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- Laurence Lavelle
- CHEM 14A
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Based on 379 Users
TOP TAGS
- Uses Slides
- Tolerates Tardiness
- Needs Textbook
- Useful Textbooks
- Often Funny
- Tough Tests
- Would Take Again
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.
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I took Lavelle for both Chem14A and 14B and got an A in both. He's actually not that bad. His lectures are podcasted, but I went to class anyway. He's a nice guy but his tests are crazy. He throws hardballs at you. You have 3 quizzes in discussion. Those are extremely hard and time consuming. I didn't finish my quizzes most of the time, but one quiz grade is replaced by take home quizzes that you turn in. Make sure you do those because they aren't required, but you could get 100% on those and replace a quiz grade! The quizzes are apparently made by the TA's, and they make it so hard for some reason and so long. You really have to know what you're doing. I recommend doing all the homework problems even though they're not required and it seems like a lot. If you actually work through them, they're not that bad. Also do all the past midterms he gives you in the back of the course reader. The books and course readers are so expensive. But anyways, the midterm and final, you're given a lot of amount of time to finish them, so you could take your time in them compared to quizzes where you only have 40 min to finish. He also requires you to post on the Chemistry Community every week. You either post a question or answer a question. I always answer questions. It's pretty easy. Discussion sections are required, but they actually helped. Dan Hatfield was a great TA! He's really chill too.
Great class! Lavelle was awesome and didn't need to study too hard, but the books were definitely critical.
Selling textbooks for Chem 14A/B with Lavelle (same book) with solutions manual.
$80 or best offer.
Contact at **********.
In addition to everything everyone has said so far, his TAs suck ass. Like really. Some of them can barely speak english, and will mark you down even if your answer is CORRECT, but does not exactly match the solutions. The UAs are great though.
Also, you will lose a minimum of 15 points on sig figs over the two quarters, especially if you haven't worked with them before.
It's definitely a tough class to take during your first quarter in college. It's a ton of material and you have to manage your time really well and be very efficient to avoid getting behind. It's easy to prioritize other classes with actual assignments due, but don't let this happen to you. There are tons of office hours so that's really nice and you're required to use Chemistry Community every week so you might as well ask questions that might actual help you. The down side is that his quizzes and tests are really hard even if you know the basic material. His quizzes are manageable but the timing will leave you making mistakes or having to guess. His tests are are super application based so even if you know the material and the homework questions in and out you'll still probably end up feeling like you're making an educated guess. My conceptual chemistry background was okay but my AP Chem teacher didn't even know how to use a graphing calculator so I was pretty much teaching myself all the calculations for the first time. I pulled through with a B after studying my ass off but if you're looking for a more doable class I would take Scerri for 14A.
Lavelle is an extremely unfair professor. I did not take AP Chem in high school, so I made sure I would use all the resources I could to get a good grade (I was aiming for an A or A-). His class is set up so it has 3 quizzes (40 points each), a midterm (110 points), and a final (180 points). The first quiz is usually known to be really challenging because it's a "buffer" quiz, so those who aren't serious about being pre-med will drop the course due to their bad score. This isn't really a problem because you have the opportunity to drop your lowest quiz score with the supplemental workbook in the class, so that's what I did. I got a 100% on the first quiz (because of the workbook), 93% on the second quiz, 90% on the midterm, and 75% on the third quiz, which led me to go into the final with an A/A-. After days of studying and hours of tutoring, I went into the final confident I would get a good grade, as I mastered all the material that was on previous exams and stressed in the course reader. However, Lavelle decided to change the structure of his final after 10 years, switching from mathematical to conceptual. The final was extremely unfair, and there was material on it that was barely discussed in class. The majority of the class bombed the final and it dropped almost everyone's grade that I know. Also, there wasn't even a good curve for the class. I even went up to him prior to the final and asked him if the final was going to be combined with Scerri and conceptual, and he lied to my face and said "no, where did you hear that?" and that the exam would surely be "fair". Scerri's students were comfortable with the material and got good grades in the class while Lavelle's kids suffered. I would definitely recommend taking Scerri, as his online quizzes are online and his exams are actually fair unlike Lavelle's.
I really like Lavelle. He's straightforward and clear, and if you do all the problems he assigns (textbook, workbook, practice midterms/finals), you will be prepared for the midterm/final. However, I cannot stay awake in his classes. (His voice is too soothing!) But he podcasts his lectures, so it's not a big deal. I just watch all his podcasts in my room. If you try hard, this class shouldn't be that bad. I recommend that you take him.
