Professor
Paul Weiss
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - Paul Weiss is one of the worst teachers I have ever had in my entire life. This man has no regard for how well his students actually learn. If there are other options for teachers in this class, take them. If you have the flexibility to wait a quarter and take it with a different teacher, do it. DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS. During the class I heavily relied on my friend who had taken 20B a quarter before with a different professor. About halfway through the quarter we reached a point where she could no longer help me because we were learning stuff that wasn't even apart of regular 20B content. The entirety of that sentence alone should be a red flag enough. But to actually get in to Paul's teaching style, the bottom line is he doesn't actually teach. Each class I would try to pay attention and learn the content, yet each time probably 5 minutes in we reached the inevitable point where he would go on a rant about some medical device that his friend created or about his friend that he's about to go visit that has a noble prize or their own lab or is doing this great research. While normally I can appreciate a little bit of getting sidetracked, as it can make the content more interesting, his getting sidetracked has the exact opposite effect. He would go on for so long about topics that have nothing to do with the class it gave no chance for us to actually learn anything. Additionally, his lectures consisted of a series of slides, each composed of a long bulleted list of topics. He would proceed to "explain" the topics, but most of the explaining was what I described before, bragging about his cool friends and his personal life, or medical things that the majority of the class had no interest in knowing, or need to ever know. Because of that I stopped going to lectures a few weeks in. A week before the midterm I decided to go and see if we would actually learn any content (spoiler alert: we didn't), and I counted how many students were actually present in class. Out of the at least 120 students taking the course, 40 were present. That just goes to show how bad of a lecturer he really is. Now you may be wondering about homework and tests and the rest of the course. Surprise, they're just as bad. Each week he would assign homework that would take an insane amount of time, that also had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE. Several times he stated that the lectures, homework, and readings were "complementary." They are anything but that. Put together they made no sense and made it impossible to actually know what content we needed to know for the exams. While both the midterms and the final were all open note, it doesn't matter. The tests would ask the most convoluted questions that he said would test our intuition. Shocker, I don't have the same intuition as someone who has been studying chemistry their entire life, and have only ever taken two other chemistry courses. Also, don't expect your TA to be of any assistance during this class either. In my discussion of at least 20 people, 4 of us regularly attended. This is because any time we asked a question about the test, or about the grading of the test, the reply was "I don't know, you would have to ask Paul." All in all, please do not take his class, it's not worth the extreme headache and time wasted. I wish I had just waited a quarter to take it with a different professor.
Spring 2025 - Paul Weiss is one of the worst teachers I have ever had in my entire life. This man has no regard for how well his students actually learn. If there are other options for teachers in this class, take them. If you have the flexibility to wait a quarter and take it with a different teacher, do it. DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS. During the class I heavily relied on my friend who had taken 20B a quarter before with a different professor. About halfway through the quarter we reached a point where she could no longer help me because we were learning stuff that wasn't even apart of regular 20B content. The entirety of that sentence alone should be a red flag enough. But to actually get in to Paul's teaching style, the bottom line is he doesn't actually teach. Each class I would try to pay attention and learn the content, yet each time probably 5 minutes in we reached the inevitable point where he would go on a rant about some medical device that his friend created or about his friend that he's about to go visit that has a noble prize or their own lab or is doing this great research. While normally I can appreciate a little bit of getting sidetracked, as it can make the content more interesting, his getting sidetracked has the exact opposite effect. He would go on for so long about topics that have nothing to do with the class it gave no chance for us to actually learn anything. Additionally, his lectures consisted of a series of slides, each composed of a long bulleted list of topics. He would proceed to "explain" the topics, but most of the explaining was what I described before, bragging about his cool friends and his personal life, or medical things that the majority of the class had no interest in knowing, or need to ever know. Because of that I stopped going to lectures a few weeks in. A week before the midterm I decided to go and see if we would actually learn any content (spoiler alert: we didn't), and I counted how many students were actually present in class. Out of the at least 120 students taking the course, 40 were present. That just goes to show how bad of a lecturer he really is. Now you may be wondering about homework and tests and the rest of the course. Surprise, they're just as bad. Each week he would assign homework that would take an insane amount of time, that also had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE. Several times he stated that the lectures, homework, and readings were "complementary." They are anything but that. Put together they made no sense and made it impossible to actually know what content we needed to know for the exams. While both the midterms and the final were all open note, it doesn't matter. The tests would ask the most convoluted questions that he said would test our intuition. Shocker, I don't have the same intuition as someone who has been studying chemistry their entire life, and have only ever taken two other chemistry courses. Also, don't expect your TA to be of any assistance during this class either. In my discussion of at least 20 people, 4 of us regularly attended. This is because any time we asked a question about the test, or about the grading of the test, the reply was "I don't know, you would have to ask Paul." All in all, please do not take his class, it's not worth the extreme headache and time wasted. I wish I had just waited a quarter to take it with a different professor.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Weiss is super self-absorbed. He spends most of the class bragging about himself and his famous friends. He also likes to give snippets of advice that he thinks are super helpful but are usually just self-aggrandizing anecdotes that don't have practical applications to students' lives. It's not hard to do well in this class, but it is hard to sit through listening to him at lectures.
