CHEM425 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Natalia White CHEM425 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2025	Not bad at all. the material for the class is quite challenging but she had most of everything you need to know on the class slides! She does ask question in class and if you are wrong she can seem a little harsh/dismissive but its just because she's trying to get to a correct answer to keep lecture moving along, like i said its a lot of material in only 100 minutes a week so she and everyone else has to keep it moving. accent is not an issue and sometimes she forgets a word which is a blessing cause it gives me a extra second to catch up. Labs aren't bad , but the reports can be a bit hard, but that's not her fault. You do get to split the work load with a lab partner so I recommend taking this class with a friend/ acquaintance you trust to do their share. but be warned if you wanna ditch you lab partner when it came to the lab reports you don't get a new one and are on your own for the rest of the class. class was split into 2 midterms each 15% of final grade, a cumulative final worth 20%, a lab final worth 5%, and the rest of the lab work is 45% of final grade so a bit of buffer for exams. If you care she cares also , I bombed the first exam, thought it was gonna be easy only studied for 1 day got a 49% on it. my grade fell to a 67. i went in asked if there was anything i could do. she said she knew i was smart but called me out on my lack trying and was right on the head of the nail. I started going to office hours asking question in and out of class, studied 3-4 days before mid term 2 and final. got and 88 on both and got my grade up to 86%. with a little hidden curve she had at the end of the semester I got an A. she cares !10/10
Peter Nemes CHEM425 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2025	He's a strange guy but clearly passionate about the material. We had no homework in the lecture portion of the class and the lecture midterms were very easy. However, he only posts slides and emphasizes that most of what he says isn't on the slides, so you have to take detailed notes during class. He also shoves his research in your face any chance he gets. The lab portion of this class was AWFUL, but he wasn't responsible for that half. As a professor he wasn't bad, but sometimes he would say the most out of pocket stuff during class. When no one would answer his questions he would walk around clapping and saying "wake up people, elections are soon," and he would call everything "common sense."
Peter Nemes CHEM425 Anonymous 12/10/2024	Just like the review on 12/09, Nemes really does structure his exams quite easily, but if you do not attend classes or you miss a class, there's basically no way to get that information because he does not record, and a lot of what he talks about/delves into in class aren't written on his powerpoint slides. If you go to class and pay attention, you'll do well with the exams for the most part.
Natalia White CHEM425 Anonymous 12/10/2024	Dr. White was extremely particular with what she wanted and did not want in a report, without making us aware of it. The structure of this lab was absolutely discombobulated: from the instruments providing ridiculous results and not working for an entire lab period, to each TA having their own rubric and searching for different pieces of information that were never mentioned in the grading schemes. We were expected to write about a lottt of concepts, but the page limit was only 8 pages. The TAs for this lab were also insufferable and extremely nitpicky. This lab was painful and both Dr. White and most of the TAs were rude. It wastes so much paper, and it drains your mental wellbeing every week.
Peter Nemes CHEM425 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/09/2024	Very silly goofy guy; he makes me laugh in lecture. Exams are pretty easy or else a random made-up question that everyone gets wrong and gets curved out. Exam questions are very surface-level. For the first exam I studied for days and the hardest question on the exam was "what's your favorite step of a redox reaction?"(mass transfer duh). The exams literally take 15 minutes. Lectures are half random stuff that he says you don't need to know. It is simply not that deep. Would definitely recommend Nemes for this lecture.
Natalia White CHEM425 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/13/2024	I think professor White means well, however the class is structured in a way such that you will not be evaluated based on your knowledge, nor your ability to learn or perform labs. Lab partners are chosen during the lab orientation and cannot be changed, unless you wish to write the reports yourself. This sucks for anyone taking a hard semester outside of this class if you have a bad partner because the only alternative is to write the reports individually. To this end, if you are busy and have unknowingly chosen a bad lab partner, assuming that you didn't know anyone in the class, your choices are to shoulder an unreasonable amount of work or let your irresponsible lab partner tank the lab portion of the grade. Regarding the midterms, there are practice exams posted (without an answer key) and the midterms taken during the class never have answer keys. Additionally, wrong answers on the midterms are not marked with the correct answers. This results in not being able to correct conceptual misunderstandings effectively. I think the course policies are set up in a manner that makes students have to work against the class. It's unfortunate that this class is a requirement for majors.
