If you're checking Felker's reviews, you're probably stuck with him. It's definitely the hardest class I've ever taken, but it's doable if you have people to study with and you work really hard. Please check the review written on Dec. 18th, 2020. It sums up most of the class really well. Here's my notes:

Do all of the homework until you get it right. The homework will only work against you in the grading scale.

Go to all review sessions you can get your hands on (your TA, other TAs, office hours before tests, TBP sessions). Do the test bank finals and review all of the questions from OWL.

The grade is on a curve centered at a low B. This means that your total points at the end of the course are compared with everyone else in your lecture, which makes the environment sort of competitive. It also makes it significantly more difficult to succeed. I studied much more than I usually would for this class to try to get a B given that I barely pulled a D on one midterm and a C on the other. Definitely study for them; you'll need it.

The lectures are also very unrelated to the material you'll be tested on. Some people never watched them. They also went overtime by probably 7 hours, and we got lectures both on Thanksgiving and on Veterans Day to finish the material.

Overall, I know Felker's class is intimidating. But you'll push through it, gain new study habits, and find a community through it. Study hard, and good luck!

you can tell felker’s a smart guy and so he goes way overboard in teaching content considering this is mostly a freshman class.

with an IB HL chem with a minimum of a 6 you’d technically be able to use credits to skip this class but you should take it because you’ll learn a lot of in depth stuff - just don’t take this prof.

lectures are so dense with content but it’s so much theory and almost all of the tests are completely quantitative, with minimal explanations and drawings. DO OWL QUESTIONS !!!! — some of the test questions follow the exact format of the questions and it tests you on almost all the content you need to know.

The textbook is bad and just full of so many words so it’s so hard to actually sift through for the important info - if you have to take felker make sure to make formula sheets for exams.

He’s actually nice to communicate with and when there were problems with my midterms he was really nice in helping me sort it out - tests online are open note as well.

the organic chemistry tutor will carry you through this class and i stopped watching the lectures after the quantum mechanics chapters.

He’ll mention a lot of equations that you can’t even technically solve yourself so it’ll get confusing but the ones on OWL are the ones you need to know !!

If you have an option take someone else but if you don’t (like i didn’t) then supplement the textbook with youtube videos. if you didn’t take IB chem/ have no chem background (idk about AP sorry) then you might want to watch the lectures but if you took IB then some parts might not be so bad

We were required to pay for access to online homework software called OWL (the homework on it counted for 20% of our final grade) which came with our textbook (I believe this was $70). There were 2 midterms, weighted at 20% each, and a final weighted at 35%. The remaining 5% of our grade came from discussion section participation.
His lectures were more "big picture". He went over theory and equations and occasionally gave examples of how to apply them. I felt he went quite fast and I had to constantly rewind, pause, and slow them down (They were all prerecorded). Because of this, I usually took x2 - x3 the length of the lecture to complete each lecture. I didn't find him very engaging, but at least he wasn't monotone. Because he fell behind this quarter, he often went overtime and posted lectures on holidays. When recording, he too often attempted to change the window he was sharing but didn't, and then proceeded to talk about something we couldn't see. Sometimes he realized he didn't share the window he was explaining and corrected the mistake, sometimes he didn't. His lecture notes were slides and LaTeX documents, except around the last 2 or 3 weeks where they were illegible, handwritten and scanned notes (he did acknowledge it at one point and I believe he said it was because he didn't have time to type them up). He never held live sessions, so office hours was the only way to talk to him live.
The homework was more "small picture". Here we applied the relationships and equations taught in class. Because OWL was based on the textbook it came with and the lectures didn't perfectly line up with the textbook, there was frequently material on the homework that wasn't taught in class. Because of the way OWL works (get a question wrong and it'll *usually* show you how to do it, up to a limited number of attempts), this didn't prevent me from finishing the homework, but it was annoying. The answers the homework software gave us were sometimes unhelpful and sometimes not there, period (it would just say "wrong" with no explanation). Expect to spend an annoying amount of time on homework even if you understood the corresponding lectures.
Discussion section started with a brief summary of relevant equations followed by a worksheet (which was just questions from the textbook, I believe) that we completed in breakout rooms. Each breakout room had a TA or LA in it in case we had questions. I can imagine that most breakout rooms usually didn't have much engagement. Submitting whatever work you did on the worksheet got you full participation points. Answers were posted and they were occasionally wrong.
The test questions were very close to the questions on OWL (make sure you understand the questions!), but they usually went further and required that we apply some knowledge of theory. The final was cumulative but the content was weighted towards what we learned after midterm 2. The midterms were both 1 hour and 15 minutes long (which felt like very little time to me) and the final was 2 hours and 15 minutes (which felt more reasonable than the midterms, though I suppose that was because I was better prepared). Answers to only some of the midterm questions were posted (as far as I knew). Also, expect a good bit of math on the midterms.
He was very accommodating.
Overall, take someone else if you can. If you really like chemistry and that information just sticks to you like glue, I imagine you'll do well. If you have a surface level interest in chemistry and/or you're taking this class as a GE, expect some struggling. If you are taking him, when you get your test grades back, make sure to go over your test and figure out what you did right and wrong. Same for discussion worksheets.

