Do not take this class <3

Here's the thing. Chem 14BE is supposed to be a class that is more heavily focused on participation and interaction with your classmates. I took 14AE the quarter prior and absolutely loved it. HOWEVER, this class is not that. Professor Courey, while a genuinely nice guy, failed the majority of students as a teacher.

His lectures are easy to understand, his examples are simple and that sets your expectations. You would think 2 hour-long Pearson homeworks and weekly online quizzes alongside 3-4 hours dedicated each week to solving lab worksheets would give you an idea of what to expect on the final. NO. Twenty-five free-response calculation questions and a set of 12 CCLE type questions over a 3 hour period. I have never been screwed by a professor this hard in my 4 years at UCLA.

Compared to what I've heard about 14B, this class seems to dish out some hard tests and some assignments which I personally found very time-consuming and unnecessary. Such assignments were the PRWAs which are basically three essays that you have to write based off chemistry topics where your grade depends on whether or not your peers liked the essay (which some people are really harsh about). The final was a complete disaster as you may have read in the other reviews. Supposedly, this class was "enhanced", as another review said, so it's supposed to help people with weak chemistry backgrounds right? Wrong. You're better off taking 14B in short.

This class was reasonable both in workload and difficulty throughout the quarter up until the absolutely brutal final that was borderline cruel. It was not only incredibly difficult but much too long compared to any of his exams he gave all quarter (apparently this version had been shorted per the advise of out TA's !!). Probably about half the class didn't finish it and if anyone did, they felt really rushed. I had an A the entire quarter and after the final exam results came out I fell nearly 10%. The curve that he offered only really benefited those who did very well on the exam already, not helping anyone really impacted by the sheer length of the test and lost around 20+ points for questions answered. He also really did not care that the CCLE portion of the exam had technical issues for a few students, offering no answers on piazza to their concerns. For a pilot class that was supposed to be ENHANCED for students who needed a more thorough approach to learning general chemistry, he is unforgiving.

I am currently taking him right now. He is yet another fantastic professor. He knows his shit WELL. He has a great sense of humor and the midterms are fair. There are no trick questions or anything. His office hours are VERY helpful too.

3 midterms 1 final (3rd midterm is given at the same time as the final)

2 homework assignments
2 articles

I LOVE YOU ALBERT COUREY!!!! After a rough experience in Chem 14A with the legendary but brain-splitting Lavelle, I made it a priority to snag one of the spots in Courey's single 14B lecture. This class is hard, full-stop (most of the gen-chem series is hard in its own way!). There's just generally a lot of information to absorb and this class in particular I felt like got really dense in the second half of the quarter. But Courey is super helpful and clearly wants his students to succeed.
The flipped classroom format was actually really helpful for me, and the more intimate group setting of discussion section with the LA's was super integral to my success in the course. DO NOT miss a single discussion. They are essential to understanding and completing the worksheets, which are formatted exactly like the tests (midterm and final) and are thus integral to doing well in the course. Participate as much as possible, but don't stress out about it. Courey offers plenty of opportunities for extra credit.
Overall, to do well in the course, I would say you need to fully understand the worksheets and powerpoints, do all your assignments on time, and take a little bit of time each week to review the previous week's topic and possible connect it to the current week's topic. Especially because the class is formatted in a weekly worksheet schedule (usually these worksheets are on new topics each week) it can be easy to compartmentalize and forget what you learned in favor of focusing on the new topic, which is bad once you get into the content-dense second half of the quarter. If you can just take 10-20 mins each week to review the previous week's topic and do a few practice problems you won't be thrown for a loop when you're studying for the final and don't remember what the frick statistical entropy is.
OVERALL, i highly recommend our good man Albert. live love Courey

Professor Courey was, without doubt, the best professor I have had during my time here at UCLA. He is very passionate about teaching, and it shows when he lectures.

He posts the PowerPoints for lectures ahead of time, and there is a quiz that corresponds with almost each PowerPoint. You have unlimited attempts on these quizzes, and to encourage you from guessing your way through these quizzes, he awards you a point of extra credit for each quiz that you get a 9/10 or higher on in under 2 attempts.