Natalia White CHEM425 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/16/2024	This lab is not a very hard lab conceptually, but there is a ton of writing. The labs are actually pretty cool if you think about them, but you have a lot of downtime in some of them. You generally have limited interactions with Natalia, but she does grade one of the intro reports and you can ask her questions. She is a very nice professor and will take the time to explain instruments to you since she also teaches this course in the spring. Some wisdom for this course is choose your lab partner carefully since you have to write the reports with them. If for some reason your lab partner doesn't write their parts, Natalia will make you write the reports individually, and that sucks.
Peter Nemes CHEM425 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/16/2024	If you take him for instrumental, he is a super funny lecturer, but at the end of most classes, his 'real world' example is one of his publications. His exams are totally random and weird. You have to do a lot of prep for them anyway, and he'll ask you a mix of super general and super specific questions and sometimes about things he didn't talk about at all. Overall he's not the worst chemistry professor in the department, but he has a huge ego and is sometimes mean. He was usually considerate of the greater stresses people were having which was nice. He also did this strange thing where he allowed no one to ask questions during exam at all, and he didn't show up to our exams, having Natalia proctor them. The lab is run by Natalia White (such a queen), so Nemes will never talk about it.
Peter Nemes CHEM425 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/19/2023	this is probably the weirdest class i’ve ever taken. the lab part is super helpful and i’ve learned a lot, but i think the lecture was utter nonsense. there’s so much dense information and the exams are not indicative of the material. the final was like maybe 10 questions all worth 20 points and only covered a small section of the material. i feel like i studied all of this for nothing. the grading is harsh and you have to predict what he wants you to write very carefully or else you will have no credit. i do think this is one of the more useful and important classes in biochem/chem, but the way they test your knowledge is upsetting and unfair. averages were generally low as well. he also talks a lot about his own research which is not very useful for us but i understand him trying to flex. decent guy i guess but he is not a super great lecturer
Neil Blough CHEM425 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/23/2013	Dr. Blough is an excellent professor, and potentially the best one I have had at Maryland as a biochem & neurophys double degree. His lecturing style is the clearest of any professor I've had thus far (in 7 semesters), he's enthusiastic, and I could readily and easily recall all of the material he lectured about during exams, even if I hadn't studied a particular topic intensely. Your TAs are usually sympathetic towards you (you're taking 6 hours of lab a week for this one class, after all) - just make sure you keep up with the lab reports (which are VERY time intensive), attend lecture, and the lecture will basically do the work for you.
Natalia White CHEM425 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/19/2013	CHEM 425 is the most difficult class at the University of Maryland period. Mrs. White is the lab coordinator for this course, which has 10, 12+ instrument printouts page lab report due every week on a new laboratory instrument. There are prelabs every week. The biggest problem I had with Mrs. White was that the answers for the prelabs were not given. This is a problem because you have to write a 12+ page lab report on the topic of the prelab. The grading of the lab reports is very strict, when I was in this class I spent approximately 40 hours a week doing work for the laboratory portion of the course. There is also a lecture portion of top of the lab. The course is not curved. This class was extremely helpful in teaching me how to write lab reports. For that I am very thankful. If you are not an expert scientific writer go to the writing center every week! Read scientific papers to see how it is done. Grading is tough.
Neil Blough CHEM425 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2013	Amazing professor. You dont need the textbook. Just attend lecture and take notes. exams are super straight forward. There's a curve. Our year an 84% was an A. Lab reports are the killer just make sure you see a Ta before submission. Start strong, thats the trick.

