For her first time teaching, Professor Shao did a phenomenal job! The material and concepts themselves may initially be overwhelming but the professor is extremely clear about her expectations of the class. Her notes are very simple to follow and she uploads all her in-class lectures. The professor is very forgiving when it comes to regrade requests, extra credit, and the overall grading scheme (an A is 90-100%, an A- is 85-89%, a B+ is 80-84% and so on). The discussion worksheets and Cengage assignments were extremely helpful for practicing the course's material. Unfortunately, the online book is very dense and didn't help create a connection between the conceptual and computational sides of this course. Although the material of Chem 20A is generally hard, Professor Shao is very transparent about the processes and clearly expresses her expectations of the course.

This class was a wake-up call. So many of these reviews are sugar-coating it. This class was A LOT OF WORK and dedication. IF you're not familiar with chemistry and the last chem class you took in hs was sophomore year...you're in for a SCARY time. I wasn't good at chem and this class didn't help me improve...instead made me so stressed. Shao is so so so nice and will answer any question...but the material is difficult and the exams were INSANE. The homework also averaged me 5-6 hours to finish...and I know people that took even more time for the hw...some people like 10 hours but others 3. You NEED to study for this class and take time with it. Though you will pass if you do the hw and worksheets it still takes a lot of work.

These reviews are very much sugarcoated…

First note: This class is really, really easy to get at least a B, but gets progressively much harder after that. Homework and worksheets are such a large percentage in the class where if you get 100% on them (which is realistic), you would only need a 10% average on exams to get a C-.

Second Note: I felt that (especially for the first unit or 2), that a physics background helps a lot more than doing something like AP chem. If you haven't taken a physics course in HS, or forgot a lot of info, the beginning may be tough.

As long as you do the work and ask questions, you'll do fine. She is a good lecturer and is amazing during office hours. Super nice. Her midterms are fast paced, but the questions are fair. Overall, would take again.

PLEASE TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HER.
I never expected that I would finally get an A with my first midterm grade being 68%, but I did! The material this class covered is VERY HARD for me, but she did well in explaining things. Her class is very helpful, and she is really responsible for her students (as she is the only professor I met who uploads a video explanation that walks through all the previous exam problems). She is one of my favorite teachers now. I would HIGHLY recommend people to take this class with her!!

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PROFESSOR SHAO FOR 20A! As a first year, I had heard from students in the past that 20A is generally pretty tough, but Professor Shao truly made this class as painless as possible. I will admit, Chem 20A is a tough class from a conceptual standpoint and isn't what I expected from my first chem class here at UCLA, but Prof. Shao gives you all the resources you need to succeed and understand the material. She is the type of professor that truly wants to see us succeed, and this is evident in the way she makes resources available to students (open office hours, MULTIPLE review sessions before each exam held by the TA's, notes posted from every lecture with annotations, expectation questions that are aligned with the course material & are posted before the exams, etc)!

Discussions are mandatory if you want the points for the collaborative worksheets that are graded! Discussions were extremely helpful this quarter because it allows you to collaborate with your peers and ask the TA questions about course content (TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS!). There's also homework through the cengage OWLV2 platform which can be pretty time consuming (5ish hours per assignment, 1 assignment every week, or sometimes every other week). I feel like the homework did a decent job at establishing a conceptual foundation, but you need to do also make sure you pay attention to the questions given in the worksheets and in lectures as well.

Exams are challenging, but they are definitely fair! If you put in the effort, go to office hours, and stay on top of the course material, these exams should be manageable. I can easily say that Chem 20A was my favorite class this quarter, despite it being quite challenging.

She is such an understanding professor and truly cares whether her students actually understand the course content. Chem 20A is a very challenging and fast-paced course but her grading scheme and testing methods help students succeed. She is very approachable and stays back after each lecture to answer all doubts and has long office hours as well. She sends surveys after each midterm and final and you can see the feedback being incorporated into the course. Lectures are streamed on zoom as well as recorded so if you are unwell, rest assured that you can always catch up. Her notes are also posted on canvas for reference and before each exam, she posts a sample question/expectations documents which really help with preparation. HIGHLY RECOMMEND Dr Shao for Chem 20A!!

Professor Shao is a very kind professor. She prepares clear and understandable lecture notes before each lecture, so having a copy of them to follow along and study is super helpful. Although her online homework problems can be long and tedious at times, they are nonetheless helpful and not too hard. Her tests are neither super challenging nor easy, and it is best to learn from mistakes to do well on the next test/final. As long as you pay attention in lecture, review notes, and seek other online resources, then this class will not be too difficult. The grading scale is also quite generous, allocating a large percent of your grade to worksheet scores (which you work on in discussion sections). This is especially helpful if you're not the best test taker (like me).

i would highly recommend anyone who is taking chem 20A to do it with professor shao. you can tell she cares about all of her students and really wants them to understand and succeed in her class. my biggest recommendations is to either print out the blank notes sheets she posts on canvas to take to lecture unless you have an ipad to annotate them because the notes in class go by really fast. it is probably actually better to print however because the midterms and the final are open note so you’ll already have them all printed out to take with you. in terms of the midterms, it is a lot of problems to go through in a very short amount of time so i would recommend going as fast as you can and not worry about small mistakes because the grading is very generous with partial credit. always have a very good understanding of the worksheets done in discussion when you go into the midterms because around half of the questions on the midterms were from worksheets. with the final i had plenty of time. for the final my recommendation is to copy as many practice problems as you can and copy down or print the answer keys from midterm because you will definitely see problems similar come up in the final. overall, i would say this class is not too difficult if you spend a bit of time with it and i would definitely have professor shao as a professor again!

This was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. Super interesting material, very passionate professor, and very large support group of resources and help for the students. While the content of this class was not the easiest, it was easy to receive a good grade as the grading scale was very generous (85% and up for an A-) and the majority of the grade was made up by the homework. The homework was difficult but through an online program Cengage that gave many tries and worksheets given in discussion sections you could work on with classmates. There were no quizzes, but the midterms and final were directly based off of the worksheets and homework for the class, as well as the many many resources Shao provided as test review (she is an amazing teacher). If you do the work assigned in the class you will be alright, and it’s also very interesting content! I definitely recommend Shao she is passionate about the topic and her students well being and you will have a lot of support in chemistry, especially coming from someone with very little physics and chemistry background. 10/10 professor.