Professor
Franklin Ow
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Most Helpful Review
Currently taking him for the summer. He's a pretty good professor and he relates to students well since he was recently a UCLA undergrad himself. The course had two midterms which are 25% each and the final is worth 50%. He gives 5% worth of extra credit. In my course he is trying a straight scale as an experiment, but he says he usually does a curve. He also assigns optional homework, but I personally don't do it because I think his lectures suffice to do well on the exam. He also does bruincast which is a great resource. Overall, I think the class is fair in terms of difficulty and grading
Currently taking him for the summer. He's a pretty good professor and he relates to students well since he was recently a UCLA undergrad himself. The course had two midterms which are 25% each and the final is worth 50%. He gives 5% worth of extra credit. In my course he is trying a straight scale as an experiment, but he says he usually does a curve. He also assigns optional homework, but I personally don't do it because I think his lectures suffice to do well on the exam. He also does bruincast which is a great resource. Overall, I think the class is fair in terms of difficulty and grading
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Dr. Ow was amazing. I took him for 14A & 14B during the summer. It was a lot of work, but only because 6 weeks is an accelerated period to learn chemistry, especially if you are taking other classes along with it. I had 0 prior chemistry experience too, so it I had to study a lot. However, Dr. Ow uses an interactive textbook through Tophat which was amazing in my opinion. He wrote the book himself, and the textbook simplifies and presents the material in a very concise manner. It provides a ton of video examples and practice problems so you can really learn at your own pace and self-study efficiently. He uses pre-recorded lectures which are straight to the point and explain the concepts clearly. This is how online classes should be run and I wish more teachers would follow his example. Take Dr. Ow if you can. You won’t regret taking this awesome teacher.
Summer 2020 - Dr. Ow was amazing. I took him for 14A & 14B during the summer. It was a lot of work, but only because 6 weeks is an accelerated period to learn chemistry, especially if you are taking other classes along with it. I had 0 prior chemistry experience too, so it I had to study a lot. However, Dr. Ow uses an interactive textbook through Tophat which was amazing in my opinion. He wrote the book himself, and the textbook simplifies and presents the material in a very concise manner. It provides a ton of video examples and practice problems so you can really learn at your own pace and self-study efficiently. He uses pre-recorded lectures which are straight to the point and explain the concepts clearly. This is how online classes should be run and I wish more teachers would follow his example. Take Dr. Ow if you can. You won’t regret taking this awesome teacher.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - If you want to regret ever becoming a STEM student, take this class. I would rather repeat my junior year of high school (with SAT stuff, AP classes, and college apps) and relive the whole of quarantine a hundred times than take this professor again. TBH Ochem is not that hard of a subject but teachers like this make it extremely difficult for students to pass the class. How is the midterm 5 pages for 2 hours but then the final is 14 pages for 3 hours including upload time? It's not adding up. In the last two weeks of class, he merely glanced over the biomolecular stuff without any concrete examples and that made up 60% of the final. He is very nit-picky with answers and sometimes it's hard to get partial credit. If you want peace of mind and a decent grade, save yourself and take someone else.
Fall 2021 - If you want to regret ever becoming a STEM student, take this class. I would rather repeat my junior year of high school (with SAT stuff, AP classes, and college apps) and relive the whole of quarantine a hundred times than take this professor again. TBH Ochem is not that hard of a subject but teachers like this make it extremely difficult for students to pass the class. How is the midterm 5 pages for 2 hours but then the final is 14 pages for 3 hours including upload time? It's not adding up. In the last two weeks of class, he merely glanced over the biomolecular stuff without any concrete examples and that made up 60% of the final. He is very nit-picky with answers and sometimes it's hard to get partial credit. If you want peace of mind and a decent grade, save yourself and take someone else.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - The grading scheme for this class was on a straight scale based on the number of points from several categories: Each midterm is 100 points Final is 200 points Top 8 of 10 quizzes are scaled to 100 points Group projects during discussion section were 50 points. For a total of 550 points. The grade scale was relatively generous with 90% being the cutoff for an A, 84% for an A-, 81% for a B+, 77.5% for a B, and 74% for a B-. This class is difficult, as indicated by the grade scaling, but not impossible to do well in. The first midterm tested on IR Spec, H-NMR, C-NMR, and Mass Spec. This material was the most difficult for me as there were many tiny details that you had to pay attention to when doing the problems. It is very easy to miss something and lose points because of that. The second midterm tested mainly on Synthesis problems, with one spectroscopy problem similar to the first midterm. This class is all reactions after the first midterm. For me, Anki flashcards were key to memorizing all of them and doing all the practice problems from the book was