There is no extra credit in this class. He curves the first midterm slightly by giving free points. He also ended up curving up my final grade which was really helpful but to be honest, I really relied on the Workshop because his lectures tend to ramble and he does not get straight to the point. Focus on conceptual aspects of this class to really succeed.

CHEM14B with Dr. Lavelle was a manageable class but requires a good amount of effort. His lectures are not very engaging but he is always good at finishing all the material on time/to schedule. Keep in mind that he goes over more of the concepts in class and then expects his TAs to go over practice problems in discussion (however, if you have a bad TA you might not get the best practice like me lol). I think the best part of his class was all the outside-class resources he organized. I would definitely recommend the Step-up sessions if you need more simple example problems. He was very clear with how he would format his exams (very similar to suggested TB problems + problem sets), but the conceptual MCQ & True/False were a bit trickier. Overall, was not a bad class as long as you put in the work!

Before reading this review please know that Dr. Lavelle is in the process of reverting back to his pre COVID tests which were a bit harder than the tests we had. Our tests were still half multiple choice, but Dr. Lavelle may change this. Dr. Lavelle's class is definitely not going to be the easiest A you will get at UCLA. The material covered in CHEM 14B is defiantly much tougher than the material covered in CHEM 14A. Overall, however, Dr. Lavelle does provide with the tools needed for one to succeed in his class. His midterms and final were very fair and contained the problems provided in his syllabus (DO THEM). He also provides UA review sessions which proved to be very helpful. I will say that Dr. Lavelle's lectures themselves are not very useful and tend to be very boring. They oftentimes are spent deriving equations rather than actually doing problems. In past midterms and final he has used these derivations but not on ours. However as he is transitioning back to his pre COVID style, I would expect these lectures to be more useful. The UA sessions were by far the most useful portion of this class. They happen outside of lecture and discussion and help solidify understanding on topics. Shoutout to Gabriel! The reason I got this A was partially because I attended his UA sessions every week. Closer to midterms and finals I would definitely recommend trying to do at least 3 UA sessions to cover all your bases. Remember that just like with any class you get out of this class as much as you put into it. If you really put all your effort in, it is not a difficult class to get a B+ or A- in. Going for the A requires more effort than what is expected though so be warned.
In all honesty I am very neutral on Dr. Lavelle. I think his difficulty (or perceived difficulty) is very much to do with the fact that CHEM 14B is a jump from 14A. I would recommend taking Lavelle any day over Scerri. Good luck if you plan on taking this class!!!!

Honestly, this class is truly about how much work you want to put in. The class itself can be difficult at times, but totally, totally manageable. I would say the worst part of this class that I am not seeing enough reviews about is the fact that his tests are in person and are hard. I guess thats subjective, but I came into the class thinking they were going to be a similar format to what he did in 14A, where we had multiple questions that varied in difficulty level, but that were all worth 4 points. In 14B, its almost all free response, and the tests are on paper, meaning you have to really really know exactly what you need to do. Each midterm is out of 60 points and often the midterms each had one 12 point question. It was normally extremely hard, so if you got it wrong, you would get a 48/60 which is an 80. You don't think its that bad until you realize that you can only miss 26 points in the whole class if you want to get an A. The class is out of 370 points and you need a 344/370 to get a 93 because he doesn't round up lol. Be prepared to spend stupid amount of time on this class if you want to do well.

Dr. Lavelle is super sweet and very knowledgable in his field of study. His lectures and presentations were always well prepared and he goes at a decent pace. Homework consists of weekly or sometimes bi-weekly questions on Achieve (usually 10-20 questions) that you have unlimited attempts on (you can get 100% if you just make sure to get all the right answers by the due date!) It is annoying that there are 2 sets of midterms but they are evenly spaced out and are only an hour long. Doing the mandatory Chemistry Community questions on a weekly basis does get annoying at times and it feels forced when we have to ask questions, when sometimes I don't even know what to ask! But overall, Dr. Lavelle provides a plethora of resources that are very flexible for all students and he really does want all his students to succeed.