If you took AP Chem in high school, the class content will feel almost like a review. But if you didn't, Lavelle's got you covered. If the lectures were confusing or boring, he organizes a lot of UA sessions and review sessions to help (I personally didn't attend UA sessions but sometimes the UAs will put their review sheets in a Google Drive folder). His damn Chemistry Community ( I swear every lecture he has to brag about the amount of views he has gotten): kinda tedious having to submit posts every week but it can be useful if you are looking for explanations for certain HW problems. Lastly, the best way to prepare for the tests is to go over textbook questions. Sapling doesn't help as much (so I wouldn't recommend studying off of Sapling), but test questions are framed like textbook questions and have similar difficulty levels.
Overall, Lavelle was pretty accommodating considering COVID and the class was not as bad as many people make it out to be. Just utilize all the resources he gives you and you should be fine.

Professor Lavelle. The most helpful and bright-spirited chemistry professor you could have. He’s got office hours, discussion sections, review sessions in Week 10 for each branch of chemistry covered - 100+ hours of review in Week 10, to be precise! Even over asynchronous lectures, he was engaging, funny, and always reviewed the fundamental concepts before building on them. And Chemistry Community is awesome for homework help! I’ll be back for Chem 14B.

Selling 7th edition pdf version of textbook for 20$ (1/4 the price)! Regular price at UCLA store for ebook is 80$! Text me @ 2096233832

One of the questions on his final was "draw cisplatinum" something he never even mentioned in class, then he said it was on his slides but he DOES NOT POST HIS SLIDES. That was probably the most UNFAIR class I've ever taken and i didn't even think the material was hard, he just was awful and unfair. 10/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND AVOID IF YOU CAN OR TAKE SOMEONE ELSE, don't do this to yourself.

I can admit that Dr. Lavelle is a great professor. You can tell he really enjoys what he is doing. He made the difficult chemistry seem so easy. He is an amazing individual filled with intelligence which I aspire to be.

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%

Although I hate chemistry, you can tell Lavelle has a lot of passion for it and for his students. He really wants you to succeed so he provides you with a lot of support and sessions. There are three lectures a week, a discussion section that will go over a few problems each week, and a lot of UA support optional sessions. The only homework is 10 questions per week. Honestly, it's up to you to do well in his class and you have to meet him half way. I didn't really put any effort in and never went to support sessions so I did poorly on exams. But if you try, do the optional things and do practice problems on your own time it's not that hard to get an A. He is probably one of the best science professors and really breaks things down. If you're taking chem, take it with him.

This class was better than expected. I failed my AP Chemistry test, but still got an A in this class. The lectures are pre-recorded videos, which you could watch on 2x speed. Lavelle is pretty clear at explaining stuff. I didn’t even need to read the textbook for this class.

The discussion sections are not really helpful. We do a couple of problems together and take the tests together. Lavelle’s office hours are also live, but he doesn’t answer many chemistry related questions and they are not very useful.

What is extremely useful is the Undergraduate Assistant Step-Up Sessions and Workshops. The UA’s explain things very well. If you don’t have the motivation to make yourself study, just go to a lot of UA sessions because they will go over everything you need to know and they will provide practice problems.

I took this course online, and the midterms were all multiple choice. The first midterm was only 12 questions and the second midterm was only 17 questions. A lot of these problems are exactly the textbook and homework problems, with the exact numbers and everything. Final was about 30 questions. It was harder than the midterms.

Dr. Lavelle is a very engaging lecturer. I found his lectures to be very interesting and have learned a lot from this class. I did not take AP chem, but I studied a lot and went to as many UA sessions as I could and did all the assigned textbook problems. Dr. Lavelle really does want you to succeed, so you'll be fine as long as you utilize all the resources he provides.

This class is very organized and the test content is relatively straightforward. I personally found it an easier class than my high school STEM classes because of how many resources Dr.Lavelle provided and because the content he discusses in lecture is succinct and not too overwhelming.