I took this as an EE major and it wasn't bad. There's a lot of people in the class so your TA sometimes can't respond to your emails fast. There were two midterms and they were weighted 15% each so it wasn't bad plus it was online with 90 min time limit on gradescope. The biggest chunk of your grade comes from the discussion worksheets and if you go to the discussions, it's a free 30% of your grade. Honestly the biggest reason why I didn't get an A in this class was I overslept my discussion as it was at 8am, but if you go to those, you're good. Lectures are recorded and uploaded on bruinlearn or youtube. She has annotated notes uploaded. Honestly, Shao said the class was kind of difficult but it was fairly manageable. Even though she says homework takes an average of 8 hours to do, it only took me 2 hours on average. It gives you 10 tries to do a question and you never need more than 3 tries. She starts off with quantum mechanics, but since there is no calculus involved in this class, it was pretty easy. Try to take Chem 20A with Shao if you can.

I took this as an EE major and it wasn't bad. There's a lot of people in the class so your TA sometimes can't respond to your emails fast. There were two midterms and they were weighted 15% each so it wasn't bad plus it was online with 90 min time limit on gradescope. The biggest chunk of your grade comes from the discussion worksheets and if you go to the discussions, it's a free 30% of your grade. Honestly the biggest reason why I didn't get an A in this class was I overslept my discussion as it was at 8am, but if you go to those, you're good. Lectures are recorded and uploaded on bruinlearn or youtube. She has annotated notes uploaded. Honestly, Shao said the class was kind of difficult but it was fairly manageable. Even though she says homework takes an average of 8 hours to do, it only took me 2 hours on average. It gives you 10 tries to do a question and you never need more than 3 tries. She starts off with quantum mechanics, but since there is no calculus involved in this class, it was pretty easy. Try to take Chem 20A with Shao if you can.

I genuinely swore I was going to fail this class. I bombed the first midterm after studying for two weeks before it. THE TESTS ARE HARD. Nearly impossible. But somehow you make it out alive because if you utilize this outstanding professor the seemingly impossible material will start to make sense.

The homework takes a lot of time but is entirely manageable if you make time for it. That is what saves your grade. Take this class its worth it.

The content of this class is tough (isn't super similar to AP Chemistry and deals a lot more with quantum mechanics/chemistry) but Shao has a very generous grading scheme to make up for it. First, she implements a scale where 90-100 is an A, 85-89 is an A-, 80-84 is a B+, ... , and so on until needing only a 55 to pass the class. Exam averages were low (around the 70s range), mostly due to needing to work through them quickly, but all in all are similar to her discussion worksheets and "expectation problems." She doesn't curve given her scaling, and exams are not weighed as much compared to other classes. Discussion worksheets and homework account for 50% of your grade, and for homework you are given 10 attempts per question. That leaves 15% for each midterm and 20% for the final. Given it was her first time teaching, her lectures were a lot and sometimes disorganized, but she is a kind, generous person and truly wants to help students learn (I heard she is also much more helpful in office hours). All in all, her lenient grading is a great reason to take Professor Shao's class, and she's also a decent teacher and overall just super nice person.

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.

Not terrible, by the grace of god I ended up with an A. This class is very hard at the start and progresses to easier topics later, so be ready.

Dr. Shao shows genuine care for her students and is willing to help out whenever she can. Though we spent the majority of the first three/four weeks learning quantum physics, I personally felt that it was still relevant to the chemical structure. I had an awesome TA as well, so that is definitely something to look out for. If there's a stellar TA that is not the leader of your particular section, it'd be super helpful to sit in on their sessions. One thing that was especially dreadful about this class was the end-of-chapter assignments on Cengage though. There's a timer that tracks how much time you spent on each assignment and I swear none of mine were below 5 hours. They're kind of dreadful and boring, but definitely help lots with your grade. Speaking of grades, this class isn't outrageously test-weighted, which I found to have helped me achieve the grade I wanted. There are also plenty of extra credit opportunities which were all easy to obtain, so you don't have to do anything super awful or a ton of extra work for extra credit.

Dr. Shao shows genuine care for her students and is willing to help out whenever she can. Though we spent the majority of the first three/four weeks learning quantum physics, I personally felt that it was still relevant to the chemical structure. I had an awesome TA as well, so that is definitely something to look out for. If there's a stellar TA that is not the leader of your particular section, it'd be super helpful to sit in on their sessions. One thing that was especially dreadful about this class was the end-of-chapter assignments on Cengage though. There's a timer that tracks how much time you spent on each assignment and I swear none of mine were below 5 hours. They're kind of dreadful and boring, but definitely help lots with your grade. Speaking of grades, this class isn't outrageously test-weighted, which I found to have helped me achieve the grade I wanted. There are also plenty of extra credit opportunities which were all easy to obtain, so you don't have to do anything super awful or a ton of extra work for extra credit.

strong care for the well-being of students, strongly recommended!

Heard bad things before taking this class but ended up really liking it. You do NOT need to read the textbook, you will do well as long as you just pay attention in lectures and put effort into the discussion worksheets. If you can keep up with the content, you don't need to put much study time in for exams. Plus, only half your grade is exams, and the other half is easy to earn homework/ discussion points. She also offers 3% extra credit just for filling out surveys/ submitting exams correctly.