Great professor, manageable exams. Make sure to do all the practice problems in the textbook as she has a tendency to reuse problems. I think she is a very generous grader and tries to give students as much points as she can. She is also very kind and friendly!

Huiling (from what I've heard), was not so great in the quarter before, but she really improved this quarter. She really listens to feedback, and looks like she wants everyone to succeed. She was extremely helpful, and I'm pretty sure it just looks bad because she's forced to begin with quantum mechanics to weed out students. Granted, midterms and finals were online, so it was a lot less stressful than in person, but the tests were much harder and longer than in person as well. I really liked this class, after hearing how rough it could've been from previous students. can she pls teach 20B over Barr, I want to die.

One of the worst classes and professors I've ever taken here at UCLA. Lectures are recorded and honestly not bad to reference if you need to miss a class, unless she decides to start writing on the chalkboard, then good luck trying to find whatever she was writing there anywhere. Unresponsive to emails and while she uploads lectures to Youtube, before the second midterm and before long weekends she has forgotten to post and doesn't reply to emails that ask her to upload the missing lectures until multiple days later. The worksheets are the only homework in the class, worth 35%, and very doable if you go to discussions because 1/2 of the packet will be done during the discussions. Our TA really really improved during discussions after the first couple weeks and made it worth going to discussions/tutorial near the end of the quarter.
Up until the final, the midterms are horrendously long and while she makes it seem like she cares about feedback with surveys and etc, the reality is she doesn't change anything on the future tests. Final was doable, have good notes to bring with you on test day. Not every one is a good teacher, and she's a good example of that. Doesn't answer questions well in class and it's honestly almost funny, until you realize you need to understand fundamental concepts to do well in the test. (Save your questions, just go to the textbook) Her attitude is dismissive (of course, since everything is so easy and "straightforward" to her as she makes sure to remind you) Her 50 minute midterms were both way too long and it's abundantly clear when barely anyone finished her midterms and they averaged in the 50's (yes, both midterms).
With how heavily the class relies on the textbook, I would study the book religiously and dedicate time and effort to those practice problems in the back of the book and take good notes for the open note exams and final. Class was curved after the overall avg grade was a C-

I'm honestly probably just high on my A right now, but I feel like I actually liked this class. Her lectures are clear and straight to the point. Her tests are all based on content she went over(especially the stuff on worksheets/midterm reviews). The worksheets are honestly not that much work, and the TA goes over most of the problems in discussion anyways. The only problem is that she makes the midterms so damn long. It's a 50 minute test, why are there so many derivation problems? The final was alright though.
In general really is just relations between partial derivatives class. Just understand what equations to use and what situations to use them in, and you're pretty much set for the class.

This was her first time teaching this class so, as you imagine, it was a mess. She started of the quarter by allowing the midterms and final to be open book, meaning we could use our iPads to look at our notes but the Wi-Fi had to be off. Well, obviously, there was some cheating later on in the course so she took that priviledge away and made us print out any notes we wanted to have out during the Final, which was totally absurd and expensive. She was a hot mess the entire quarter if you could not tell already. During the first midterm, she assigned us to different lectures and when the time came to take the exam the TA's tell us to share one exam packet for every group of 3 because she didn't make enough copies. It was a whole mess because she didn't want us looking over people's papers yet wanted us to share a packet. Everyone emailed the dean and department chair and she was told to re-administer the exam but she chose a day during class (50 minute time limit). She ended up assigning 8 questions all with (a-f questions) which was crazy so then everyone emailed the dean and department chair about it and she had to curve the exam immensely. Her lectures are very hard to follow so it doesn't help much. Her homework worksheets were alright. Her discussions were attendance tracked too.

