I do concur that the course itself is relatively challenging. The class does not use a curve, the majority of your grade is determined by two tests (50 points each), one midterm (120 points), and final (180 points). I did AP Chem, so for me, the pace of the course is reasonable. Exams are doable, but the wording is tricky and cost you points. Yet, I still learned a lot from this class, and personally would take him again. Lavelle is a sweet person and experienced in lecturing (and yes he is a meme). Attendance matters, since he never posts his slides or bruincast the lectures; also do all the homework problems he assigns.

I did not do the greatest, but I have always struggled with chemistry. He does offer a lot of help which is so worth going to. But I will say this, it is very possible to pass. He was very proud of himself for my quarter 98% of students passed his class. To pass, you just need 50% of all the points possible. I barely got over that and I got a C- so it doable!

Great class. I had Chem 14a with Lavelle also and the format was identical. I found the content more difficult than 14a, even though I got the higher grade in this class. Make sure to study for the midterm! Test 1 and 2 had very high averages, but the midterm was significantly harder. Our final was online which made it way easier than it should have been.

When I first looked at reviews for Lavelle before taking the class, I didn't have a good opinion of him because I was just parroting off what people had said about him only caring about his metrics and the 100+ hours of chem help offered, and the success of his website chem community.
But honestly, after taking both Chem14A and Chem14B with Lavelle, that is completely false. He constantly mentions his extra help UA sessions and they are so helpful. And later in the quarter I really felt that he cared for the students as he boosted our final exam scores by 10 points when it was really hard.
His class is not a free A, but it is a very doable A if you watch lectures, go to at least 1 UA session a week, do all the textbook practice problems (he includes some in his tests).
Stats: MT1 100%, MT2 100%, Final 83%

This class was harder than it needed to be. The content that was covered in class was a majority of review from AP Chemistry. However, the midterm and final were overtly difficult. They were phrased poorly and sometimes covered material that we did not go over in lecture. He teaches based on powerpoint presentations which he does not post later. The best way to do well in the class is to do the homework, go to lecture, and read the textbook. Even if you did not go over it specifically in class, I would still try to learn the material. Lavelle also does not do many practice problems during his lecture, so you are left dealing with calculation after. This structure can be difficult for many people. Your TA also plays a large role in your grade. For one exam, the partial credit earned on a certain question depended on your TA. Some TAs gave no partial credit while others gave 2 points back. In terms of the final, I was particularly surprised by the titration question since we barely covered the material in class. Overall, I would recommend that you take this class with Lavelle if you have a good foundation in chemistry and are comfortable self studying.

The concepts in this class are harder than that of 14A, but you can still get an A in class, just attend a UA session weekly, do ALL the hw problems as he puts some on the tests, and don't fall behind on lectures.
Lavelle is actually a very kind professor and he gave us an opportunity to earn 4 points extra credit on both MT2 and the final. (I completely disagree with the review saying he was self-infatuated).
If you put in the work you'll easily be able to get an A, def would take Lavelle again if I could!
STATS: MT1 95%, MT2 96%, Final 93%

Everything was alright for me up until the final. Completely blew me out of the water, especially considering how easy I thought his past exams were. I think Lavelle realized the practice tests the UAs make were being a little too helpful, and decided to up things up, only the way he did this just makes everything so ambiguous. The TAs are never on the same page about anything. A whole question on the test was dedicated to a topic many of them assured wouldn't be on the test! I also expected a little bit more from Dr. Lavelle. He's fine at teaching and offers lots of office hours, but lazy when it comes to writing the test. Both on the midterm and the final there were egregious mistakes that wasted a lot of time for everyone. On the final, the TAs pointed out a mistake, which made me cross out all my work and redo the problem, only to say 15 minutes later that their correction was a mistake! so I had to do the problem yet again. Maybe this was just a one-time thing, but it doesn't change the fact that there were plenty of examples where the TAs had to get our attention mid-exam to explain an error to us. You'd think that if roughly 1000 students were going to take an exam, you'd put a little more attention to how the questions would be perceived. I'm disappointed in my grade, mostly because it was greatly affected by the mistakes and trick questions on the final. Not impossible to get an A, especially if you pay special attention to the past exams.

(Disclaimer: this class was taken online) Professor Lavelle is a very nice guy and is super passionate about chemistry. Some might say he is a bit TOO passionate about chemistry. He provides a ton of TA & LA office hours and review sessions all throughout the week to help students stay on track. You have to buy Sapling to complete the homework (which is free points) and its quite pricey. He also has a chemistry forum that you post on to ask and answer questions for free points. His midterms were multiple choice with both conceptual and problem-solving questions. The final was pretty hard and there wasn't enough time to check your answers; granted, he did curve the test up ten points. This class is not easy to get an A, but easy to pass because class total 50% is a C for him. He cares a lot about his students and really wants everybody to succeed, even if he won't stop bragging about his countless review sessions and chemistry forum.

Lavelle was definitely a better prof for Chem 14A. In 14B, his teaching layouts were at times confusing and didn't follow the order in the textbook. He doesn't provide students any bearing on how the midterm or final will look like through past exams or practise questions from himself, so we must prepare for everything blindly. This makes his course very time consuming because we must redo the textbook questions over again to be prepared. He does have many UAs that offer numerous sessions to help, and it's great to have such accessible guidance. A pattern I have noticed with Lavelle is that his tests and midterm are perfectly reasonable, and then he pulls out a brutal final that also tests on memorization instead of calculation, something that none of his other exams do. So beware of the final, and other than that, Lavelle isn't the worst.

I took Chem 14A and 14B with Lavelle through covid, and I have to say I'm impressed! His classes were well organized, and although a lot of them ran longer than 50 minutes, most people just put him on 2x speed. His midterms and finals were not very difficult imo, and very similar to the textbook problems so just do those to practice. I personally read all chapters of the book and this saved me on the second midterm for 14B, but I would say you don't have to necessarily read to do well, just go over textbook problems. He gave a lot of resources to succeed! I didn't utilize TAs that much, but the workshops and review sessions with the UAs saved me a bunch of times. Go to as many as possible! I think Lavelle really adjusted well to the online format and didn't punish students for covid (unlike some professors who made their tests harder). Just beware that the tests have questions that are 10 points each or 5 points, and if you get the 5 point questions wrong, you don't get partial credit while the 10 points have partial credit for a select few answer choices. You can only lose 28-35 points to get an A (depending on total points of the course) so this was VERY stressful.