There were a combination of factors that led to this class being notoriously difficult. For one, the class is asynchronous and Felker's lectures are pre-recorded. Weekly discussion sections are just for students to solve discussion worksheets in silence; however, participation grade is based on submission of the worksheets, so students don't even need to attend. The answer keys for the worksheets are often incorrect and contradicting between TAs too, so they don't help much. The lectures frequently went over time by 10-15 minutes, and yet Felker managed to stay behind schedule throughout the quarter. (He posted a lecture on Thanksgiving, too.) His lecture materials started out decent, but they then became handwritten notes which were terribly difficult to read and understand. Lectures were extremely conceptual, but exams computational. The grading breakdown is 5% discussion worksheets, 20% OWL problem sets, 20% x 2 midterms and a 35% final exam. OWL homework problems are computational and their answer explanations are extremely helpful, so study those carefully in preparation for tests in conjunction with bruintestbank exams. Practice your problem solving speed, because his exams have a lot of time-pressure. Overall, the class material wasn't that bad; it was very physical chemistry-oriented and actually somewhat interesting to me, but I would not recommend taking this class with Felker.

Avoid Felker
- his lectures are pretty bad because he fills them with meaningless information and his writing is just flat out messy/hard to understand
- I recommend reading the book but even then there is a lot of meaningless information. what really helps is watching organic chemistry tutor videos on the subjects
- your best resource are the TA's
- expect the class curve to help you if you are doing poorly but not if you are doing well. he likes the bell curve so he will try to keep it that way
- Felker isn't the best with technology
- tests are not too bad if you know the info but there can be poorly worded questions

Don’t take this class unless you have to. He is a clearly a knowledgeable guy but his lectures r very conceptual and boring as hell. His slides slowly got worse as time went in as they went from long paragraph in slides to notes he has written down. I learned mostly through the textbook because I could not sit through his lectures. The midterms and exams are very math based so the OWL homework and the discussion worksheets are your best friends in this class. My AP Chem class was also not the hottest so I came in here knowing not a lot and I struggled a lot. Honestly only passed because of the curve.

**Taken virtually during COVID

First off- this class is not going to be easy no matter who you take it with. However, I would try to take it from someone else if at all possible. This is definitely a weeder course- I came in thinking I loved chemistry and was a chem major. I am coming out of it as a Polisci and Sociology major who never wants to take another chemistry class. Felker used lecture slides that were sometimes typed and sometimes written (you can barely understand his written notes since they're messy asf). His lectures were asynchronous and often went over the scheduled time. They were purely theoretical and rarely to never included any mathematical instruction. Participation in discussion sections were a tiny percent of our grade, then there was obviously the final, two midterms and OWL- the program used for homework. You have 6 attempts on a certain type of questions (usually between 15-30 every week and a half ish) that cover a chapter at a time. You have to basically teach yourself the math on these questions from the textbook. Having a groupme, test banks, etc; was really helpful for this hell of a class. While Felker is not a great teacher and not very communicative, he was typically pretty understanding about pushing back OWL deadlines based on content covered and scaling grades to a B being the most common. I switched to P/NP after getting a 27 on my second midterm and somehow still passed (I did not do well on the final). Basically you could survive in this class, but it is a traumatic experience. Just be prepared for it to be rough.

