CHEM 20A
Chemical Structure
Grades
3.51
Average grade awarded in CHEM 20A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
69%
of the 4,457 letter grades
D, F or W
2.9%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
<1%
9 of 15 students passed
The registrar's own records: 4,457 grades over 12 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
3 of those terms are summer sessions, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 12 terms ran 3.08 to 3.85.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 1,001 · 22.5%
- A 1,423 · 31.9%
- A- 654 · 14.7%
- B+ 375 · 8.4%
- B 324 · 7.3%
- B- 191 · 4.3%
- C+ 166 · 3.7%
- C 109 · 2.4%
- C- 84 · 1.9%
- D+ 12 · 0.3%
- D 26 · 0.6%
- D- 7 · 0.2%
- F 85 · 1.9%
- P 9 of 4,498
- NP 6 of 4,498
- I 26 of 4,498
Percentages are of the 4,457 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), and incompletes (I).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Fall 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KAVNER, ABBY reviews ↗ | 3.70 | 3.71 | 1,625 | 3 | 81% | light | not teaching it |
| SHAO, HUILING reviews ↗ | 3.54 | 3.54 | 1,031 | 3 | 68% | light | not teaching it |
| WU, ERIC C reviews ↗ | 3.37 | 3.37 | 784 | 1 | 64% | - | not teaching it |
| DEIFEL, NICHOLAS reviews ↗ | 3.65 | 3.65 | 350 | 2 | 83% | very light | not teaching it |
| OW, FRANKLIN P reviews ↗ | 3.28 | 3.26 | 336 | 3 | 53% | very light | not teaching it |
| SCERRI, ERIC ROBERT reviews ↗ | 2.88 | 2.85 | 331 | 1 | 28% | average | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Reported assignments across instructors and terms. This term's syllabus may differ.
What the work looks like
- Exams mentioned, no number given, 11 mentions in past reviews
- Quizzes mentioned, no number given, 3 mentions in past reviews
- Papers mentioned, no number given, 1 mention in past reviews
- Problem sets mentioned, no number given, 5 mentions in past reviews
- Presentations mentioned, no number given, 1 mention in past reviews
Based on 336 reviews; source checked about 2 months ago. dibs counts only what a review actually states, so a kind of work nobody mentioned is absent rather than zero.
In Falls
Ran in 5 of the last 5 Falls.
From the terms dibs holds, which start in Fall 2021 and exclude summer. A department can run a course in a quarter it never has before.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Preparation: high school chemistry or equivalent background and three and one half years of high school mathematics. Recommended preparation: high school physics. Requisite: completion of Chemistry Diagnostic Test. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 31A. Not open to students with credit for course 14A. First term of general chemistry. Survey of chemical processes, quantum chemistry, atomic and molecular structure and bonding, molecular spectroscopy. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Fall 2025
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking CHEM 20A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
No student reviews are available to read on dibs for this course yet. Took it? Tell the next person what helped, what was hard, and how you spent your time.
Looking for more perspectives?
External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.