I have mixed feelings about Lavelle.
For one, the way he structures his class makes it so one can get a good grade if one is very good at time management. In his syllabus he lists 60+ problems in the text book for each chapter we go over, but he will never collect the problems for a homework grade. Instead, he expects you to pace yourself and do however many problems you see fit, and to check your answers in the solution guide (which is expensive as balls, along with the other materials in this class.). On one hand, if you took AP Chem in high school and had a decent teacher, most of the material (excluding the super different quantum stuff in the beginning) will be review. On the other hand, if you did not take AP Chem, it is absolutely essential that you pace yourself and do almost every homework question possible. As long as you do as many problems as you can, as well as figure out your mistakes after doing each problem, you can get a dependable low-B to low-A grade. A more valuable asset, however, is the 5 midterms and finals in the back of the course reader. Taking practice tests (spaced out, as cramming will only frustrate you) is the single best thing you can do to get a good grade in his class. Lavelle tests are notoriously tricky and expect you to have some background chem knowledge on hand that you may not think important to remember; by taking the practice tests, you are able to get a feel for what he throws at you, which is always gonna help you.
His course reader is a crutch that I don't recommend you use. I bought the thing, along with the quiz book and the laminated periodic table (perhaps the most useful of the three) and I found that the course reader made me pay less attention in class. Perhaps to appeal to the lazy student, Lavelle told us that we could take our notes straight in the course reader due to its large margins. In reality, though, his course reader was straight up the info slides he showed us in class; taking notes in it would mean you have to write sideways, diagonally, and in awkward locations just to fit your notes in. Halfway through the course, I stopped taking my notes in the course reader. I have it out in front of me for lecture in case I miss something, but now I take all my notes in my own notebook. I found that this made me more alert in class and retain information better.
In terms of his lecturing, Lavelle is actually really knowledgeable of the material. The problem is simply that if you didn't take AP Chem, there's no good way to shove all this chem material in 10 weeks and still expect you to follow along completely. Expect not to know stuff right away; it's perfectly okay as long as you seek help along the way. I personally really enjoyed Lavelle's deep probing of the material; he explained why certain things were the way they were, and made me rely less on memorization. Overall, I left the course feeling with a deeper understanding of chemistry. Also, his accent's pretty cool. Esp. the way he says "buffer" ("baffa").
I took Lavelle for both Chem14A and 14B and got an A in both. He's actually not that bad. His lectures are podcasted, but I went to class anyway. He's a nice guy but his tests are crazy. He throws hardballs at you. You have 3 quizzes in discussion. Those are extremely hard and time consuming. I didn't finish my quizzes most of the time, but one quiz grade is replaced by take home quizzes that you turn in. Make sure you do those because they aren't required, but you could get 100% on those and replace a quiz grade! The quizzes are apparently made by the TA's, and they make it so hard for some reason and so long. You really have to know what you're doing. I recommend doing all the homework problems even though they're not required and it seems like a lot. If you actually work through them, they're not that bad. Also do all the past midterms he gives you in the back of the course reader. The books and course readers are so expensive. But anyways, the midterm and final, you're given a lot of amount of time to finish them, so you could take your time in them compared to quizzes where you only have 40 min to finish. He also requires you to post on the Chemistry Community every week. You either post a question or answer a question. I always answer questions. It's pretty easy. Discussion sections are required, but they actually helped. Dan Hatfield was a great TA! He's really chill too.
Great class! Lavelle was awesome and didn't need to study too hard, but the books were definitely critical.
Selling textbooks for Chem 14A/B with Lavelle (same book) with solutions manual.
$80 or best offer.
Contact at **********.
In addition to everything everyone has said so far, his TAs suck ass. Like really. Some of them can barely speak english, and will mark you down even if your answer is CORRECT, but does not exactly match the solutions. The UAs are great though.
Also, you will lose a minimum of 15 points on sig figs over the two quarters, especially if you haven't worked with them before.
It's definitely a tough class to take during your first quarter in college. It's a ton of material and you have to manage your time really well and be very efficient to avoid getting behind. It's easy to prioritize other classes with actual assignments due, but don't let this happen to you. There are tons of office hours so that's really nice and you're required to use Chemistry Community every week so you might as well ask questions that might actual help you. The down side is that his quizzes and tests are really hard even if you know the basic material. His quizzes are manageable but the timing will leave you making mistakes or having to guess. His tests are are super application based so even if you know the material and the homework questions in and out you'll still probably end up feeling like you're making an educated guess. My conceptual chemistry background was okay but my AP Chem teacher didn't even know how to use a graphing calculator so I was pretty much teaching myself all the calculations for the first time. I pulled through with a B after studying my ass off but if you're looking for a more doable class I would take Scerri for 14A.
