This man in a menace to society. He is by far the worst professor I have had at UCLA and anyone that says otherwise is lying. For starters, his lectures are absolutely unbearable. All he does is read his notes off a word document and that is about it. You can ask him questions, but unless you are one of his little pets then expect to get a rude remark back. He is so unengaging that more than 2/3rd of the class decided not to watch his lectures live and just watch the recording. I personally had to watch them in x2 speed because he talks so slow that I could renovate my whole room before he reaches to any meaningful part of the lecture. Now lets go into the course content ( spoiler alert: it's not any better). Okay first and foremost, he makes all the students buy a subscription to Thinkwell. "But surely he has a good reason to do so" you might say, well you would be wrong. All that anyone does with thinkwell is take the four quizzess he assigns, which is something he could just do on CCLE, but no he would rather lock our grades away behind a paywall. If you genuinely want to learn anything in this class, I recommend you get a PLF because Scerri will not be helpful. Let us move on his despicable tests. He has the midterm and final, but I can tell you that no matter how long you study for them, you will still be unprepared. Oh and even you do somehow manage to understand his tests, well good luck even finishing them. He is so intent with making sure student's don't cheat that each question is subdivided into the whole alphabet. So prepared to take on question 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f,... you get the idea, and no just because its subdivided does not mean it is any easier. And while it may sound good on paper, for those of us that cannot write or process almost instantaneously, we end up having to suffer because we now have to submit our test with multiple sections left unanswered. Do not even bother trying to talk to him about it because you will get no sympathy from him. If you want to know how he interacts with students, I'll give you a little anecdote: on week 10 a girl asked him if the review session he was going to have would be recorded. And what did he do? He (very obviously) rolled his eyes and said yes, and then proceeded to interrogate her on why she would not be able to make it to the live viewing. Mind you this was in front of many other students, and even recorded. When I was watching it, I had to replay it because I was in disbelief that he would dare roll his eyes at a student. He has a huge ego and it was apparent since day 1. As a professor, he is horrible, but as a person, he is despicable. So, do not listen to these positive reviews on bruinwalk because I have a sneaking suspicion some are TAs trying to get students to take his class. IF YOU CAN AVOID THIS PROFESSOR, DO SO AT ALL COSTS. Trust me, it is NOT worth it. If you happen to have the misfortune of having him please enroll in a PLF or watch youtube videos on the topics instead because I assure you that you will learn more that way.

This class is so hard for no reason!! The grade for this class is made up of Thinkwell quizzes, the midterm, and the final. Thinkwell doesn't take up too much time, but we were not given enough time for the midterm or the final. For the midterm, we got 2 hours and 30 minutes to submit, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't when you have almost 30 questions. By the end, I was scrambling to finish. The final wasn't any better. We were given 3 hours and then another 30 minutes to submit. Eric is horrible at communicating, and at the end, we breezed through electrolysis and we had so many problems about it on our final. The grading of our midterm was inconsistent, and it was very difficult trying to communicate to either the TAs or Eric. The answer keys Eric gave to us to study with were wrong!! Honestly, going over homework problems helps a lot but not even that was able to save me from the inconsistencies of the tests. Overall, I would recommend this class with Eric because he allows open notes during his tests and Thinkwell makes up a decent enough portion of your grade.

Scerri is the worst, most unaccommodating professor at UCLA. I didn't think much of him before entering the class and think even less of him now. His class is severely disorganized ( I mean the man had no sense of respect for the stuff he teaches). He is often very arrogant and downright condescending towards those who ask him questions in his classes.
I came into the class with quite a strong background in Chemistry but the way that he and his staff work, it makes it quite difficult to work with. His tests are not bad but the graders make mistakes and as a result one's score is jeopardized in the class.

He is not a good professor and I would stay away from his class -- he might be easy but his class is more disappointing than any other -- in terms of academics and otherwise.

This class gave me PTSD (Post Traumatic Scerri Disorder). Professor Scerri is the worst professor I have EVER had. This class left me defeated, confused, and unprepared. This class is so hard, and there is so little support for students. This class is the only reason why my GPA dropped - I was a straight A student until now. We weren't given enough time for exams, and they had parts a-e for every question. Absolute hell. Not to mention that the answer keys weren't even correct and we could barely get clarification or corrections from both the prof and TAs. Grading of the midterm was inconsistent too, and many students reported that their final grades were curved DOWN. Like what even??? Scerri is also a very passive aggressive individual and there were some instances where he was rude and discouraging to students who had genuine questions. Unless you somehow got on his good side, he would treat you with very little respect. I had him for 14A as well (in person) and I wish I learned the first time around to stay far away from his class. Honestly, just get a good tutor or PLF because you'll learn jack from him. I relied on YouTube chemistry tutorials and explanations to get by. If you take this class, Lord have mercy on your soul, because you're going to need it.

