A lot of the reviews on here are coming off of a long, difficult final that students were not able to finish which negatively impacted grades. So, take these reviews with a grain of salt as Courey really is a fair, great professor that truly cares about his students.
Other than the final, this class is manageable. After taking Chem 14A with Lavelle during the fall quarter, I wanted nothing more than to take a chem class with a different professor. In terms of lectures, Courey was very clear and a really good lecturer. His slides are very comprehensive, so even if you miss something in the lecture, the slides fill in all of the blanks. They also make reading the textbook pretty unnecessary in my opinion (which is totally different than Lavelle's class in which I read every chapter of the textbook and took notes in order to understand concepts).
The workload of this course is honestly heavy, especially compared to what I did in 14A with Lavelle. There are weekly, group discussion worksheets, 3 peer-reviewed essays (hated these, your peers are not nice graders lol), weekly homework, 1-3 per week pre-class quizzes (multiple attempts), 3 concept mastery quizzes (single attempt), 2 midterms, and a final.
Ultimately, this class is more work than Lavelle's class, but if you put in the time, you can do well. The grading is FAR MORE FORGIVING than what I experienced in 14A. And, even though the material is harder, Courey does his best to make it understandable.
This was the first time Courey taught 14BE, so I think he deserves a break. His midterms and quizzes were extremely fair if you studied. His final was pretty bad, but it was manageable, especially after the curve he offered. I would still recommend this class over Lavelle's!

Let me lead with, this class was hard. The content is simply challenging and confusing. I went through the class fearing lecture, but it got better every day. Even though the class was hard, it's fun and it is interesting. Courey sometimes goes too fast and sometimes goes too slow, but he very clearly cares about the students understanding material. I would sometimes stay with him after class and ask him questions, and he made an effort to learn people's names so he can address them with their names. You can obviously tell he is very knowledgeable, but sometimes it takes asking questions and outside-of-class work to actually get what he's saying. You will definitely have to put in work for this class-- there's no way you can get by without putting in work. But as long as you do put in the work, there's no way you won't pass. Getting an A was def hard-- I was 0.1% higher than the minimum you need for an A at the end of the quarter, but I got a 98% on the final and that got me a 95% in the class. So, my point is, you can most definitely do very well on the exams (which will be hard), but you have to study. The tests are not misleading-- they are very, very fair. Courey is a very very nice ol' man.

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Despite all of the negative reviews below, I thought that Chem 14BE was one of the better classes I have taken at UCLA. The course logistics are very similar to Chem 14AE: there are 3 quizzes, two midterms, and one final. The midterms have an individual and group portion and you have two hours to complete the individual portion. The final worth 23% of the overall grade and is solely based on individual effort. The midterms were pretty easy if you attended LA workshops or understood the homework. I do agree with the reviews below that the final was tough and long. However, Dr. Courey fully acknowledged the length of the final was unreasonable and curved the final as well as the overall class. Dr. Courey took our grade on the final out of 100 and divided by 0.88. I scored an overall 76% on the final and the curve brought it up to an 88%. He also adjusted the grading scale so that a 91 was an A as opposed to a 93 as stated in the syllabus. Overall, I think Dr. Courey was a very clear professor and his slides were very helpful for studying. If given the opportunity, I would 100% take Dr. Courey for chemistry over Lavelle or Scerri!

I think a lot of my peers that reviewed this course took to Bruinwalk to vent their frustrations after the final, which would explain Professor Courey's low average rating for the class. However, I think that's very unfair; I also felt that the final was very difficult, but students had given him very little time to both grade and react to exams before dragging his name through the mud.

In regards to the class itself, I found it to have a pretty big workload, but all of the group and writing assignments were very helpful for exams. For the most part, I felt that the peer grading of writing assignments was generally pretty fair. There were some graders that definitely missed the mark, but this was not worse than LS 23L peer grading. Midterms 1 and 2 were fine, and the time limit was reasonable. The final was very difficult in that it was too long and not enough time was given. However, Professor Courey divided all exam scores by 0.88 (some students complained that this benefited those who scored higher much more, but in reality, the difference in score-boosting was pretty marginal), lowered the thresholds for all grades (an A became a 91%), and provided 1% of extra credit (from surveys throughout the quarter). He could have done better to prepare a more suitable final exam, but I'm confident that, should he teach this class again, an issue like this will not pop up again, and given how amazing the rest of the quarter was, I would definitely recommend taking this class.