Winter 2019 - Weiss is super self-absorbed. He spends most of the class bragging about himself and his famous friends. He also likes to give snippets of advice that he thinks are super helpful but are usually just self-aggrandizing anecdotes that don't have practical applications to students' lives. It's not hard to do well in this class, but it is hard to sit through listening to him at lectures.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Paul is definitely a GREAT professor for Chem 20BH! First of all, I believe all of you who are viewing this page must have noticed the difference between Paul's rating for Chem 20B and Chem 20BH. This arises from the different nature of these two: If you just want to learn some chemistry and pass 20B(H) as easily as possible, stay away from Paul's class; if you want to really learn SCIENCE, including chemistry and involving all aspects of science (research skills, analytic skills, etc.), you can hardly find a better professor than Paul. Second, I acknowledge that the workload is heavy, but it is well manageable. In the quarter I took this Paul's class (winter quarter of my first year ---- as most of you who will take this course will most probably take at this time of the year), I took 5 courses including 2 maths and a cluster and I survived. Other comments have talked about what to expect, and they are all precise. However, if you are very academic, you will definitely handle all this. Last but not least, Paul is pretty chill. Just think about how many 60-year-old professor would like their students to call them by their first name instead of Prof. X or Dr. X. His class is extremely interesting, where Paul would occasionally tell jokes and personal experience. And again, if you are a very science guy and want to get into a lab, Paul is extremely helpful. He knows who to turn to regarding every aspect of chemistry or materials science if he can't answer himself. The only minor problem with this course is that the exams are very comprehensive. As other comments have said, many of the materials are complementary, which results in a heavy workload. It will be great if you command them all, but since most of us can't, you should be wise at telling the most important points from others (as I did). Other than that, Paul's course is very amazing.
Winter 2019 - Paul is definitely a GREAT professor for Chem 20BH! First of all, I believe all of you who are viewing this page must have noticed the difference between Paul's rating for Chem 20B and Chem 20BH. This arises from the different nature of these two: If you just want to learn some chemistry and pass 20B(H) as easily as possible, stay away from Paul's class; if you want to really learn SCIENCE, including chemistry and involving all aspects of science (research skills, analytic skills, etc.), you can hardly find a better professor than Paul. Second, I acknowledge that the workload is heavy, but it is well manageable. In the quarter I took this Paul's class (winter quarter of my first year ---- as most of you who will take this course will most probably take at this time of the year), I took 5 courses including 2 maths and a cluster and I survived. Other comments have talked about what to expect, and they are all precise. However, if you are very academic, you will definitely handle all this. Last but not least, Paul is pretty chill. Just think about how many 60-year-old professor would like their students to call them by their first name instead of Prof. X or Dr. X. His class is extremely interesting, where Paul would occasionally tell jokes and personal experience. And again, if you are a very science guy and want to get into a lab, Paul is extremely helpful. He knows who to turn to regarding every aspect of chemistry or materials science if he can't answer himself. The only minor problem with this course is that the exams are very comprehensive. As other comments have said, many of the materials are complementary, which results in a heavy workload. It will be great if you command them all, but since most of us can't, you should be wise at telling the most important points from others (as I did). Other than that, Paul's course is very amazing.
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