If you aren't naturally gifted at chemistry, you will need to teach yourself most of the material--which is fine but there are almost no resources to do this. Professor Barr's exams are insanely difficult, and the study resources you have are limited to practice problems with no answer keys (so if you don't know how to approach a problem, good luck) and recorded lectures. The recorded lectures have almost no material that ever shows up on the exams. There's also no curve.

The first thing I want to say is Professor Barr gets more hate than he deserves. I acknowledge that there are some things about him that are super annoying, but overall, I feel that I learned a lot of chemistry.

Things I liked about his class:
- I thought he was a very good lecturer. He explains concepts well and makes his lectures somewhat engaging.
- His lecture guides are very helpful. Every week, Barr provides a lecture guide which is basically an outlined note taking system. This helped me figure out what was important to know and what wasn't.
- The textbook homework, known as OWL V2, was a very good resource. It was somewhat hard to figure out how to make an account at first, but once I got that figured out, the homework was very helpful in my learning.
- Barr is very clear about his policies. He has a very detailed syllabus and made it well known what needs to be done to earn an A.
- The worksheet in his discussion section was helpful in learning the material better.

Things I disliked about his class:
- Barr doesn't post his slides.
- Barr provides an optional problem set every week, but doesn't provide the answers or solutions for the problem set. In order to get the solutions for the problem set, you must attend his office hours. If you have something going on during his office hours, you're out of luck.
- Barr provides sample midterms from previous classes, but doesn't include the solutions. If you want the solutions, you have to go to his office hours.
- Barr makes his tests ridiculously hard. The average for midterm 1 was "about 80%." The average for midterm 2 was around "low 60s." The average for his final was 76%.
- Barr has so many different types of assignments, it gets hard to keep track of. He has group homeworks, lecture surveys, course surveys, OWL pretests, group midterms, etc.
- One of the last assignments for Barr's class is to design your own exam question and then answer 3 other people's exam questions. This was super annoying because some people's exam questions were unclear or unsolvable.
- Barr never releases midterm scores exactly when he says he will. He usually says something like "Midterm scores will be posted by Friday night," but they don't actually get posted until Monday morning. This isn't a huge deal, but it definitely causes some increased anxiety.
- Barr doesn't let you use a TI-84 calculator on his tests. You can only use a scientific calculator, so if you have a graphing one right now, be prepared to drop an extra $10-$20 on a different calculator. He says that this is "department policy" but we were allowed to use a graphing calculator in 20L. Anyways, here's the link to the one I got: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-Scientific-Calculator-Accents/dp/B00000JBNX/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZSCE4QLX9Q87&keywords=ti30&qid=1648428571&sprefix=ti30%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-2

Advice I'd give to future students in this class:
- Use the printed lecture guides as your system for taking notes.
- Find a group of 5-10 people and make a google doc. Take turns going to office hours and add problem set answers and midterm answers to the doc.
- Try to stay caught up. Like actually. It'll make things a lot easier.
- Since he has so many types of assignments, implement a good system for organization.
- If you know anyone who previously took the class, ask them to send you their midterms and finals as a study resource.

Overall take: Barr is super annoying and doesn't stop talking about how he worked for Disney. His tests are super hard and you will have to put in a decent amount of work for this class. With that being said, an A is still achievable if you stay on track and study well for the exams. Lots of people continuously complain about Barr, but at the end of the day, I feel that my knowledge of Chemistry has increased tremendously and it has already helped me in other classes. If you have take this class I'm praying for you.

My rating: 3.5/5

Way too many negative reviews just because people did badly on their tests. Definitely not the fault of the professor, since many of the applied questions were fair and directly connected to concepts discussed in lecture. Overall, Barr doesn't make this class easy, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know I've ended up learning more with a harder class but many of my classmates choose to whine and moan about their struggles instead of rising to the challenge. I hope that these complainers are weeded out of chem/pre-med in the next few quarters so I'm not stuck with them for the rest of college. Overall, Barr is very clear in lectures and there are plenty of resources for learning: problem sets, textbook readings, textbook questions, discussion groups, review sessions, and a ridiculously huge amount of office hours. He's definitely a little goofy but that makes lectures a little fun. His tests are hard but they're certainly possible if you put in the work to understand his questions and definitely pay very close attention in lectures, which can directly tie into test questions. My only complaints are that he doesn't have a 12/24 hour window for tests and that he takes forever to grade stuff. Overall, hard but rewarding class. Don't let the number and the angry, dramatic students skew your perspective.

With Barr, the way that he teaches is not like regular chemistry classes. The styles of questions of what people usually have seen in past chemistry classes are not the way he teaches--it's like those deeper insight questions found at the end of the problem sets found in textbooks. The way that I can describe him and the things you learn are very much applied like those fun chemistry videos you see on youtube or social media. He is a very engaging lecturer and has several opportunities for office hours and areas to help you out. However, his teaching methods are questionable when it comes to answer keys. In his logic, he doesn't post answer keys because he wants students to come to office hours to get them and to build communication and speaking the language of chemistry which to some extent is valid but is hard to do on our end esp when it comes to studying near a midterm/final. My advice for this is to communicate with other students and collaborate to make your own answer key by going to his office hours. Although his methods are somewhat questionable in that sense, it's very doable to work around. His midterms and final in the past have been tough but in my experience, these were actually relatively easier than the ones from the year before and much more attainable in the scope of this class in terms of expectations. While these assessments are really tough, he is a very gracious partial credit grader, giving points to things that basically made people pass midterms and finals when we probably barely had any idea what we were doing.

Final advice: going to office hours is a non-negotiable every single week if you want to succeed in this class and that being said the problem sets as well. Practicing previous midterms and finals from years past are a great method in preparing for assessments. Although this class is very tough, it is feasible to succeed but there definitely needs to be work put in past lecture and cram studying.

he curves way too well in the end, 90% ended up with A

He's the best!

To the person who said this is fuckin UCLA and if you can’t handle this course you’re going to die in your future classes”.... you’re a fucking asshole. Keep to yourself and sit down.

DISNEY ADULT!!! That right there should say enough but for real I haven't met a single person in this class who likes him. He won't give out answer keys to the practice problems (even the ungraded ones which makes no sense) so in order to get answers for anything which is crucial, you have to sit through hours worth of office hours each week, which is so inconvenient. In addition, he uses exams as an opportunity to try and trick students and test out new things that we have never learned that are so loosely related to the actual topic. Overall, do not take him if you do not absolutely have to.

i think after the horrible tests in winter 2021, he toned them down. granted they were still hard but it was mostly doable.

I think Barr is passionate, but my experience with him was terrible. The exams were tough, and he would not listen to class feedback. To be honest winter quarter was just a nightmare all over. The whole class experience was akin to experiencing a firebombing 24/7. That said, I understand it was his first time. I just wouldn't take him again. UCLA Chem department needs to do better, as their restrictions during covid probably was also terrible and made it harder for Barr to accommodate us. I heard he got better, so take my review as you will. I just can't say he was a good professor based upon my experience.