I actually really loved this class. From the students I talked with that were also in the class, this seems to be one of the most polarizing classes I've been in. You either love it or you hate it. But that makes sense, since general chemistry is often a weeder-type class for many pre-med students.
I will say this though: it's possible for anyone, even if you're not "good" at chemistry, to get a good grade in Eric Scerri's Chem 14A and have an appreciation for the material.
40% of your final grade in this class is the final exam, and 30% is the midterm. Dr. Scerri will give you several old exams to study and STUDY THESE!! Even MORE importantly, go to the test bank and search for as many old exams as you can find. Split it up between you and your friends to get literally as many exams as possible. These past exams are very useful because Dr. Scerri has been known to copy and paste pretty much all of his exam questions to his current exams, or he may change a single word or number. Understand how to do problems on as many practice exams as you can find and you'll be golden. I got a 98% on the midterm and a 97% on the final through this method, because as I reviewed more and more practice exams, the problems that I had with the material eventually disappeared. I can guarantee you that people who don't do well in this class don't do this.
20% of your grade is online quizzes, which aren't too difficult, and 10% is homework, which can be quite tedious but is overall manageable. Scerri is very funny at times, but can also be quite dull at other times. However, I would say he's in the better half of professors I've had at UCLA. Don't even bother wasting money on the textbook.
Lastly, going to discussion definitely didn't hurt me either. Some of the more complicated concepts such as molecular orbital theory and hybridization were ironed out for me through my TA's teaching.
Overall, this class is manageable, and the resources for you to do well are definitely there.

The Chem 14 series is just hard altogether, there is no "easy" professor, especially if you don't know how you learn. With that being said, GOODLUCK. Try new methods, and rely on yourself rather than the professor! I personally liked Scerri for 14A, but don't rely on my review

These students are on crack. I worked my ass off for this class got a damn B+ that ain't bad but still not ideal. He is funny but when students would ask clarifying questions he would make sly remarks that could easily discourage a student from wanting to engage with him further. There is a lot of room for you to make your own study plan so if you need a lot of check ins this class is not for you. This class is structured to make you responsible for your education and if you don't understand a concept it is up to you to use resources both from class and outside resources. The upside to this course is that there is not a lot of homework, there are these things called sappling quizzes but those are all submitted at the end of the quarter and you have unlimited attempts for every question. He speaks fast but in a monotone voice so if you have difficulties paying attention in lecture...best of luck on staying engage. You have to put in a lot of focus because on second of distractions you went from mole conversions to orbitals really quick.

as for the practice exams he gave us the wrong solutions to some questions and the exams had a few questions drawn from previous exams but not all.

he also doesn't tell you the curve so you don't really know how your grade was determined. i heard students who had gotten A's on the midterm but got a B or B- in the class where as other students failed the exams but got an A in the class. It is subjective and not my favorite class.

I would recommend taking it with a different professor.

TLDR: if you need constant homework assignments to keep you on track this isn't for you. if you are better with less work to allow you to have more time to study then yessss take this class.

The content before the midterm was relatively easy to pick up especially if you took AP chem in high school. The second half of the course introduced new material that, for me, required a little more work to understand, but it was never unbearable.
The only homework we had was Sapling quizzes, which were basically practice problems that gave you unlimited attempts to complete. Some of the material on the quizzes were not taught in lecture, which was annoying, but Dr. Scerri assured us that we were not responsible for knowing it. Dr. Scerri only tested us on material explicitly mentioned in class, so I found that the best way to prep was to rewatch old lectures.
Dr. Scerri doesn't require attendance, and at the end of the quarter only around 60/235 students actually showed up to the live lecture. After each class, he would stay around for 30min-1hr to answer any questions, so that was really nice. He's really good at clarifying topics, so don't be afraid to ask!
The most intimidating thing about the class was his curve, which only benefitted us because he used at-home testing as a justification for giving us a really difficult midterm. For the curve, he takes sets the mean score as the minimum score for a B+ and then bases the curve around that because he "can't give everyone an A."
If you watch the lectures and study his practice exams, you'll do fine.

