I personally do not like chem at all, so this class was difficult for me. Either I'm not a good test taker or the material is not sticking for me. I did not take AP chem during high school and only took it for one year so I did not have a great background, but this was a struggle for me. He offers a lot of points and step up review sessions, but I still performed poorly on his tests.

Chem 14B is probably the hardest class I've taken so far, but Lavelle is a good professor who offers a ton of resources. His lectures are mainly focused on derivations, which can be boring, but the sheer number of out of class resources make the class material learnable. I personally loved the Step Up sessions and learned how to solve most problems there. His tests are really hard. They are all multiple choice with options a through f (none of the above is the answer sometimes) and will have you questioning everything you thought you knew. Each midterm is worth about 16% of your grade and the final is about 32%. The other about 40% is easy points from discussion participation and homework (which has unlimited attempts). Biggest advice is to do the textbook problems and go to as many LA led learning session as possible. Thermodynamics is really hard and the class is overall pretty time consuming if you want to do well, but Lavelle is a good professor who cares a lot about his students.

Lavelle gives an abundance of resources. There are always TA or UA sessions that you can attend if you feel behind. However, he is a little unclear in the lectures and he often goes off on tangents. 14b is a lot less fun than 14a because it is less conceptual and just a ton of calculations. Overall, Lavelle is a solid teacher to take this class with.

not the most engaging lecturer, but he has so many office hours, worksheets, TA office hours, and outside help that an A is definitely achievable if you put in the time to use his resources. His exams were a bit tougher than I expected, but if you do the textbook homework (which is optional) you can recognize some of the questions and how to approach them.

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.

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!!!!

The class isn't too hard as long as you dedicate time to doing a lot of independent practice and studying. Attendance is required for discussion, but not lecture, and lectures are recorded. Discussion sections are helpful for expanding on concepts in lecture and doing practice problems. Overall the class was manageable, just do the textbook readings and practice problems he recommends!

This class consists of two midterm exams, one final exam, weekly homeworks, attendance at discussion sections, and participation in the online chemistry forum. The tests are not overly difficult, and the participation based assignments give you a good amount of buffer in your grade.

Lavelle's lectures are very clear, and he never puts anything on exams that was not explicitly covered in class. The exams are often very similar to the textbook problems, so students who do all the weekly problems can succeed easily. Additionally, the UA sessions offer great support to students who need extra help.

This was a great class and I recommend taking it with Lavelle!

Lavelle isn't a great lecturer. He practically whispers and anyone can hardly hear anything he is saying. Additionally, Lavelle spends too much time discussing things that are irrelevant to the objectives we need to master for the tests. His tests were not that hard. He pulls test material from the textbooks but I couldn't do well on them most of the time because he is such a bad lecturer and I had to teach myself everything. I will say that he is a sweetheart and offers many resources to help students but the execution in lectures is just not there and you will find yourself teaching yourself the material.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.

TAKE 14BL SIMULTANEOUSLY IF POSSIBLE
If you need to take the Lab take them at the same time. I wish I had. I just forgot everything I learned in B for BL, but it would've been helpful to just two-for-one study, The material is the same.