CHEM 1610

Class is difficult but the professors do a good job during lecture and discussion to help the students. Definitely a desire to help the students learn.

pick metcalf over terry

Metcalf>Leung, but that being said Chemistry is not fun and is a lot of work. Especially for CHEM 1610 as an engineering intro requirement, most people don't really care about it, but have to put a lot of time into it.

Lectures are mandatory, though pretty helpful even if you're just listening and not taking notes. Mastering Chemistry (the homework) is pretty easy which is a helpful grade boost. Quizzes/tests are difficult mainly due to the trickiness and ambiguity of the questions written by Professor Leung. I'd definitely recommend Metcalf though, he's easier to understand than Leung and genuinely cares about how well his students understand Chemistry.

For this class, Metcalf is definitely the lesser of two evils. He is a lot easier to understand, and he does try to make his lectures interesting. Honestly, there just is no good CHEM 1610. It's just something you have to get through. The homework (Mastering Chemistry) is relatively easy, and there isn't a lot of work to do. However, there are weekly quizzes/tests that you need to study A LOT for that are extremely difficult because they are written by Professor Leung. Pay attention in lecture and study a lot on your own, and you should be fine. Just know that you will need to put in a lot of work.

Basically, for chemistry you either go for Metcalf or Leung. Go with Metcalf just because neither teaches better than the other (I base this on the fact that they give the same tests/quizzes and both classes get around the same average), but Metcalf is a lot more fun/silly which helps keep you awake in class and makes it more enjoyable. Metcalf also uses Mastering Chem for homework rather than Aleks which is a lot easier to complete with 100%.
The main, most helpful, study tools for this class are the old quizzes that are posted on Collab. The quizzes/tests do tend to have questions about some random exceptions that weren't covered in class and I personally couldn't always find in the book.
Speaking of the book, get a cheap, older version of Tro. A lot of people my semester bought the $250 new edition and only opened it once or twice. It's not a necessity for the course, just a personal study tool.

For 1610/1410, you are basically choosing between Metcalf and Leung. For Fall 2014, Leung taught the 9am and 10am sections, and Metcalf taught the 12pm. Leung is a better lecturer (talks to you instead of at you, gives you time to answer clicker questions, etc) but Metcalf has a better personality. You get used to Leung's accent after a while. I had Metcalf for 1610 but I would recommend Leung.

metcalf is a terrible teacher, class size is huge, material is covered entirely too quickly and nothing is explained. IF YOUVE NEVER TAKEN CHEM DONT TAKE METCALF. clicker questions, 3 really hard quizzes, and plenty of online assignments.

General Chemistry, the first year killer. Like anyone else will tell you, this course is no joke. It's difficult, especially during your first semester of college when you're getting adjusted to everything. To keep up in the class you'll have to do reading and practice problems each week that come from the chemistry textbook and also do ALEKS, which is this online supplement to the work done in class. ALEKS lets you go at your own pace but there are certain deadlines you have to meet, so be wary of those. The tests are fairly difficult but if you study a lot and get any questions about concepts cleared up you should be okay. I wouldn't recommend taking this course if you don't have to. It's definitely a weed out class.

Metcalf is pretty okay as a professor, I'd say. He's not exceptional, but he does his job and I think he's a pretty nice guy. He's also helpful at office hours and if you just ask him about what you need help with he'll be willing to answer. He doesn't deserve all the flack that he gets, in my opinion.

It's not a terrible class but it is difficult. The tests are fairly challenging as they are mostly concept based and Leung tries to purposefully trick you by adding a negative sign somewhere. Both of the teachers aren't very good, so I'd say stick to the book and make sure you understand the concepts well. The concepts are hard but use resources like Khan Academy and others to try to wrap your head around them.

You also have ALEKS assignments due every other week which is basically just an online teacher that requires you to learn 265 topics by the end of the semester. You have to learn 30 topics every other week and each "milepost" as they call them is 0.5% of your final grade, so don't mess up. Also, make sure you do all of the assessments and mileposts on ALEKS on time because you can get a full percent added to your grade if you do all of them, which can save your grade.