Well run subject with a organised and well resourced faculty. However the exam was pretty weird and challenging, the practice exams do not prepare you very well for it.

Content was somewhat interesting, some of it was very similar to VCE Year 12 Chemistry so those lectures were pretty boring, but some of it was an extension of assumed knowledge from high school, which ranged in difficulty with some of it being good. Written practical reports were pretty easy to get a good mark on, but some were harder than others and therefore took more time to complete to a high standard. Definitely recommend listening to the demonstrators when they tell you to answer the questions you can before the practical as it spreads the workload out across a few days. The demonstrators will also help you with any difficult questions on the report so make sure you pay attention to them. Practicals themselves were hit or miss, and they go for 3 hours meaning that they take up a large space in your timetable. Tutorials were great, Sonia made them fun and they helped a lot with consolidation of knowledge, especially for the more difficult topics. The majority of the weekly feedback quizzes (WFQs) were simple as long as you did the review questions they provided and/or attended the tutorials for the content of that week as the questions given were similar. However, the downfall of this subject was the exam, worth 60% of your final mark. None of the mock exams or the WFQs prepare you for the difficulty of it. The multiple choice questions were alright and accessible to some extent, but the short answer questions were, for the most part, extremely hard, likely having an impact on final grades for the subject. Overall, this subject was decent during the semester, however, it is far from a WAM booster as a result of the exam, and can take up a decent amount of space in your timetable, so I recommend doing it only if you need it for your major/degree, or if it's needed in order to keep your options open.

I aced VCE Chem and I guess Chem 1 was alright but it's not like what VCE Chem sets up university chemistry it to be. I did Chem 1 to keep my options open, but I ended up falling asleep in lectures (especially the organic chemistry stuff). I remember the tutorials being pretty good, and the labs were very broad and enjoyable. Someone stole my paracetamol though, which was VERY rude. The exam wasn't too bad. I think if you just remember the basics, then you can apply them to more difficult concepts.

This subject was very well-run and interesting. I didn't even like chemistry that much in high school yet I found this subject very interesting, though some topics do require time and practice to understand. All the lecturers and professors are very concise, organized, and clear. The chemistry staff in general are very supportive and fair, they also provide many resources for you to do well. I would definitely recommend this subject, however, do note that this is a pretty heavy subject, requiring a lot more work than other science electives to do well in. The exam is also considerably harder than the weekly tutorial questions and mock exams. Make sure to do the weekly questions and stay on top of your lectures since it's really hard to catch up once you're behind.

I found this subject really interesting and the lecturers were really good at explaining the different aspects of this subject. There are a lot of help sessions and the tutors (at least the ones I had) were really helpful in trying to help you understand the core ideas of all the questions and how it can relate to other areas in chemistry. The exam is definitely more difficult than the practice materials and the quizzes we did during the semester, but I do think that some of it was very fair, however there were a lot of tough questions as well.

don’t do it unless you have to. took wayyyyyyy too much effort and didn’t improved at all the mark i ended up receiving

PLEASE, PLEASE do not take this subject, it absolutely destroyed my WAM, and I so regret taking it. I put more work into this subject than I put into ANY other subjects at Uni and I still ended up with an H3, which is so disappointing. The workload is definitely 2 to 3x any normal 12.5 credit subject. The exam takes the cake. It was ridiculously difficult, and nothing like the practice exam/ past exams WHATSOEVER, despite the promise that the practice exam would be of a similar difficulty to the real exam. No amount of the readings or tutorial worksheets could possibly have prepared anybody for the exam that my cohort had to write. They assessed you on irrelevant parts of the course (SOME OF WHICH WERE NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE LECTURES) instead of the crux of the subject, and even the questions that focused on the main aspects of the course were not straightforward or even remotely understandable. The exam was NOT fair. Even though I was averaging high 80s/90s throughout the semester, the exam was so difficult that my exam mark was closer to mid 50s, so please keep this in mind. The teaching of the subject is okay. The topics include gas laws, trends, isomerism, naming molecules, equilibria (ksp, ka, pka etc) and thermodynamics (entropy, enthalpy, Gibbs etc) most of which are challenging to understand/apply but do-able in most assessments (except for when they turn up beyond convoluted in the exam). Although the weekly quizzes keep you on track with studying, they are simply not a good indication for what the exam is like. Practicals are not related to lectures most of the time which is very inconvenient and there's often prep work. There isn't a lot of guidance given for HOW to write up lab reports for the practicals and marks are taken away for petty things. The lab demonstrator I had was unhelpful and didn't really answer any of my questions, and then proceeded to take away marks for getting things wrong on the report (which I wouldn't have gotten wrong if I had my doubts clarified in the first place). The person running my tutorial was terrible, he didn't go through any questions on the worksheet and didn't bother to explain them when we asked him to. Overall, this subject is terrible. Please only take this subject if you need to as a pre-req/don't mind what grade you get.

I loved this subject. I find it interesting, especially the organic chemistry one. The tutor (Sonia) was amazing! She gave us detailed explanations and comprehensive discussions to the tutorial questions. The workload is also not too bad, but you do need to keep up with the lectures. The exam was pretty good too, they gave us about 3 hours and that is a good time where you won't need to rush things. Doing the lectures, past exams, and tutorial sheets they gave us is definitely enough to at least get a relatively good grades in this subject

One of the harder 1st year subjects sure, but it's chem so what do you expect. They give plenty of resources for students to use and do well at the subject. Hard but interesting subject.

To be fair, this subject was quite dry and nowhere near as enjoyable as chemistry in high school. The difficulty was a massive step up and many lecturers seemed to just force the content into your head without really explaining it properly. Pracs were annoying, stressful and weren't related to the lecture content at all. What was more annoying was that you could spend up to 2 hours preparing for each prac (e.g. doing most of the writeup beforehand), since you're expected to submit everything at the end of each prac session, which made the workload for this subject very heavy. The exam was also much harder than all of the past papers given and we were often assessed on content that only appeared on one lecture slide. Overall, this was poorly-organised subject that has a workload of 1.5-2 times that of a normal 12.5 credit point subject, so prepare to work really hard throughout the semester.