His first midterm was pretty hard, and time was extremely limited. However, he realized this, and allowed us to gain back some of the points we missed. Also, he made the second midterm significantly easier, and I think it was because of the feedback he received on the first midterm.

The final was not super easy, but he was very understanding of the circumstances, considering it was during the whole coronavirus frenzy. He made it optional, but if you were to take it, you had ample time to do it. In addition, he allowed us to collaborate on it, and gave us the opportunity to earn 10 points extra credit on it.

We had weekly homework due, but these were graded on effort, and we would go over some of the problems with an LA in our discussion, which clarified the concepts well.

Overall, Professor Courey is a gem, and I would definitely take a class with him if I could!

there’s pros and cons to this class so ill just list them out:

pros:
- all lectures are recorded; there’s clicker questions during lecture however but you only need to complete 70% of them and they’re only based on participation. if you miss them there’s a way to make up those points every week.
- midterms were pretty easy and straightforward and he gives you two hours to complete them. use discussion worksheets, la workshops, lecture slides, and the practice midterms to study for this. there’s also a group portion of the midterm which can help raise your score.
- students were given 1% extra credit for filling out some surveys which really helped in the end
- overall courey is a really caring professor and very helpful during OH and will listen to student concerns if they’re brought up to him

cons:
- midterms had to be taken at a specific time (for us it was 7-9 pm)
- we had 3 prwa assignments (peer review writing assignments) where we basically had to write short essays on a given chemistry topic. writing these wasn’t too terrible but the professor doesn’t grade these your peers do and then you get graded on how well you graded someone else. i personally found these assignments very tedious and time consuming.
- discussion is 2 hours long and if you didn’t complete the discussion worksheet in section you have to meet with your group outside of section to complete it. they were mostly based on concepts we learned in class but some of these were just so long.
- workload for this class is very high compared to lavelles class. we have ptl quizzes that require you to do a bunch of reading review ppts and watch videos before taking them (theyre not timed and you get three attempts on them so they’re not as bad as they sound) i got away with not doing the reading in this class we also have three cmc quizzes that were sometimes difficult because a lot of it consisted of true/false questions

content wise the course is definitely difficult especially if you hate thermodynamics like I did. but courey did a really good job at doing the best he could at helping us understand the material and providing a lot of resources to study. The final did screw me over very badly but he did end up curving it and curved the class slightly at the end so it ended up working out.
This class is definitely a lot more work than lavelles class but I do think courey is a lot more lenient with grading and less weight is put on our assessments but do not take this class just because you think it’ll be easier because it was definitely not easy will guarantee make you cry once a week.

Professor Courey is incredible. If given the chance do not pass up taking 153B with him. He gives you everything you need to succeed. Very available through office hours and will often send reminders out to make sure people stay on track.

I didn't think the material of this class was particularly interesting past the first midterm (really liked the DNA topology section) and the material for the final was definitely a struggle to get through because I found it very boring. That said, the finals are perfectly and doable if you go through the lectures and do the practice tests. Our average for the 1st midterm was kind of low at a 66% but midterm 2's average was probably much higher. I scored in the A range for both midterms by just doing the practice tests, going through the lectures, and doing some problem set questions here and there.

To get the A (which is tougher than you think because there are no curves in this class) you really have to nail the quizzes and homework because that's 20% of your grade that you can easily, easily miss by being lazy on the homework and quizzes. You do get to drop 2 quizzes though so that's a nice bonus. Also I strongly recommend doing all of the cold call discussions because you will often be able to squeak by without saying anything so it is easy participation points.

Overall, Professor Courey is an amazing professor. Take 153B with him.

I love professor Courey! He is just an amazing person and a caring person. He gives a lot of extra credit so do them all. His exams are all from the slides and his problem sets. He does not post the answers to the problem sets, so you have to ask him during office hours (which are extremely helpful for this class since some of the questions from the problem sets will be on the exam so make sure you have the right answers). Discussion sections are also important as the worksheets help prepare for the exam (answers for those are not also posted so go). There are journal paper discussions (2 of them) and attendance is mandatory (you get points for going). His exams also contain questions from the journal articles so make sure you understand them. He is just awesome and will make you love the class. If you ever get the chance, you should take him.