Prado supposedly added a lot of material compared to when Hardinger taught it, and I definitely felt that. I studied a ton for this class, and memorizing all the mechanisms felt impossible at times. The grading scale is also pretty harsh at 95 to an A (I got a raw 93.7% and she curved it 1.5%—her curve was pretty generous in the B-C range but really limited for the A range, so it was almost straight scale). I definitely saw a correlation between grades and how long people spent studying. Her lectures can be pretty unclear at times, so your best bet is to just do all the practice you have available. Don't bother with OH worksheets, but the practice midterms and finals are really helpful so definitely do them and when you mess up on them practice those areas. As far as I know Prado and Tobolowsky have the same tests or similar very tests and also decided on the grading scheme together so don't let that be your deciding factor in who to take.

To do well in this class, you need to put in the work. There is a lot of material but, it isn't Prado's fault, she has to teach all of it because of the department's policies. Overall, she was very helpful and knowledgable. My advice: You will get a lot of mechanisms and it will be overwhelming at first, but break it down into smaller sections and memorize them. Once you get past memorization, you will be able to apply them and everything is downhill from there. Overall, the class is not bad as long as you keep up the material and pay attention to detail! That's where you will lose all the points. Practice all of her office hour worksheets (they are really crucial to doing well) and practice exams ahead of time and if you notice a minor detail that you don't think is important, it probably is important and you should go ask her about it in office hours. As for the 95% cutoff to get an A, don't worry about it. She will give you extra credit from going to discussion section which really makes a difference, and the class usually gets curved a little in the end so you will be fine. When I took it, the cutoff for an A was moved down to 93% which is standard.

Rest of the reviews are accurate. Just wanted to add that I found it really helpful to just watch the bruincasts. I was able to condense that hour of lecture to 30 minutes by watching at a higher speed, and bruincast was helpful as I was able to pause and figure out the mechanism, then watch how she did it.

Prado really cared about students and teaching and explained concepts pretty well. Compared to other 14C professors, Prado is definitely a better choice as exams are pretty fair and she doesn't try to trick you up or anything. I would recommend taking it with Prado if you can

I loved Professor Prado. I had her Chem 14A SIS class. She is a clear lecturer, and the textbook she uses is clear and useful. She's the only professor I've had that reaches out to the students before the beginning of the quarter to see if they need any particular accommodations. Overall, the class was great and I recommend Professor Prado if you can get her.

Because the class is intensive and crammed into six weeks, there was a lot of content for each slide set but i thought it was completely okay because lectures are recorded, meaning you can take as much time as you need to understand content. Professor Prado also had awesome clarity and explained concepts very thoroughly. She made it easy for me to grasp with no chemistry background. For the summer class, there was only homework, discussion, midterm and final. Discussion was very easy and could usually be completed in under 20 minutes.

My experience is certainly different because I took the class in the summer (6 week session) so it was easier to do well given it was my only class. Prado recommends that you read the textbook before lecture to have a a basic understanding, i think I did that for the first 2 or 3 chapters then stopped and fully relied on her slides. Her slides are very helpful, and I never woke up for class so I would later watch and pause the lecture recordings as I went taking detailed notes. Doing that made me get an A with no huge difficulty and no chemistry background, just make sure you know how to do every practice problem in the slides. Homework is also useful for practice. Prado did not scare us with any new types of problems on the midterm or final so just make sure you prepare with all resources given and you will not be surprised.

Dr. Prado was the best professor for a summer sessions chem class. While the class moved in a quick pace and some of the material was challenging, her extensive office hours, plus helpful TAs were always helping and explaining concepts. It is very easy to get a good grade in the class and at the same time, absorb a lot of information about chem for future classes. For the final, she takes the highest score and adds the points it would take to get to 100 to everyone. For example, if the highest score in the class was a 92, everyone would get 8 points ec. Definitely the nicest, most informative teacher I've had.