CHEM 30A
Organic Chemistry I: Structure and Reactivity
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 20B with grade of C- or better. First term of organic chemistry for Chemistry, Biochemistry, and engineering majors. Covalent bonding, shapes, stereochemistry, and acid/base properties of organic molecules. Properties, synthesis, and reactions of alkanes, cycloalkanes, alkenes, and alkynes. SN2, SN1, elimination, and radical reactions. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
1 of 1
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - Shuming consistently goes above and beyond for her students. I haven't had a single teacher or professor from elementary, middle, high school, or college as dedicated as her to teaching students. Her class is extremely tough-don't get me wrong, but she prepares students well for her exams. The homework is more-or-less free points, and it's very similar to what is on exams. She gives two practice exams which are fairly representative, along with additional problem sets. You can also get up to 2% extra credit, but you'll need it. Again, the exams are really hard. Most importantly, Dr. Chen herself does weekly review sessions in the evening, which contain even more practice and are highly useful. Her lectures are engaging, and very clear and useful. However, only buy the modeling kit-you get to use that on exams. Otherwise, the book is practically useless; just pirate it as you won't read much from it. Looking back after having taken Chem 30B with Merlic, her class really does give students the fundamentals to succeed in future courses. Her tests were definitely hard; I'd say that her synthesis problems were even harder than the ones I had to do in 30B, with over a dozen of steps compared to 5-6 max in 30B.
Spring 2019 - Shuming consistently goes above and beyond for her students. I haven't had a single teacher or professor from elementary, middle, high school, or college as dedicated as her to teaching students. Her class is extremely tough-don't get me wrong, but she prepares students well for her exams. The homework is more-or-less free points, and it's very similar to what is on exams. She gives two practice exams which are fairly representative, along with additional problem sets. You can also get up to 2% extra credit, but you'll need it. Again, the exams are really hard. Most importantly, Dr. Chen herself does weekly review sessions in the evening, which contain even more practice and are highly useful. Her lectures are engaging, and very clear and useful. However, only buy the modeling kit-you get to use that on exams. Otherwise, the book is practically useless; just pirate it as you won't read much from it. Looking back after having taken Chem 30B with Merlic, her class really does give students the fundamentals to succeed in future courses. Her tests were definitely hard; I'd say that her synthesis problems were even harder than the ones I had to do in 30B, with over a dozen of steps compared to 5-6 max in 30B.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Professor Reilly is the best professor I've had during my time at UCLA. If you have the opportunity to take this class with her, I would 100% recommend it. I would take her class again in a heartbeat. She really cares about her students and has been very accommodating during the pandemic. She holds office hours after class and during the weekend. We had 3 different types of assessment -- 5 Take-Home Assessments, 5 In-Class Assessments, 6 BACON. Take-Home Assessments were completion and she held workshops after they were due to go over each problem. In-Class Assessments were completed in 1 hour during class time. These were pretty challenging, but as I adapted to her testing/teaching method, it became easier over time. BACON worked to integrate our course materials with real-life, and although these were not for completion, they were very easy and took only 20 minutes. She also shows us pictures of her dog Kasey, who is absolutely adorable, during lecture. She gave numerous extra credit assignments including completing evaluations and memes/drawing.
Fall 2020 - Professor Reilly is the best professor I've had during my time at UCLA. If you have the opportunity to take this class with her, I would 100% recommend it. I would take her class again in a heartbeat. She really cares about her students and has been very accommodating during the pandemic. She holds office hours after class and during the weekend. We had 3 different types of assessment -- 5 Take-Home Assessments, 5 In-Class Assessments, 6 BACON. Take-Home Assessments were completion and she held workshops after they were due to go over each problem. In-Class Assessments were completed in 1 hour during class time. These were pretty challenging, but as I adapted to her testing/teaching method, it became easier over time. BACON worked to integrate our course materials with real-life, and although these were not for completion, they were very easy and took only 20 minutes. She also shows us pictures of her dog Kasey, who is absolutely adorable, during lecture. She gave numerous extra credit assignments including completing evaluations and memes/drawing.
1 of 1
