful to review for her exams, Do not miss discussion sections. As much as I thought my TA was unnecessary, LAs helped a lot and those worksheets do count towards your final grade so do them at your best ability and don't hesitate to ask for help. Exams were take home and were to submit on gradescope. 2 midterms and one final. Exam 1 was crazy hard and we had very little time to finish it. Exam 2 was a bit easier but still hard to finish on time. Final was easier than 2 midterms, but still had to rush to finish and do well. For exams know how to do in class exercises and discussion worksheets. Also, try to not just glide through the engage and actually spend the hours doing the assignment. It is super helpful to build your ability to exercise yourself. Overall, this class wasn't overly demanding in work, but if you want a good grade, you will have to not neglect it and actually put some effort into it. I also never went to office hours, so you don't need them to do well. And finally textbook is completely useless with Shao.

Recap: If you can, take this class with Shao. You will gain good knowledge about fundamentals of chem 20 A in a fast paced but reasonably constructed course. it will be VERY confusing at times, but with exercise and effort you can definitely do great. Good luck!