Professor Lavelle is an excellent educator. I had not taken AP Chemistry in high school and managed to do very well thanks to the diverse array of resources he provides in the form of textbook problems, review sessions, and past tests in the coursereader. The resources are there to succeed in this class, it's simply a matter of putting the work in.

Although I got an "A", I would advise avoid Lavelle. His lecture is boring and dry. In fact, I rarely went to his lecture after the midterm. You just need to practice his past exams and you will be fine. His exam questions are all very similar. My TA does not think of Lavelle highly either. Among the 4 professors this quarter, I rank Lavelle the worst.

If you end up with Lavelle, don't freak out too bad. This is a challenging class, and you might get a B even if you want an A, but that's okay. My older sister (forth year biology major) told me that the upper division classes (at least for biology major) are a lot easier to get an A in than the requirements for the major. So basically, you might get worse grades your freshman year than later years. Hope this will calm you down if you are worried.

I was a little worried because I heard a lot of bad things about Lavelle, but I ended up with a B, which I am fine with. The only experience I had with chemistry was honors chemistry sophomore year of high school, which was pretty basic.

Definitely get the course reader. I studied by reviewing the course reader over and over, writing outlines on it. Also do the practice problems in the course reader without looking at the answer, as well as all of the practice quizzes. I had an outdated copy of the textbook, so the problem numbers did not line up with the homework he posted. So I didn't do any of the homework he posted. That being said, a lot of people insist it helps, so I would recommend getting the textbook and doing the practice problems.

Your grade is based on 3 quizzes (one of these can be replaced by the average of the practice quizzes grades in the workbook.) Definitely do really good on the practice quizzes in the workbook, try to find someone to go over them with. It will save you if you do bad on a quiz.

Also grade is based on posting on his chemistry website every week. If you don't feel like answering actual questions just post a joke on the jokes thread weekly.

Grades also based on midterm and final obviously. No real advice for this except study and do practice problems.

My complaints... Well, on the midterm/final, he might ask you to recall one tiny piece of information that was just one bullet point in the course reader that may not have been emphasized. And there's a million of these in the course reader. I didn't like that... would have liked him to stick to more general ideas or math. He is kind of boring, it was hard for me to focus at times, so it helped me a lot more to go over the course reader on my own. This is the first chemistry class I've ever taken and while I ended up doing fine, I've heard from everyone that he's way harder than he needs to be, so that's unfortunate. Try to get someone else for chemistry, but if you end up with him, don't panic.

Hope this helps... good luck!

I studied pretty hard for this class , but having read the comments from people who also took his class this quarter, I obviously did not study hard enough.
Anyways, despite what people may say, I think his tests and quizzes are quite fair. In fact, they are usually very similar to the problems in the textbook. Furthermore, Lavelle offers plenty of resources to his students. There is usually at least 4 hours of office hours(from TAs, UAs, or himself) per day. Both the TAs and UAs are extremely helpful.
All in all, I think this was a tough but reasonable class.

I've definitely learned and remembered a lot more from this class than the entire year of AP Chem in high school, and I'm really thankful to Professor Lavelle for facilitating this in the way he structures his course.

Granted, this was not a super easy course for me even though I was in the top 5 of my high school class. I needed to put in a lot of personal effort to do well. I spent many hours reading the textbook and doing every textbook problem I could, often spending a week per problem set; clarified concepts using outside sources (MIT open courseware and Bozeman Science); asked many questions on Chemistry Community and during chem discussion and office hours; did practice quizzes and exams; and set up study groups to review with other people.

I realized that I wasn't studying ahead enough 3 weeks into the quarter, so my advice is to take this course running; as soon as resources are available, take advantage of them and learn what study habits work best for you. Use the course reader as a guide to where you should be in concepts. Try to keep up in the textbook problems with Professor Lavelle's pace of topics and clarify what you don't understand early so you don't stare at a problem for an hour not knowing what to do.

Best of luck and study hard! :)

Tough class. I did pretty poorly, but I also didn't put in nearly as much work as I should have. Grade is almost entirely based on tests and quizzes. I would definitely recommend doing the homework, even though it is all optional. All lectures are filmed and put on to Bruincast. Go to office hours and review sessions.

Lavelle's class grade consists of 3 quizzes, one midterm, and a final. Although he does assign a ton of homework problems to do, he never checks them, so it's up to you to do as much as you feel like you need to. That makes it really easy for students to slack off, so make sure you're doing at least half the homework problems (at the bare minimum) in order to have the concepts down and the practice necessary in order to succeed. His lecture slides are basically verbatim of his course reader. You can take notes separately in a notebook, but most students just prefer annotating the course reader itself.

Lavelle has very many office hours, not only for himself and his TAs, but also held by his UAs. He make it really accessible to get the help that you need, so take advantage of those resources, especially before midterms and finals, when there are multiple review sessions every day for an entire week.

I also highly recommend buying the decades' worth of midterms & finals, because a lot of the questions on the midterm and final were very similar to his previous exams. The course reader does come with some old midterms and finals, but not nearly as many as the separate "decades' worth" supplement comes with.

Overall, Lavelle is an excited and helpful guy, and if you put in enough time and effort into this class, you can succeed.

Taking AP Chem definitely made this class significantly easier. Lavelle goes over concepts and basic calculations, but most of what I needed to know I learned either from AP Chem, or from going over the problems in the textbook. He provides you with a LOT of office hours and review sessions, so definitely utilize those. Above all else though, you really have to put in the effort to do all the problems in the book. His quizzes are pretty straightforward and easy, but his midterm and final can be a bit tricky. It is definitely possible to get an A, though it's really just a matter of how much time you can dedicate to the class.

Overall, Lavelle is certainly not the worst professor at UCLA, and while his class is a struggle at times, he will prepare you well overall. Kids in the class will laugh at anything he says though, which was probably the most annoying thing about the class.

If you took AP Chemistry in high school and did well on the exam, you can easily get an A in this class. If not, you can still probably get an A if you put in the needed work. For me, this meant doing or at least making sure I knew how to do all the HW problems he assigned and working through multiple practice midterms/finals in his course reader. His lectures are very straightforward and it's probably a good idea to attend them, but I think you can get away with just learning from the textbook and practicing the types of problems on tests. Just be real with yourself: do you know the material well enough?

He has a lot of resources for students to use like TA office hours, personal office hours, course reader, practice exams, review sessions, his chemistry community. Honestly I didn't use all of these, but it's helpful to have those there if you need them.

Grading is almost entirely quizzes and exams. (110pt midterm, 170pt final, and 3 40pt quizzes along with 10pts for posting on his forum every week). This class is not as bad as people say it is as long as you put in the needed work!

I've never seen any professor as organized as Dr. Lavelle. Lectures are awesome. Only bad thing was seeing everything written in capital letters.

If you buy the book from the course reader store that has a DECADE worth of midterms and finals with detailed solutions, there is no reason to not get an A in this class. Midterm and final were just a mixture of problems from the review book with some numbers changed. After you do a few practice exams you can practically guess what's on the actual exam.

Last time I took chemistry was in Sophomore year and I didn't take AP Chemistry. Enjoy good chemistry, a man who wears the same shirt everyday and watching students flip out over nothing.