I loved this class with Casey! She really was a great lecturer. She was also super kind and understanding.

Our lab reports and discussion lab worksheets were graded very harshly. However, we expressed these concerns to her and she made some huge adjustments– basically giving us 20 extra points in the lab report category and 8 extra points in the discussion lab worksheet category. These buffers made it so that most people should have scored 100%, or at least very close to 100% on both of these categories.

There was one midterm and one final. Both exams were not easy, but doable in my opinion. After the midterm, she made a policy where we could replace our midterm grade with our final grade if that would help us out in the class.

All in all, professor Casey was extremely kind, very very accommodating and actually listened to her students. This was her first virtual lab so there were some bumps along the road at first, but she really took our concerns into consideration and made the class very fair in my opinion. I would definitely recommend any class with Casey!

I absolutely hate this lady. She’s a good lecturer but her exams were SO UNNECESSARILY HARD. Writing the labs was such a waste of time and literal my they graded so harshly on everything even though it was a prelab and it was what I was supposed to use to help ME for lab. I hate this woman who said she would round up scored if she sees significantly lower scores from a TA who by the way JAY SUCKS. He was literally the hardest TA ever and didn’t try to help us, he didn’t care about our grades or our emotional state, I’m so done with this stupid class and will NEVER take casey for anything again.

To put it simply: an absolutely amazing professor. Although CHEM14A with her covered a lot more material than with other professors, I do not regret taking this class with her. Dr. Casey gave amazing lectures and did everything in her power to give her students the opportunity to succeed. Her midterms and final were extremely fair, the homework is optional (but you should definitely do all of the homework), and her office hours were the most helpful office hours I've ever been to at UCLA. If Dr. Casey teaches CHEM14A again, do yourself a favor and take the class with her; you will leave her class with a newfound appreciation for chemistry and a strong foundation for the rest of the chemistry series here at UCLA.

No matter what, this course requires a lot of tedious busy work so if you don't like it, do not blame Casey. She does a great job as a teacher, explains the concepts super well, and is genuinely interested in helping you. Unfortunately though the class does get worse if your TA is harsh, especially since they do most of the grading. And make sure to start the group lab reports early (around weeks 8-10) because those are worth a lot more points than individual labs. Lastly even though Casey is very nice and the lectures aren't crazy, make sure to study well for the exams. They are very concept based and tend to be a bit more complex than the practice problems she posts. Just make sure to understand the concepts, not just the math alone. But these exams are very doable, just put in the work. Rereading the lecture slides are not enough.
Side note: careful when you buy old graded labs for Casey. I bought a lab that was from only two quarters beforehand and only HALF of the material on each lab remained the same. She will change up the questions asked so make sure to buy the MOST CURRENT graded labs you find.

Professor Casey is really sweet and understanding. Her weekly assignments were not that time consuming, however there is one writing assignment that she gives around the end of the quarter that takes up a lot of time. The grading system is okay at first, but towards the end you realize how quickly you can lose points. The midterms or “application assessments” are challenging and are graded toughly. In order to do good in them, it is important that you fully understand the concepts conceptually and that you can apply them. I did not do good on my first one at all and I believe that is what caused me to get a B+ instead of a higher grade. She hosts a lot of office hours and LA workshops and those are very helpful. Discussions are important for understanding the concepts and I had a group that was not very collaborative and I think that might have affected how much of the content I understood. Of your discussion group is not great, try to switch towards the start of the quarter. I tried switching but there was no other groups that had room so I was stuck with my group. Her final was okay, better than the application assessments, but it is worth a lot so be careful not to mess up on it (worth 100/350 total class points).

TLDR: She is a great professor, but you have to do attend a lot of office hours or the extra workshops she offers to make sure you fully understand the content. Try not to mess up on the first few assignments because that will affect your overall grade tremendously.

Exactly like what other people said: great professor, horrible class structure and workload.

This is NOT a 3-unit class; treat it as a 5-unit one! The lectures are pretty useless as they are overly simplified; watch the PSS instead, as it is the only source of knowledge that will get you through the confusing lab reports and activities. Attendance for the sessions isn't mandatory, but you're screwed if you don't go through the practice problems. Piazza contains most of the answer keys, so make sure to check it before submitting stuff.

Besides the horrible class structure, what makes this course extra difficult is the lack of connection between each week's materials. Stuff you've learned from the previous week might have nothing to do with that of next week.

P.S. If you get Wenfei as your TA, try switching out of that section immediately. He is unapproachable, passive aggressive and horrible at replying emails.

I would highly recommend this class. Even though it was during a six-week summer session, the class was very understandable thanks to Dr. Casey's in-depth explanations. Definitely go to her office hours, Casey is very approachable and wants you to succeed. The exams are challenging but fair. We also had a group final exam during discussion, which was more difficult, and your grade in that is dependent on the ability of your group. The textbook is confusing, so I would recommend going over the discussion worksheets and slides to better understand the content.

Great professor!

Professor Casey is a great professor! I can't say the same about the class structure. Casey does her best to provide useful information and labs for every week, which I think she does. My biggest complaint would have to be that this felt like this class should have been at the very least a 4 unit course instead of a 3 because I was spending more time on this class than in my 5 unit and even 6 unit course.
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Grading: She was very accommodating and for grades, giving us multiple assignments that we could drop as well as making a big writing assignment optional. I know that grading depends heavily on the TA that you get, and with mine I got 100% on all the labs and almost all the lab activities.
The midterm wasn't that bad, at least in my opinion, and I was able to get a 100% on it, however, I felt similarly confident on the final but got a 78%, so I'm not sure what happened there. Even despite the C on the final I was able to get an A because a lot of your grade is padded with labs, lab activities, participation and 10 points extra credit.

Professor Casey is great at explaining concepts and the website that we use, Piazza, to ask questions and get immediate feedback is really helpful when trying to do our assignments because it makes them seem less daunting. She was also very understanding with grading, letting us replace our midterm score with our final exam score (not vice versa), if we did better, and there is some leeway on the prep points each week to miss a couple points and still get full score. The lab activities during discussions were a bit boring, but manageable since we worked on them in groups. The weekly lab reports aren't difficult if you read the posts on Piazza. The exams were also open note, which was really helpful.