great prep for the second midterm and the final. The final was also mostly synthesis questions, but had two spectroscopy problems. The timing for the tests was actually decent. I usually 'finished' about 30 minutes before I had to upload to gradescope, so I spent the next 25 minutes combing through my answers and checking for mistakes. Practice tests were posted before each midterm and final. They were all accurate in difficulty and helpful in gauging how prepared you are for the actual one. During the (open book/note) tests, I wrote down as much material as possible and had everything in front of me, although I don't think that will be possible in the future once classes are back in person. The lectures for the class were all pre-recorded and posted on CCLE. The actual lecture time served as office hours. The lectures were kind of dry, but decent enough. Dr. Ow gives you the material and constantly reminds you that the key to doing well is doing practice problems. Keeping up with the material is all on you, so don't slack on watching the lectures. Leave time in the week to do the book problems as well. I highly recommend getting the solutions manual to check your answers. I couldn't find it online, but its relatively cheap if you rent from Chegg or some other service (less than $15). During discussion sections, we were given 'reaction roadmaps' that showed how to go from molecule to molecule. The group projects were filling in the reagents, reactants, and products in these roadmaps with classmates in your discussion section. These group projects are basically free points if you go to your TA's office hours and make sure everything is correct. The roadmaps are also very useful during tests. Weekly non-timed quizzes were posted on CCLE, which covered the lecture material for that week. They were relatively easy, but worth checking your answers so you don't miss out on points. You only had one session to do the quiz as well, no stopping in the middle and starting it again at a later time. The average for both midterms was 64%. I got a 69% on midterm 1 and 85% on midterm 2. I don't know the average for the final, but I it was probably similar to the midterms. I got a 94% on the final and got an A in the class. I assume there was a small upward curve applied to the class as I don't think that I made the cutoff for an A based purely on points.
Winter 2021 - The grading scheme for this class was on a straight scale based on the number of points from several categories: Each midterm is 100 points Final is 200 points Top 8 of 10 quizzes are scaled to 100 points Group projects during discussion section were 50 points. For a total of 550 points. The grade scale was relatively generous with 90% being the cutoff for an A, 84% for an A-, 81% for a B+, 77.5% for a B, and 74% for a B-. This class is difficult, as indicated by the grade scaling, but not impossible to do well in. The first midterm tested on IR Spec, H-NMR, C-NMR, and Mass Spec. This material was the most difficult for me as there were many tiny details that you had to pay attention to when doing the problems. It is very easy to miss something and lose points because of that. The second midterm tested mainly on Synthesis problems, with one spectroscopy problem similar to the first midterm. This class is all reactions after the first midterm. For me, Anki flashcards were key to memorizing all of them and doing all the practice problems from the book was great prep for the second midterm and the final. The final was also mostly synthesis questions, but had two spectroscopy problems. The timing for the tests was actually decent. I usually 'finished' about 30 minutes before I had to upload to gradescope, so I spent the next 25 minutes combing through my answers and checking for mistakes. Practice tests were posted before each midterm and final. They were all accurate in difficulty and helpful in gauging how prepared you are for the actual one. During the (open book/note) tests, I wrote down as much material as possible and had everything in front of me, although I don't think that will be possible in the future once classes are back in person. The lectures for the class were all pre-recorded and posted on CCLE. The actual lecture time served as office hours. The lectures were kind of dry, but decent enough. Dr. Ow gives you the material and constantly reminds you that the key to doing well is doing practice problems. Keeping up with the material is all on you, so don't slack on watching the lectures. Leave time in the week to do the book problems as well. I highly recommend getting the solutions manual to check your answers. I couldn't find it online, but its relatively cheap if you rent from Chegg or some other service (less than $15). During discussion sections, we were given 'reaction roadmaps' that showed how to go from molecule to molecule. The group projects were filling in the reagents, reactants, and products in these roadmaps with classmates in your discussion section. These group projects are basically free points if you go to your TA's office hours and make sure everything is correct. The roadmaps are also very useful during tests. Weekly non-timed quizzes were posted on CCLE, which covered the lecture material for that week. They were relatively easy, but worth checking your answers so you don't miss out on points. You only had one session to do the quiz as well, no stopping in the middle and starting it again at a later time. The average for both midterms was 64%. I got a 69% on midterm 1 and 85% on midterm 2. I don't know the average for the final, but I it was probably similar to the midterms. I got a 94% on the final and got an A in the class. I assume there was a small upward curve applied to the class as I don't think that I made the cutoff for an A based purely on points.
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