I didn't take AP Chem, but I was able to do well in Courey's class by studying his slides, LA worksheets, and discussion worksheets before quizzes/exams. His midterms were very easy (lots of people did very well on them if they studied), and there's a lot of easy points in the class so that exams don't count for as much. The only things that generally sucked were the peer reviews (but they don't count for too much of you grade), and the length of the final. The final was very similar to the practice final exam he gave us and I didn't think it was too difficult if you made sure you understood everything in the course, people's main issue was with length, although I was able to finish since I generally work fast under pressure. Courey was very nice and curved the final by making it out of 88 points instead of 100, and curved the grades by making a 91-98 an A, 88-90 an A-, etc.
If you have the time to put the effort into this class and really study, I would definitely recommend this class.

If you want to teach yourself chemistry, take this course. The final and exams were extremely difficult and worth the biggest part of your grade. Oftentimes, Courey did not know the answers to most questions and whenever questions were asked, he simply responded with "ask on campuswire". This class will burn you out.

Dr. Courey was helpful and provided a lot of resources, but I did struggle to find time with him due to the nature of Zoom and number of people in our class. Throughout the quarter, I felt I was understanding the content well and performed above average on most exams and quizzes.

The final exam was ridiculous and too long. I did not even complete it in the given time and struggled to even understand what some of the questions were asking. I studied a great deal for the exam and felt incredibly frustrated with Dr. Courey after the exam. I felt he was fair in compensating final exam and overall final grades based on the response to the exam.

Overall, an ok lecturer. Not sure I would seek out taking a class with him again, but I would not be against it.

This professor was very reasonable except for the final. The final was extremely long and almost nobody finished; however he did curve upwards after the final which was good. He also is very good at explaining things, and although the course material is extremely dense, his office hours are helpful in clarifying everything. Overall, I think I learned a decent amount.

Dr. Courey is an incredible professor. point blank. He is VERY accommodating and understanding to say the least. Personally, I loved the enhanced series. I thought the structure was very similar to high school in that you have assignments throughout the week and tests every couple of weeks, unlike other classes like Chem 14A, where essentially your test scores are what determine your grade.

Overall, if you are good at keeping track of your assignments, communicating and asking for help, and don't like the idea of a couple of test grades determining your overall grade, I definitely recommend this class.

General chemistry is not supposed to be easy by no means, and there is not an easy way out, so you have to expect that you are going to be doing assignments and putting in many hours outside of class studying the material. However, this professor is very clear and easy to understand and engage with.

Take most of these reviews with a grain of salt—in my opinion, to be successful in this course, besides learning the content, you really have to get used to the types of questions that are asked on exams vs. quizzes. For me, the quizzes (CMC's) and exam multiple choice questions were harder than the free response portions. This is because they are very conceptual and REALLY try to trick you. This sounds stupid but you kind of have to ask yourself "what concept is the professor trying to test me about?"/"how is this question trying to trick me?". I think a lot of people get confused by the terminology, so you just have to read carefully and check your work. Free response questions were super straightforward if you're allowed to reference your notes—they were mainly plug-and-chug type problems, you just have to recognize what equation to use. To study, I'd suggest focusing on the discussion worksheets especially, slides, learning catalytics, and maybe the PRWA's. I was too lazy to do the LA worksheets and I was fine. For the PRWA's, just make sure you hit all the rubric points and be nice when grading others. The final was a bit of a time crunch, but what helped me was creating an equations sheet with everything on it and the TA's giving partial credit. I took AP chem in high school, so I do know my experience might be different from others, but I don't think anyone should be discouraged from taking this class. I really would suggest this class if you have the time for it!