Professor Shao is genuinely invested in her students’ learning. She takes into consideration student feedback and adjusts her lectures and class structure accordingly. She also provides lots of study resources (midterm review sessions, expectation questions, etc).
There was definitely a steep learning curve for the course material. I received a 69% on the first midterm. This class taught me how to effectively study, and it is very, very possible to receive an A in this course if you put in the time to review lectures. Professor Shao’s exams are very fair; not easy but also not extremely difficult. She writes exams so that students have ample time to complete them.
Discussions were incredibly helpful; exam questions were very similar to discussion worksheet problems. I also had the best TA Rakesh Bal! He was very good at explaining concepts that originally weren’t clear during lecture. He was also very easy to reach and replied quickly if I ever had questions about the content.
Overall, I would definitely take this class again. The grade scaling was very generous and in favor of students. Each midterm (two total) was worth 15%, discussion worksheets were worth 30%, homework was worth 20%, and the final was worth 20%. The workload itself is not a lot, however studying to simply understand the material is time consuming. Chem 20A with Professor Shao was definitely my hardest class of the quarter, but also my favorite.

Not going to lie the first midterm was awful. However, the class is curved and it is very easy to get an A or B with her grading scale. (50% of the grade is homework and passing is a 55% in the class) Also, tests are open note!
Shao's lectures slides are easy to follow, but sometimes she goes too fast. Slides are posted before lecture and recordings are posted.

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.

Honestly I liked this class! Tests were all open note, and all of the slides and lectures were uploaded to the canvas, so it's easy to skip if you like. Class is well paced if you are already familiar with bonding, stoic, and periodic trends like I was. Grading is more than fair, there is always a 5 point curve (85 is an A-) and your grade is only 50% tests, although the midterm average was 65 to 70%

Shao's lecture tone was somehow engaging when I wanted to listen and simultaneously the perfect cadence to fall asleep to when I needed a nap. Her pronunciations of a lot of greek letters are,, uh,, not standard so watch out for that, but she's got good handwriting so its not hard to tell what she means. Overall, def recommend!

This class sucked. I'm not sure how much Shao is to blame for the amount of suffering I endured in this class, but she sure didn't help me too much. The lectures were painfully boring. Shao did not stop much to explain the material. She zoomed through the slides reading off information that was incredibly difficult to understand. Unfortunately, this isn't really a class that you can get out of taking so good luck.

Full transparency, the first few weeks of this class gave me academic whiplash. To preface I hadn't taken a chemistry class since sophomore year of high school and I never took AP, but this truly didn't matter up until the first midterm because none of it was chemistry, purely quantum mechanics. The concepts are very hard to comprehensively understand, especially in combination with the sheer speed of instruction. Professor Shao is incredibly fast paced, but she is organized, passionate, and genuinely cares about her students. She gave us tons of recourses for tutoring and inquiries, which can truly help. In addition the worksheets in discussions and homework are fair in my opinion. Nonetheless, the average on the midterms were sub 70%... But this shouldn't discourage you because the grading scheme isn't very bad. While it isn't curved in a traditional sense, Professor Shao shifted all of the grades down (i.e A = 85-90%). As an example I scored slightly above average on both of the midterms (which was pretty hard to swallow any the time) but did better on the final (which you—proportionally to content—have much more time on) and was able to walk away with an A. All in all, I'd say that this class will temporarily destroy your confidence in Chem and maybe even STEM in general, but if you stick with it and put the work in you should be just fine.

Shao is a wonderful professor, but is still lacking in a few areas. She is incredibly understanding and accommodating–willing to help you out in office hours and on her own time. The amount of effort necessary to complete assignments is not much, but I recommend doing extra practice on your own just to familiarize with concepts.

At the beginning of the quarter, I full expected not to even pass this class (I did horribly on the first midterm), but here I am.

As Shao has open-book exams, I highly recommend having all of the assigned worksheets and practice problems printed out and separate from your notes–it will make it easier to look through and find them.

I think this is Professor Shao's first time teaching so even though the course started with lots of confusion, it got better at the end. The midterms are very time consuming and almost no one could finish in time, but she made the final a lot easier cuz most of the questions on the final are similar to her study guides and midterms. She goes over concepts very quickly sometimes so I recommend using a tablet so you can directly edit the slides and take notes. Her slides are very good and clean comparing to most of the other professors I have. The course starts off very hard but once you get used to it , it gets better.

While the class material was very difficult, Professor Shao did a great job at simplifying and explaining the concepts. The Cengage assignments provided questions very similar to those on the exams, and the explanations helped me learn a lot of the content. Textbook reading is not totally necessary, as the lectures cover all the content you need to know. Office hours are very helpful, as Professor Shao typically covers misconceptions from the lectures and goes over difficult homework problems. Great professor, would take the class again.