The material is explained very well in class, though if you don't spend lots of time actually understanding the way that the mechanisms work, you'll be in trouble for the midterms and final. This is a class that is very doable, but the topics are not simple. In my opinion, this is the best class I've taken in my entire life both in terms of my interest and feeling really satisfied with taking the time to understand and really appreciate the material. For studying: the problem sets are the exact same setup (and in my opinion near identical difficulty) as the midterm and final, so I would recommend you learn everything and then attack the problem sets as more of a proof of knowledge to yourself rather than just getting through the homework just to get the points. Doing it well will lead to strong scores.

I personally loved Prof. Pham. OChem is undoubtedly a hard subject, and honestly whether you do well or not in it kind of depends on if it clicks with you or not, which really sucks.

That being said, I liked how structured Pham's course was. The problem sets were really helpful for the exam since they were past exam questions, so really make sure you understand the problem sets. The TA worksheets are also really helpful for extra practice, so definitely do those before each exam. I found TA office hours to be really helpful when going through problem sets and understanding the mechanisms/reactions. Sometimes the TA will also give you the answers which is nice since you don't know which questions will be graded on correctness. For this quarter at least, I didn't even go to my specific TA's office hours, and found the other TA to be really helpful so really all of the TAs were good, and make sure to take advantage of that (especially because A LOT of people go to Pham's OH, and it's not really helpful). Some people read the textbook, but I personally didn't use it because I found it to be confusing/complicated/unhelpful.

The BACON assignments are basically free points so make sure you do well on those. For the problem sets, make sure you check with a lot of people in the class because they can help you catch small mistakes that might cost you points. He does drop the lowest BACON score and the lowest PSet score, which is nice. He also give A LOT of extra credit opportunities, so do them, even if you think you don't need it. The class gets to the harder content after the first midterm (mechanisms/reactions), the first half is mostly basics.

OChem is hard, but it's not impossible - really the biggest piece of advice I can give is to do a ton of practice, because then you start recognizing patterns which almost always show up on exams. Take advantage of all the resources out there (TA worksheets, LA review session worksheets, optional textbook practice, TA OH). Good luck and you got this!!

As I'm sure many of you know organic chemistry is not an easy class no matter who you take it with... however I think that Professor Pham did an excellent job of teaching this course in a way that was approachable and easy to understand. I would HIGHLY recommend trying to take this course with him if you can since he does an excellent job of teaching it. The course structure is as follows:

Total of 300 possible points
Problem sets (lowest score is dropped) 60 points
BACON tutorials (lowest score is dropped) 40 points
Midterms 1 and 2 50 points per midterm
Final 100 points
Extra credit 6 points (could differ based on his preference)

First off, the problem sets are assigned every other week and you have around a week and a half to complete them. I would often work with other people or ask the course LAs for help during my discussion section if I needed help on the problem sets. I think that I missed only 1 or 2 points on just a few of the problem sets so my total came out to 58 points/60 points.
Next, the BACON tutorials are an online presentation followed by a quiz at the end (only the quiz counts for the grade), and there are 6 BACONs to complete for this course. I would be aware that some of the questions are very specific and I would recommend taking pictures of the slides if you want to be sure that you get full points. I believe that I got a 38/40 on this section.
The midterms are in nearly the exact same format as the problem sets, so make sure to study those in preparation. I got a 96 on the first midterm and a 89 on the second, but the class averages were around a 70 for both of these. There are opportunities for some extra points at the end of each midterm but they are pretty minimal.
Lastly, the final, which is the largest component of the grade. This is very similar to the midterm but included the content from the whole course. I got a 95 on the final.

Overall, I spent around an hour each day learning the material and practicing the skills necessary for organic chem. I would not try to take this course along with many other tough classes, since it is not one that you can procrastinate on. I think that Dr. Pham is one of the best professors I have had, so I would definitely recommend taking this course with him if you can.

Easiness – 3 – Its Organic chemistry, so by nature its going to be really hard, but to make it easier practice it every day, you have to if you want to keep up, otherwise you get will get swallowed just by how much content there is. I will say on the midterms there isn’t much space to mess up since they are only 50 points, although he does offer a lot of extra credit, (not as much as the 14 series) there is still so many easy ways to lose small points.

Clarity – 5 – he is excellent at explaining the concepts and tries to relate it to a concept we might be more familiar with

Workload -4 – the workload in terms of what you actually have to do is pretty low, a BACON usually once every 2 weeks, a problem set which you have 2 weeks to do. But like I said you have to practice every single day to make sure you understand because the content will always build up on itself.

Helpfulness -4 – he is very helpful and very smart, but I feel like he has low patience to questions he feels are stupid. To be fair some of the questions asked are things he literally just talked about, and I’ve heard he has less patience with the premeds and the 14 series (Tbf premeds can be kind of annoying about grades, coming from a premed) but overall he tries his hardest to help you understand the content, he really wants you to actually understand organic chemistry and make an effort to learn your name, which I greatly appreciated.

Overall – 5 – I loved this class, organic chemistry was very fun, Pham was an excellent professor both at explaining the content and being very understanding towards the students.

Hands down the best Chemistry class I've taken at UCLA. While the class is not easy, Dr. Pham delivers the content clearly and gives us all of the resources necessary to excel in the class. He is also pretty funny. It's important to note that you should probably stay up to date with lectures. He covers the bulk of the important material in lecture, and all of the problem set/exam questions are based off of concepts discussed in lecture. The added flexibility of recorded lectures is nice as well.

Coming into organic chemistry, I was really scared because it's known to be an extremely hard class, especially since it's the physical science series. Although it was definitely hard, the problem sets that he provided as homework were extremely similar to the midterm and finals so it's important to understand them extremely well. Also, I would highly recommend working with others on the problem sets and going to office hours to work on them so you can really understand the reactions. They can be unforgiving when grading the problem sets since they are graded on correctness and he did not drop homework grades. I found his lecture slides really helpful and would definitely recommend using online resources as an online pdf of Ochem as a second language. Side note, if you can, I would opt out of the textbook that the course provides because it isn't needed and wasn't helpful for me personally.

One of the best classes I have taken! If offered to take the class with Dr. Pham, definitely jump at the chance. The class is overall very enjoyable and professor breaks down the concepts in a way that is easy to understand and provides a lot of good advice and cool knowledge during fun Fridays. Just don't fall behind and use your molecule kit well during the learning process. You get out what you put in and don't forget to have fun because it is easy to do so.