Worst professor I have ever had if not teacher out of all my years in schooling. He really made my first quarter at UCLA the most miserable it could possibly be. Do yourself a favor and avoid this man at all costs.

If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you had to enroll in this class, so I'll just give my advice. First of all, I would say this class ends up being a lot of self-study and the textbook (or Youtube) is your best friend. If you have zero chemistry background, this class is already going to be rough, and Felker does not necessarily make this easier. He skims over the first two introductory chapters in about a week or two, so if you can, I would try to learn the basics of chemistry (atoms, proton/neutrons/electrons and their counts for elements, isotopes, stoichiometry, etc.) before the class if possible. As for my general advice, focus on the end of chapter problems and the OWL homework for studying, as his tests closely mimic these questions the most. As many other students have said, his lectures are very conceptual while exams have little concepts and more math, structure drawing, etc., so knowing the OWL problems well will only benefit you in the long run. In terms of learning the content, I wholeheartedly recommend you read the textbook. It's explanations can be sometimes extreme and it gives a lot of formulas you don't necessarily need as it tends to give lengthy proofs for the formulas that you do actually need, but when it gets to the useful content, I found it to be very good. I also found that reading the textbook before lectures was EXTREMELY helpful, as what he was saying actually made some sense as compared to when I watched his lectures before reading because he sort of assumes you know what he's talking about even when you shouldn't. However, if you truly are pressed for time, I say pick the textbook over his lectures, but if you can, I recommend using his lectures to supplement the textbook (which sounds backwards, but yeah.) I usually took notes on the textbook and then added to them when watching his lectures when applicable. However, be on the lookout for when he skips material, as he did skip over a few sections in the book and you only would know if you watched the lectures or if other students told you. Also, sometimes he goes on tangents about somewhat unrelated material in lectures and says it's "fair game" for the test, but I do not believe this happened, at least for my section. I also found that completing the OWL problems as I went through the textbook chapter to be very helpful, as it functioned as a sort of on-the-go practice that you don't get from lectures. Also, as some other people said, if you have difficulty understanding the textbook, there are loads of videos on Youtube (the most popular among us being ones from Organic Chemistry Tutor) that teach the topics that we learn in class.
When studying for exams, I again found OWL to be the most helpful, as sometimes he copies questions directly from OWL, or the topics/math being tested is very similar to the problems found on OWL. If you can find past exams, use those too. Also, since his tests are open note, I HIGHLY recommend making a formula sheet/cheat sheet to use on the exam where all the components of formulas are labeled and the most important concepts (like different o-chem structures or how atomic/molecular electron configs are written). This saved me loads of time on exams, which is important as he makes the times very short, and creating them functioned as a great way for me to study the material further. Overall, his tests seem to combine minimal conceptual knowledge with math, unless he's asking you to draw graphs, molecule structures, write electron configurations, etc. Therefore my overall ranking of study material would be like (1) OWL, (2) Formula sheet material/most important material from your notes (3) Past Exams (4) Discussion Questions, (5) Other end of chapter questions (be aware that OWL and the weekly discussions include most of the important ones, though).
The class certainly isn't easy, and it's a lot more work than most expect from their first college class, but it is certainly manageable with the textbook, YouTube, and your peers available to help you. Also, usually some of the TA's are extra nice, so you can always email them for assistance too. Good luck!

He gives clear explanation on concepts that make them easy to understand. Unfortunately, they have relatively nothing to with the mathematical tests. The tests are mainly hard because of time constraints because the tests are online I suppose, but they are extremely hard to prepare for. The worst part of the class is the stress because it is hard to figure out one's grade relative to the curve.