Most people feel relieved when they hear an exam is open-book, but not in Weiss's class. I genuinely do not understand how some students enjoyed this course with him. Without exaggeration, this was the worst class I have ever taken. No matter how many hours I studied, I never really knew how I did on the tests. Lectures aren’t recorded, and the modules are just slides with random, disconnected topics. The textbook doesn’t match what’s covered in lecture, and the discussion worksheets don’t prepare you for the exams at all. To be fair, I’ll give Weiss credit for being flexible and offering a diverse grading structure. Other than that, this is not a typical chemistry class, and I would not recommend it to anyone. I regret taking it with him.

The workload for this class is A LOT, but Paul and the TA Katie are extremely generous with the grading. Most of your grade isn't dependent on the tests so you can get the lowest score on the midterms and still scrape through with an A like I did.

The class itself is really research-based/heavy, and you become really research literate by the time the 10 weeks are up. Going to Paul's office hours are a must if you want to join a research lab, as he will give out recommendations left and right for the students who took his class.

Paul Weiss is a horrible professor, and I say this from the deepest place in my heart that I truly hope he never teaches another Chem 20B class ever again. It is clear from his lecturing style that he should remain behind a desk and continue to do research. His lectures consisted of slide shows that had bullet points with some important sentences, but mostly pictures of him with Nobel Prize winners. He would start on the topic at hand, then always ramble into tangents about a "funny" story of his old teaching days in Chem 20BH or an inventor he met in his free time. He claims that the homework, textbook readings, lectures, and discussion worksheets are "complementary to each other," but they are incompatible as the discussion worksheets were way behind the content we were "learning" in lecture, and the homework was so far ahead of the lecture content that I resorted to learning everything I had to know from the textbook and yet that still wasn't enough. When asked questions, he avoids giving a straightforward answer and is often quite patronizing. He kept saying he was preparing us for standardized tests in the future, like the MCAT, but this is general chemistry, where half the people taking it are engineering majors, who will not go on to take more chemistry or these tests he talks about and "prepares" us for. For the first midterm, we were blazing through topics that should have lasted us until the end of the quarter, and got so far that for the second midterm, we went outside of the scope of Chem 20B. If I wanted to take an organic chemistry class, I would have.

Furthermore, my TA was of no use when I asked him questions about the class's structure or the content that would be on the exams; he often said, 'I don't know' or 'I don't know why Paul Weiss does it like that.' Not only was Paul Weiss an inept lecturer, but he also asked the most mind-bending questions on exams that he expected us to know, when he never taught us that content. Although the exams were all open note, that is not an excuse to make the midterms 2 hours long and ask the most ridiculous questions that are all free response. Safe to say that Paul Weiss did NOT prepare us well for any of the exams, and I feel bad for his TAs and LAs who need to pick up the slack for his pathetic excuse of a review day. I would have much preferred to take a normal Chem 20B class where I wasn't constantly being given material from a previous Chem 20B Honors class that he taught in 2017. Lastly, Paul Weiss was so busy with his research that he would often leave town to attend forums and leave us with a sub which would have been a blessing except he left them a set of slides to go off of, which were just as useful as if he were to cancel the lecture all together.

Please, UCLA, never ever let him teach Chem 20B again. Instead, I think that the whole class would have preferred to take it in the fall with an actual qualified professor.

Ok this is somewhat incomplete seeing as I couldn't even complete his class. In full honesty, even though I dropped this class week 4, I still attended some of his lectures with my friends because this guy is definitely a character.

His class is basically all a bunch of different topics going on at the same time, and the expectation is that you learn all of it completely and effectively. What I mean is that all of the reading, the homework, the lectures, and the discussions were all disconnected from one another, but the midterms were comprehension based that combined every piece of material.

I would agree with the rest of the reviews that Weiss is kind of arrogant, however I really liked this about him. I would rather have an arrogant and engaging lecturer than someone who had no idea what they were talking about. He was pretty funny, and if you paid attention what he said didn't seem too crazy or outlandish. He just covered supplemental material during lecture, so it was pretty hard to make up. This made it pretty difficult because I had to miss an entire week of class due to personal reasons.

Anyway, the main complaints: homework was pretty time consuming considering that we wouldn't cover any of the content during lecture. Weiss was also really proud of the fact that he taught 20BH, the honors version of the class. As someone who took all of the honors physics 1 track, it made me laugh that he was always talking about how great that class was and how special they all were. I didn't feel affected by it, but it definitely could be bothersome to people. His lectures tended to go in places that didn't feel relevant but definitely were, so if you weren't paying attention it was harsh when it came time for midterms. The midterms were also held after lecture, so you had an extra time commitment which was kind of annoying.

pros: Weiss is entertaining as shit and if I wasn't graded in his class I would've loved it. The homework and discussion worksheets had higher weight in the class than the midterms, so if you messed up it was okay. Tests were completely open note, so you could've brought a lot of material to the test. I would say this class is somewhat comparable to an honors class, so if you're a chem major I would try and take Weiss because he's definitely a good contact. He promised basically everyone in the class research.

All in all, don't take chem 20B with Weiss if you just want a standardized chem class because it's a lot more than that. Just take 20BH if you want, or wait til you can get an easier prof.

Although almost every review has already stated this, this class is an extreme amount of work and isn't something to be taken lightly. When I originally heard of the amount of work in this class, I thought that I would be fine and wouldn't need to worry about it. However, this class will be a lot of work no matter what despite what the grade distribution might show. There's a lot of homework and classwork to be done in this class and there was more work than my other three classes combined. However, the way this class is structured makes it so as long as you put forth your best effort and a little more, you won't have to worry about your grade which is nice. Midterms and finals aren't worth a large portion of your grade and are forgiving due to the group phase. Also, midterms and finals are online and open internet/note but there's a reason why it is that way. The midterms and finals are extremely difficult and you need to do research to work through them a lot of the time so good luck. In my opinion it does help you as a researcher since it forces you to think critically and uses your resources. It's worth noting that this class overall is more like a research class since the professor really wants everyone to be in a lab after taking the class and he will help you. Because of this, you can see that in the homework assigned and the way the tests are structured. For homework, other than the textbook problems, there are scientific paper review assignments and a final project where you do research which is why this class feels more like a research than a general chemistry class. Although I highly struggled in this class, I managed to end with an A and do not regret taking this class at all.

Chem 20BH is a significant amount of work; on top of doing the weekly textbook assignments, there are also scientific literature assignments every other week and a LARGE research project that creeps a lot faster than you'd expect. That said, I feel like I learned a lot and Paul and the TA/LAs are all very very helpful and all want to help you succeed. Office hours are a huge help (attending at least one is mandatory for participation), and a great way to get into research. If you're aiming to get connected with professors, this class is definitely worth it because Paul will go out of his way to help you out with that. The grading scale is weighted less towards the tests, but there is a lot of extra credit available so as long as you do all the work, your grade should be very favorable.

This is the best class at UCLA. It is hard (honors), but well worth it. Paul takes students and turns them into scientists with labs, connections, and experience. After this class, you have a guaranteed lab, you'll be reading scientific articles, and you'll be attending seminars, meeting all the top scientists and professors at UCLA. Paul is very engaging in class, and often tells stories from his millions of miles of traveling and his interactions with hundreds of Nobel prize laureates