Dr. Lavelle is amazing! He offers many resources for students and seems to really want us to do well! Mandatory chemistry community posting can be a little bothersome if you don’t need it, but it really helps many students who need clarification often, and helps bump your grade up too! His tests are pretty straightforward and he doesn’t usually try to be tricky, although there are a few problems where he was. The homework is a reasonable amount and is often a bit more complex than his lectures and tests, which is better than the other way around. He also does motivating poetry and gave out M&M’s at a review session once! So sweet!

All the bad reviews of Dr. Lavelle are people who did not take advantage of all the resources that he provides. He would constantly give us reminders of different ways/places to seek help if you were struggling, and provided countless different learning mechanisms. His class is very straight forward. One piece of advice I would give is that he will often times ask for answers in different units than the ones provided in the question so always be on the look out for what unit your answer should be in. Overall, Lavelle was a quality teacher who I would gladly take again!

Definitely take this class. You'll actually learn a lot. Prof Lavelle has tons of review sessions and stuff.

Dr. Lavelle is one the most caring professors I have ever met. The subject he teaches is difficult, but he provides all the resources necessary to get an A. Basically if you put in the work, you will get an A. He really wants his students to succeed and makes that possible. He puts in a lot of extra energy he doesn't need to be expending to provide chem help.
He's also tries to make his class more fun. He has poetry time and presents chem jokes.
Overall, Dr. Lavelle creates a positive and helpful learning environment.

Prof. Lavelle has been teaching this for many many years so he is by far the best and most experienced professor you can get for gen chem. He provides so many extra resources that you can use to help you succeed, like extra review sessions, office hours, etc. You do have to put in effort to learn, but if you use the resources, you definitely can get an A. He cares a lot about helping all his students succeed. I definitely recommend taking Lavelle and shout out to Lyndon for his super helpful UA sessions.

Dr. Lavelle's lectures are extremely straightforward. Additionally, if you are ever confused or just want some extra practice there are so many different ways to get help. Lavelle has arranged a ton of office hours, peer learning sessions, and chemistry community is open 24/7. There is really no reason why you cannot be successful in this class if you are attending lecture and getting help when you need it. A lot of people seem to bash on Dr. Lavelle on Bruinwalk, but from being in his class for 2 quarters I can definitely say that he is overwhelmingly liked by his students. He is cheerful and extremely helpful!

Chem 14A with Dr. Lavelle was a challenging but rewarding class, and as long as you put enough effort into the class, you'll be successful. He gives 4 tests, a midterm, and a final. The 4 tests and the midterm were very straightforward and if you study for them, you'll do fine, but the final was pretty tricky and definitely tripped me up. Dr. Lavelle's lectures are not really necessary because they're pretty much straight from the textbook and he is a somewhat dry lecturer, but I highly recommend going to as many review sessions as you can. He provides many opportunities for people to seek the help they need and really seems to care about students' success in the class. Overall, I recommend taking this class with Dr. Lavelle because if you work hard enough, you can do well.

I absolutely love Dr. Lavelle. He’s such an incredible teacher— his lectures are perfectly paced and the slides are so helpful. He’s also super funny, which is a plus. The tests are medium/hard, but if you go to class and do the homework you’ll be just fine. Lavelle truly made me love chemistry. I wish he taught 14C and D. Live, love, Lavelle.

The class isn't particularly difficult, especially since it's no longer graded on a curve. It's out of 500 points with a small bump after the final that will only boost your grade higher, never lower. I missed a lot of free homework points due to carelessness, but an A shouldn't be too difficult unless you chem is your weak point. Even then, there are a bunch of UA and TA hours, so there's always someone ready to help.

Since there aren't that many points, the class test scores do add up. They seem to mark the difference between +/- for a lot of people. The first two tests are easy points with questions off the homework and modules. Honestly, while prepping for the class tests, you don't really have to do the exercises at the far back. The tests aren't meant to trick you.

Lavelle is a great lecturer because he uses slides and sticks to them. I skipped a lot of lectures, but I don't recommend unless you bought a course reader from a past student or already know the material because all that backed up material will get to you. The class tests really punish the no-studying-before-midterm mentality.

Best way to score high on midterm/final other than hw is to get old exams. They aren't available in the test bank, but ask around and you'll find them. (Also, use the test banks if you're part of ACA/KASA/etc cause they have old class tests and exams). The review sessions depend on who's teaching it. The two times I attended weren't particularly helpful (we just did a vague review and people asked questions from the book). I heard some were really helpful for the later topics though.

For reference, the mean grade on the final was 80 and the midterm an 83.

Your grade is solely dependent on how well you want to do and how much effort you put. Trust me, the more you put in, the more you get out. This course is very similar to AP Chemistry, so there weren't that many new topics covered. However, there is really no curve, so don't count on that to save you. Do ALL the homework problems (MULTIPLE TIMES!!), use chemistry community/ UA sessions to ask questions, and do the past final exams/midterms to ace both tests. Lavelle offers many resources, so it's on you to figure out what you need help in. Homework and online forum posts do cushion your overall grade in this class, so make sure you do them. This class can be time consuming, but I would highly recommend taking this course. Overall, it's a fair class.