Dr. Loo is great. He has very interesting lectures with little bits of chemistry trivia. There is a lot of lab work, given that there are two days per week, but it's still a relatively light load for a five unit lab class. The lecture material isn't always correlated to lab but it often is. Brcause Dr. Loo is an MS specialist, the class focuses a lot on MS. The tests are somewhat challenging but they're not that bad as long as you study for them. I highly recommend taking this class.

This class is a 5 unit lab class where you will explore the techniques of analytical chemistry. It is important to remember that with a 5 unit lab class, there will be weekly reports due that take up a majority of your time. The lab reports are no t as cutthroat as the physics 4AL/4BL series, but they do require you to put effort and create a complete analytical report. While his lectures are not in sync with the rotating lab periods, he does give you a good overview of the techniques used in analytical chemistry. Also, the techniques practiced during the lab sections are very fundamental and important to adding to your arsenal. The test were a bit tricky, but nothing new of information provided on the slides. Study the slides, read the book and do well on the lab/lab reports and this class should be no problem. I definitely learned a lot under prof loo and I hope he continues this class!

The previous reviews are pretty accurate. I honestly enjoyed this class and I highly recommend it. The class structure was fair and reasonable. Dr. Loo himself is actually pretty funny and he always tried to make his lectures interesting with little anecdotes. He would gear lectures towards topics that actually interested him and were actually useful, so it never got too boring. You walk away from this class feeling like you actually learned something useful as a future chemist (even if it is mainly mass spec).

The midterm was really long and our class average was super low (55%). I bombed the midterm but I admit it wasn’t necessarily too difficult, he just expects you to remember a lot of little details from lecture, so you basically have to memorize the whole powerpoints.

Even with my low midterm I got an A in the class thanks to the lab reports. The reports make up the majority of your grade, and they will also take up the majority of your time. Lab reports are due every week and trust me, do not underestimate how long it will take you to finish them. I actually pulled my first all-nighters trying to get these done. They’re not super complicated but they do ask for a lot, and the TAs have pretty high standards for how they should be written. The labs are actually pretty interesting, and the lab work and data analysis itself was pretty quick. My TAs were absolutely incredible and I am very grateful that they made the lab experience so smooth.

I took this class Winter 2020, so week 10 and finals week were cut short by COVID. He ended up canceling our final group presentation, extended our final group report deadline, and gave us 24 hours to do a straightforward open-note final, which all showed me that Dr. Loo is a pretty understanding guy. Wish I got a chance to talk to him because he seemed really chill. I knew many people who avoided this class because of the grade distribution, but if you have even the slightest interest in learning instrumentation, I think you’ll be happy that you took this class.

CHEM 184: Do not take this professor unless you have the whole sets of old paper. He is too demanding. If you are taking one or two classes, it might be okay. But with three or four classes, you will fall behind within the first week and will never catch up with the material again. Exams are super-hard (You don't even know whether the problems are from 184 material.) and insanely long, making slow-paced people hard to pass. He will find anything to mark you down. His grading schemes are questionable too. I know some people got B's even though they did not finished their lab. He's one of those obnoxious people who takes the attitude that "life's going to treat you like shit so I'm going to treat you like shit - that way you'll be conditioned". This class was the most time-consuming class that I had at UCLA and ruined my transcript. Plus I came out learning nothing.

Awesome professor and awesome course. I'm a chem and matsci major and I had to take either 184 or 114 as an elective. After reading the horrendous reviews on Bouchard's 114, I signed up for 184 as soon as it was available. Took it remotely during covid, and the class was awesome. Lectures were engaging, and had fair workloads in terms of lab reports and exams. As long as you put some time into writing quality reports and taking notes, should be an easy A.

This class is quite hard but one of the most useful classes I've taken at UCLA! Dr. Loo is amazing and incredibly caring. Midterm and final are hard and lab reports take forever but is incredibly rewarding!