Professor Scerri is too smart to be teaching this class. The material makes much more sense once you learn it on your own and then go over it with Scerri. Thankfully, his lectures are recorded, and it isn't necessary to go to your lecture live. He gives out practice tests and problems, which actually help out a lot. The tests are very similar to the practice exams. The TAs are fantastic, and I was able to learn much more from the TA than Scerri because the TA explained it in simpler terms. There are extra quizzes that you take on Thinkwell, but those are pretty easy and give you easy points. The homework isn't mandatory but doing it and reading the textbook help a lot for this class.

I feel that Dr. Scerri often gets a bad reputation, and that may be because some of his jokes are insensitive. I think that that is just his personality, and once you can get past that, he is great professor that knows a lot about the material and is well versed in teaching it to students. His jokes are even funny sometimes. His method of teaching you the concepts of chemistry is more important than any practice problem you could do.

Dr. Scerri was such a great professor. His lectures are very well organized and clear, and he does a lot for his students- he spends an additional thirty minutes after every lecture to answer questions and gives students multiple opportunities to ask questions throughout lecture. He even gives us time to think of questions while reviewing that day's material briefly after lecture. He encourages us that there's no such thing as a dumb question and he really shows that he cares about our learning and wants us to succeed. I found him to be incredibly approachable and very generous when it came to providing resources - he posts multiple practice exams that are almost identical to his actual exams. Additionally, he is really funny and cracks jokes during lecture to make it more enjoyable. I loved this class with Scerri and would definitely take a class with him again.

Professor Scerri is a nice enough guy, and he did actually end up being very accommodating with our final exam, making it optional because of the protests that are happening around the country. He doesn't assign any mandatory homework, and grade is made up of these online, open note quizzes for each unit, on Thinkwell (30%), the midterm (30%), and the final (40%). All of our assignments were open note because of Covid and online classes. My TA, Gail, was awesome, very helpful and better at explaining concepts than Scerri was. My main problem with this class is that Scerri goes over only very basic problem examples in lecture and it is really up to you to self study and teach yourself enough material to do well on the exams. Also a lot of the time he didn't explain new concepts very clearly and especially for the second half of the course I found learning the material difficult. If you're good at being self motivated and teaching yourself, you'll be fine, but personally this was difficult for me and I wouldn't take him again if I could avoid it.

Edit: I TAKE IT BACK. He is not a very nice guy, and only pretended to be accommodating about the final. Based on everything he told us, I should have received an A in the course. I ended up with an A-, after he specifically told us on multiple occasions that he wouldn't curve down. So I guess know, that no matter what he says, he will indeed curve down if he feels like it. I chose not to take the final, and I think he ended up punishing me for it. Those who took the final had that test curved up pretty heavily which helped their class standing and overall grade, which ok, fair, but it seems like those of us who did not take the final are being punished for their success and when emailed about it Scerri basically said yeah I did do that, what are you going to do about it. I guess the answer is nothing, but at least I can rant about his questionable morals and integrity here on Bruinwalk.

Professor Scerri is one of those stereotypical professors in movies. He uses the board more often than not, but he still has slides that go along with what he writes on the board. He uses the board as a way to explain the topics that are on the slides, I think it does the trick.

When it comes to his tests, he really focuses on the previous exams that he gives and going to discussion section. Discussion is mostly the TA just going over previous years exam questions. It is not mandatory to attend discussion. but helpful. Professor Scerri likes to go over the history of chemistry and the scientific discoveries that helped the discovery of the concepts taught in class, so expect easy questions like "What discovery led to the idea of [blank]?" But, once again, refer to past exams (given by the professor) for reference.

Scerri is a great professor IF you have a strong background in chemistry from taking a good AP Chemistry class. I emphasize this point heavily because I know I did well in the class mostly because I was familiar with the content from taking honors and AP chem in high school and didn't rely heavily on Scerri's lectures. I've heard from friends and from reviews that without this background, Scerri can be a difficult person to learn from and his demeanor often makes asking questions in lecture and office hours intimidating. I did find his office hours helpful, and had good experiences with my TA Unal. The most helpful things to do well in this class by far were using the practice tests he posts, using the SAC test bank to look at his old tests, and reviewing his slides. I never bought the textbook and didn't feel like I ever needed to use it once. Overall, I would recommend Scerri as long as you know what you're getting into ahead of time.