Dr. Scerri is clearly a very knowledgeable in the field of chemistry. That being said, he often times explains concepts as if we already have a strong understanding of this material, making it very difficult at times to follow along. The grading structure consisted of 50% of our grade being 4 quizzes which we had 3 attempts on, 20% our midterm, and 30% our final. The quizzes were fair, however, the midterm and final were both very difficult and rushed. He simply did not give us enough time resulting in poor results on the tests. Though the practice exams were similar to the questions he gave us on the test, they often had wrong answers on the key he provided, leading us wrong for what the correct work and answer should be for the actual exam.

Furthermore in light of COVID-19, he was not accommodating. Not only did he give unfair exams, but he also curved the class down significantly at the end of the quarter. He did not send out any reasoning for this curve nor did he offer the final numbers for the class. Instead, we received our final grades with no explanation which is both disheartening and frustrating. As a whole, the class was one frustrating experience after another and was not a pleasant experience.

The class itself is not that hard, especially after they removed o-chem. I found his thinkwell quizzes to be quite confusing and frustrating but they did help me learn the material before exams. Do all of the recommended homework problems and you'll be fine. Know everything that he talks about in his slides because that is the material that will show up on the exam. I don't consider this class unreasonable at all.

I did not take AP chem in highschool

Very fair class. Although the material during lecture can feel overwhelming, if you go back and go over the slides you should be fine. His tests are VERY fair, he is not trying to trick you at all. I had Lavelle and felt his class was way more work and his tests more complicated than Scerri. Just put in extra work outside of lecture and you should be fine.

For some reason, people are really going off on Dr. Scerri in these reviews. Please DO NOT BE MISLEAD!!!! Dr. Scerri is an amazing person, period. He is a wonderful lecturer, his workload is minimal, and he encourages questions more than any other professor I've had so far. I've had Dr. Scerri for both 14A and 14B and I was honestly nervous to take him at first because of some of the reviews I've read, but he has blown my expectations out of the water.

First, let me start by saying this: we literally have no homework in this class. Our only workload consists of four Thinkwell quizzes which are not bad at all (you get three tries and unlimited time on each one and you're allowed to collaborate, so you can definitely get 100% on all four and this makes up 50% of your grade) and that is it!! He also has suggested problems that he recommends we do but I didn't do a single one of the suggested problems from the textbook and still ended up fine. My biggest advice is to just study his lecture slides and make a study guide using the problems from lecture. Some people say his slides are confusing, but they're honestly really thorough and they're organized in a super strategic way so you can learn by just reading through the slides and referencing your notes.

One thing that I absolutely love about Dr. Scerri is he is SO OPEN to questions. He stops every ten minutes to ask if students have questions and he will answer ALL questions. Literally there were times when people asked him to repeat a whole entire section from lecture and he did it with no hesitation. Even more so, he'll stay a whole HOUR after lecture to answer questions if they take that long! Lecture ended at 1:50pm for us but after lecture, there would always be like five people who stayed until 2:45 or so. After he was done answering all of our questions, he even cared about getting to know us on a personal level and we would all introduce our pets or he would play guitar for us or we would talk about some deep philosophy on life and the universe. Dr. Scerri is absolutely hilarious and maybe some people mistake his sense of humor with arrogance, but he is genuinely just trying to be funny and he has a golden heart. He really cares about his students. He wants you to succeed and he is there for us to help make sure that happens, so take advantage of the resources he offers!

I'm going to miss Dr. Scerri and I would definitely take a class with him again if I could. Out of all my classes at UCLA so far, Dr. Scerri has created one of the most positive and light-hearted atmospheres, such that I enjoyed coming to lecture every day because I always knew I would get a good laugh out of it.

Also, about his exams: I do agree that there was a time crunch on the first midterm, but he was receptive to our concerns and made the final much more manageable timewise. As for the content of the exams, it is very doable. Just study his problems from lecture, and make a study guide!!! My study guide saved me in both the midterm and the final. I didn't do any of the practice exams he posted, but I spent like 20 hours making my study guides and that was enough to get me through.

Take this class if you have the chance! And get to know Dr. Scerri!! Go to his office hours, ask a ton of questions, and turn your cameras on during lecture. Also, stay after lecture because that's when all the fun times happen and you get to meet Dr. Scerri's cats (: Great professor, great person. Would highly recommend.

I’ve taken him for 14A and 14B, and he just might be my favorite professor so far at UCLA. Scerri is a straightforward lecturer. He gets straight to the point, and doesn’t waste time talking about things you don’t need to know on his tests. Because of this, some people might think he’s “rushing” through his lectures. His past exams are useful. Study those. He also does not curve down, as many people claim. They just don’t know how to calculate their grades correctly.

Chem 14B with Scerri was honestly a very enjoyable class. I had him for Chem 14A as well! His tests are pretty much based off of content on his slides, if you are unsure of certain concepts just ask him. He uploads the slides online, so you can TECHNICALLY get away with not attending lecture. My advice is to always attend lecture because he emphasizes what he is going to be putting on the midterm/final. Go to the classes before each big test because he does a quick review and he will leak one or two important concepts on the exams. The discussions are not mandatory, but going to them won't hurt you because the TA will help you. He makes a lot of small jokes in class and he is an overall pretty funny person so this class should be enjoyable :P.