Lavelle is an extremely unfair professor. I did not take AP Chem in high school, so I made sure I would use all the resources I could to get a good grade (I was aiming for an A or A-). His class is set up so it has 3 quizzes (40 points each), a midterm (110 points), and a final (180 points). The first quiz is usually known to be really challenging because it's a "buffer" quiz, so those who aren't serious about being pre-med will drop the course due to their bad score. This isn't really a problem because you have the opportunity to drop your lowest quiz score with the supplemental workbook in the class, so that's what I did. I got a 100% on the first quiz (because of the workbook), 93% on the second quiz, 90% on the midterm, and 75% on the third quiz, which led me to go into the final with an A/A-. After days of studying and hours of tutoring, I went into the final confident I would get a good grade, as I mastered all the material that was on previous exams and stressed in the course reader. However, Lavelle decided to change the structure of his final after 10 years, switching from mathematical to conceptual. The final was extremely unfair, and there was material on it that was barely discussed in class. The majority of the class bombed the final and it dropped almost everyone's grade that I know. Also, there wasn't even a good curve for the class. I even went up to him prior to the final and asked him if the final was going to be combined with Scerri and conceptual, and he lied to my face and said "no, where did you hear that?" and that the exam would surely be "fair". Scerri's students were comfortable with the material and got good grades in the class while Lavelle's kids suffered. I would definitely recommend taking Scerri, as his online quizzes are online and his exams are actually fair unlike Lavelle's.
I really like Lavelle. He's straightforward and clear, and if you do all the problems he assigns (textbook, workbook, practice midterms/finals), you will be prepared for the midterm/final. However, I cannot stay awake in his classes. (His voice is too soothing!) But he podcasts his lectures, so it's not a big deal. I just watch all his podcasts in my room. If you try hard, this class shouldn't be that bad. I recommend that you take him.
I have mixed feelings about Lavelle.
For one, the way he structures his class makes it so one can get a good grade if one is very good at time management. In his syllabus he lists 60+ problems in the text book for each chapter we go over, but he will never collect the problems for a homework grade. Instead, he expects you to pace yourself and do however many problems you see fit, and to check your answers in the solution guide (which is expensive as balls, along with the other materials in this class.). On one hand, if you took AP Chem in high school and had a decent teacher, most of the material (excluding the super different quantum stuff in the beginning) will be review. On the other hand, if you did not take AP Chem, it is absolutely essential that you pace yourself and do almost every homework question possible. As long as you do as many problems as you can, as well as figure out your mistakes after doing each problem, you can get a dependable low-B to low-A grade. A more valuable asset, however, is the 5 midterms and finals in the back of the course reader. Taking practice tests (spaced out, as cramming will only frustrate you) is the single best thing you can do to get a good grade in his class. Lavelle tests are notoriously tricky and expect you to have some background chem knowledge on hand that you may not think important to remember; by taking the practice tests, you are able to get a feel for what he throws at you, which is always gonna help you.
His course reader is a crutch that I don't recommend you use. I bought the thing, along with the quiz book and the laminated periodic table (perhaps the most useful of the three) and I found that the course reader made me pay less attention in class. Perhaps to appeal to the lazy student, Lavelle told us that we could take our notes straight in the course reader due to its large margins. In reality, though, his course reader was straight up the info slides he showed us in class; taking notes in it would mean you have to write sideways, diagonally, and in awkward locations just to fit your notes in. Halfway through the course, I stopped taking my notes in the course reader. I have it out in front of me for lecture in case I miss something, but now I take all my notes in my own notebook. I found that this made me more alert in class and retain information better.
In terms of his lecturing, Lavelle is actually really knowledgeable of the material. The problem is simply that if you didn't take AP Chem, there's no good way to shove all this chem material in 10 weeks and still expect you to follow along completely. Expect not to know stuff right away; it's perfectly okay as long as you seek help along the way. I personally really enjoyed Lavelle's deep probing of the material; he explained why certain things were the way they were, and made me rely less on memorization. Overall, I left the course feeling with a deeper understanding of chemistry. Also, his accent's pretty cool. Esp. the way he says "buffer" ("baffa").
Based on 379 Users
TOP TAGS
- Uses Slides (124)
- Tolerates Tardiness (106)
- Needs Textbook (126)
- Useful Textbooks (110)
- Often Funny (91)
- Tough Tests (101)
- Would Take Again (102)