- This was my first quarter at ucla and this class genuinely made me excited about the rest of my time here. I didn't come in with an extremely strong background in chem (took honors chem in my sophomore year of high school) but before the quarter I spent a week or so reviewing AP chem material on khanacademy.

- The best thing Lavelle provides is sooo many resources. He gave preclass, optional content for the first couple units -- they essentially covered all of the first 3 weeks of content + several practice problems for each of them. His lectures align pretty well with the textbook, and he assigns specific textbook problems as optional homework (that you should definitely do). In addition, there are tons and tons of worksheets that UA's prepare with many more practice problems.

- His lectures are very clear in my opinion. What I really like is that almost everything he says is documented in the lecture notes, and they are clear/consice while not leaving out any important info. The midterms were both 15 question mcqs, and the final was 30 mcqs. Personally, I thought all the exams were extremely fair. For every single problem (I checked all of them after the exams), I could pinpoint exactly where in my notes the topic was discussed.

- For every 15 questions, i'd say that about 2-3 of them were directly taken from the textbook. another 5-6 were very similar to the textbook problems even if it wasn't exact. The remaining 6-7 were probably a bit on the conceptual side, but again were pretty straightforward. The questions are not meant to mislead (when more than half the class got a question wrong on the midterm, he gave everyone free points for that). The final was similar to the midterms, had many repeat questions, and overall was not meant to trick you. I will say that each question is worth a lot of points so there is not much room for error to get an A, but the questions are all very fair so it isn't as scary as it seems.

- If you take advantage of all of these online resources, I see no reason why you won't do well in the class. I am really excited to take 14B with him.

This class has frustrated me to my core. I had a very easy time understanding the material in the achieve question as well as those given in the outlines. Yet this proved to be a big waste of time as I feel all the practice we did not apply to the test whatsoever as Lavelle's tests consists of vague and confusing questions that do not test your knowledge on the practice he gives out. I was holding a strong B until the final came where he put such a huge emphasis on Acids and Bases which had finished learning about ONLY DAYS AGO!!!

I can admit that Dr. Lavelle is a great professor. You can tell he really enjoys what he is doing. He made the difficult chemistry seem so easy. He is an amazing individual filled with intelligence which I aspire to be.

When I first looked at reviews for Lavelle before taking the class, I didn't have a good opinion of him because I was just parroting off what people had said about him only caring about his metrics and the 100+ hours of chem help offered, and the success of his website chem community.
But honestly, after taking both Chem14A and Chem14B with Lavelle, that is completely false. He constantly mentions his extra help UA sessions and they are so helpful. And later in the quarter I really felt that he cared for the students as he boosted our final exam scores by 10 points when it was really hard.
His class is not a free A, but it is a very doable A if you watch lectures, go to at least 1 UA session a week, do all the textbook practice problems (he includes some in his tests).
Stats: MT1 100%, MT2 100%, Final 83%

Although I hate chemistry, you can tell Lavelle has a lot of passion for it and for his students. He really wants you to succeed so he provides you with a lot of support and sessions. There are three lectures a week, a discussion section that will go over a few problems each week, and a lot of UA support optional sessions. The only homework is 10 questions per week. Honestly, it's up to you to do well in his class and you have to meet him half way. I didn't really put any effort in and never went to support sessions so I did poorly on exams. But if you try, do the optional things and do practice problems on your own time it's not that hard to get an A. He is probably one of the best science professors and really breaks things down. If you're taking chem, take it with him.

This class was better than expected. I failed my AP Chemistry test, but still got an A in this class. The lectures are pre-recorded videos, which you could watch on 2x speed. Lavelle is pretty clear at explaining stuff. I didn’t even need to read the textbook for this class.

The discussion sections are not really helpful. We do a couple of problems together and take the tests together. Lavelle’s office hours are also live, but he doesn’t answer many chemistry related questions and they are not very useful.

What is extremely useful is the Undergraduate Assistant Step-Up Sessions and Workshops. The UA’s explain things very well. If you don’t have the motivation to make yourself study, just go to a lot of UA sessions because they will go over everything you need to know and they will provide practice problems.

I took this course online, and the midterms were all multiple choice. The first midterm was only 12 questions and the second midterm was only 17 questions. A lot of these problems are exactly the textbook and homework problems, with the exact numbers and everything. Final was about 30 questions. It was harder than the midterms.

Dr. Lavelle is a very engaging lecturer. I found his lectures to be very interesting and have learned a lot from this class. I did not take AP chem, but I studied a lot and went to as many UA sessions as I could and did all the assigned textbook problems. Dr. Lavelle really does want you to succeed, so you'll be fine as long as you utilize all the resources he provides.

This class is very organized and the test content is relatively straightforward. I personally found it an easier class than my high school STEM classes because of how many resources Dr.Lavelle provided and because the content he discusses in lecture is succinct and not too overwhelming.

The only chemistry experience I had prior to taking this class was 4 years ago when I took Honors Chemistry my sophomore year of high school. I was extremely nervous going into chem this quarter since it's not like I had as strong a background in comparison to some of my other peers, but Dr. Lavelle offers so many resources that the learning curve was nowhere near as steep as I feared it was going to be. Surprisingly, I liked that the exams were multiple choice as opposed to free response. Although we didn't have partial credit on our second midterm or final, Dr. Lavelle's online exams were significantly easier than the ones he's given in previous quarters. For reference, our class averages on the midterms for Fall 2020 were around 86-87%, which is significantly higher than Lavelle's normal averages of ~70s. Homework is credit/no-credit and you get unlimited attempts on problems so as long as you finish your homework by midnight on Sunday every week, you'll get 100%. To be honest, I didn't actually find lectures to be all that helpful for my personal style of learning so I ended up learning a lot of the material from watching youtube videos from the Organic Chemistry Tutor. I just followed along with Lavelle's outlines every week so I knew that I was keeping up with all the material. While I don't necessarily think Lavelle is the best lecturer, he's a very genuine professor who cares a lot about his students' wellbeing. He went out of his way to organize countless hours of review and step-up sessions/UA workshops to ensure that if anyone was struggling with the material, they'd have external, free resources that would help them keep up. Honestly, the UA sessions saved my life this quarter, and made learning much easier and far more engaging. There's typically multiple sessions per day, all at different hours to accommodate everyones' schedules, regardless of what time zone you're in. If there's one piece of advice I can give, it would be to do the textbook problems listed on Lavelle's outlines and always attend UA sessions whenever you're lost on something. They're super useful and the UAs are always really sweet too! Overall, despite my lack of a chemistry background, I still managed an A in this class and I'm excited to have Dr. Lavelle as my professor again for Chem 14B next quarter. I would definitely recommend taking this class with Lavelle if you have the chance :)

Chem 14A is a great class learning-wise, but is structured horribly for grading. I spent countless hours overpreparing for midterms because essentially, if you got 100% on both midterm 1 and midterm 2, you could only get 6 wrong on the final for a 93%.

Regardless, Lavelle is a good lecturer imo. It was exactly interesting but I felt like he really condensed information in a great way. He has so many resources available to you in forms of office hours, step up sessions, and an online forum. As much as the online forum was stupid in the sense that we had to post a lot every week, it was pretty useful for getting help with.

Overall, if you prefer a class which is more "plug and chug" rather than conceptual, I highly recommend Lavelle. If I could give you one piece of advice, his final is much harder than the midterm so be prepared and try to save as many points you can lose for the final.