It was her first quarter teaching this class when I took it. Many people have heard about the chaos of our first midterm (there weren't enough paper copies), but Shao ultimately tried her best to make sure it didn't negatively affect us. We were able to choose to retake the exam or disregard it and weigh our other exams heavier. The retake exam was more than fair; it was extremely similar to the original test. She also offered extra credit when most of us would miss an exam question. The people saying bad things about this professor are just mad about what happened in the first midterm, but that wasn't necessarily her fault and she did address it in the best way possible. I also think that Shao had very clear lectures and was very open to helping students. Homework and quizzes were fine and we were able to work together on them. Getting an A in this class is very doable but most people want to dwell on mistakes that happened rather than take the opportunities she gives students.

This professor was pretty good as chemistry professors go. I appreciate how she posts her lectures on YouTube. The tests were pretty difficult, but they were open note. The homework was 35% of our grade and the final was only 25%.

Professor Shao took the feedback from past quarters to heart and actually changed her teaching style and exams to match this quarter (Spring 2024). While she did start off skipping important steps in derivations/conceptual problems and rushed lectures in the beginning, she took our feedback to heart and started explaining concepts more thoroughly and included additional conceptual example problems in each lecture. She also made sure to go over each derivation step as well and overall, was pretty thorough in teaching the material. The midterms (2 in total, each worth 20% of final grade) were quite doable and drastically different than previous quarters in terms of total question content. Answer keys were in the form of a Youtube video walkthrough and they were helpful for reviewing what we did wrong. The final (25% of final grade) was also doable but there were some questions that came up that were barely covered in lecture so do make sure you understand each and every concept covered! The discussion worksheets (35% of final grade) were given and created at the discretion of the TAs - and honestly the TA I had was not very good. He wasn't responsive to emails and not at all transparent about the things related to our discussion worksheets. They were often released late, making it hard to look over the questions, try to solve said questions on our own, and then come to him during office hours/discussion to ask questions before the worksheet deadline. Answer keys for the discussion worksheets were released late, when we barely had any time left before our midterms. Overall, this class is what you make of it: I goofed off quite a bit so I didn't get the grade I wanted but if you put in the time to consistently review lecture/textbook material and do the end of chapter problems and worksheet problems, you'll not have any problem getting a good grade.

Prof Shao definitely listened to the feedback she got her last quarter, as well as the feedback this quarter, and made the class is a lot more manageable. It is hard to make comprehensive 50 minute exams, but I believe her exams were fair and were not too easy/not too hard. She offers 3% extra credit and the class is already pre-curved (a normal A- would be an A, a normal B+ would be an A-, etc.) and she is very very clear with her grading policies (no curving if the class average is at/above a B-). It is a hard subject, but practicing the end of the chapter problems are really helpful in preparation for her exams. However, I often found the discussion worksheets to be unrelated to the material we were learning (they were often far ahead), and they were also usually released late, which made it hard to get help on them. I also did not find the discussion sections to be useful either, as it was mainly just regurgitating the answer key to the worksheets. Overall, the class is what you make out of it and it is not impossible to get a good grade is you are consistent in keeping up with the matieral.

This class was so much fun! Dr. Shao was so nice and helpful throughout the entire quarter. The concepts were extremely hard to grasp, which is why I’d say a lot of people had trouble in this course, but it wasn’t Dr. Shao’s fault. Quantum mechanics is never easy, but Dr. Shao helped us as much as she could. Her slides were very organized, and she didn’t rush through the lectures. The homework was done in a way that we were basically guaranteed 100%, (ten attempts on each problem, but after you got it wrong it would walk you through the steps) but it would help us a ton to gain an understanding of the topics and the kinds of questions that we would have to answer. The tests were easier than the homework problems. The first midterm was essentially just plugging stuff in, you just had to know which equations to use. The second midterm required a bit more chemistry knowledge, but it was stuff that we had done in class. As long as you paid attention, you’d be fine. The final was super easy, much easier than I expected, just long. Also, all of the tests were OPEN NOTES. She wanted us to understand the concepts more than just memorize problems, which I think is admirable. Learning shouldn’t be about just learning to take a test, it should be learning to understand. All in all, Dr. Shao was an extremely helpful professor and I would recommend this class!