Natalia White
CHEM425

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/23/2025

Not bad at all. the material for the class is quite challenging but she had most of everything you need to know on the class slides! She does ask question in class and if you are wrong she can seem a little harsh/dismissive but its just because she's trying to get to a correct answer to keep lecture moving along, like i said its a lot of material in only 100 minutes a week so she and everyone else has to keep it moving. accent is not an issue and sometimes she forgets a word which is a blessing cause it gives me a extra second to catch up. Labs aren't bad , but the reports can be a bit hard, but that's not her fault. You do get to split the work load with a lab partner so I recommend taking this class with a friend/ acquaintance you trust to do their share. but be warned if you wanna ditch you lab partner when it came to the lab reports you don't get a new one and are on your own for the rest of the class. class was split into 2 midterms each 15% of final grade, a cumulative final worth 20%, a lab final worth 5%, and the rest of the lab work is 45% of final grade so a bit of buffer for exams. If you care she cares also , I bombed the first exam, thought it was gonna be easy only studied for 1 day got a 49% on it. my grade fell to a 67. i went in asked if there was anything i could do. she said she knew i was smart but called me out on my lack trying and was right on the head of the nail. I started going to office hours asking question in and out of class, studied 3-4 days before mid term 2 and final. got and 88 on both and got my grade up to 86%. with a little hidden curve she had at the end of the semester I got an A. she cares !10/10

Peter Nemes
CHEM425

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2025

He's a strange guy but clearly passionate about the material. We had no homework in the lecture portion of the class and the lecture midterms were very easy. However, he only posts slides and emphasizes that most of what he says isn't on the slides, so you have to take detailed notes during class. He also shoves his research in your face any chance he gets. The lab portion of this class was AWFUL, but he wasn't responsible for that half. As a professor he wasn't bad, but sometimes he would say the most out of pocket stuff during class. When no one would answer his questions he would walk around clapping and saying "wake up people, elections are soon," and he would call everything "common sense."

Peter Nemes
CHEM425

Anonymous
12/10/2024

Just like the review on 12/09, Nemes really does structure his exams quite easily, but if you do not attend classes or you miss a class, there's basically no way to get that information because he does not record, and a lot of what he talks about/delves into in class aren't written on his powerpoint slides. If you go to class and pay attention, you'll do well with the exams for the most part.

Natalia White
CHEM425

Anonymous
12/10/2024

Dr. White was extremely particular with what she wanted and did not want in a report, without making us aware of it. The structure of this lab was absolutely discombobulated: from the instruments providing ridiculous results and not working for an entire lab period, to each TA having their own rubric and searching for different pieces of information that were never mentioned in the grading schemes. We were expected to write about a lottt of concepts, but the page limit was only 8 pages. The TAs for this lab were also insufferable and extremely nitpicky. This lab was painful and both Dr. White and most of the TAs were rude. It wastes so much paper, and it drains your mental wellbeing every week.

Peter Nemes
CHEM425

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/09/2024

Very silly goofy guy; he makes me laugh in lecture. Exams are pretty easy or else a random made-up question that everyone gets wrong and gets curved out. Exam questions are very surface-level. For the first exam I studied for days and the hardest question on the exam was "what's your favorite step of a redox reaction?"(mass transfer duh). The exams literally take 15 minutes. Lectures are half random stuff that he says you don't need to know. It is simply not that deep. Would definitely recommend Nemes for this lecture.

Natalia White
CHEM425

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/13/2024

I think professor White means well, however the class is structured in a way such that you will not be evaluated based on your knowledge, nor your ability to learn or perform labs. Lab partners are chosen during the lab orientation and cannot be changed, unless you wish to write the reports yourself. This sucks for anyone taking a hard semester outside of this class if you have a bad partner because the only alternative is to write the reports individually. To this end, if you are busy and have unknowingly chosen a bad lab partner, assuming that you didn't know anyone in the class, your choices are to shoulder an unreasonable amount of work or let your irresponsible lab partner tank the lab portion of the grade. Regarding the midterms, there are practice exams posted (without an answer key) and the midterms taken during the class never have answer keys. Additionally, wrong answers on the midterms are not marked with the correct answers. This results in not being able to correct conceptual misunderstandings effectively. I think the course policies are set up in a manner that makes students have to work against the class. It's unfortunate that this class is a requirement for majors.

Natalia White
CHEM425

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/16/2024

This lab is not a very hard lab conceptually, but there is a ton of writing. The labs are actually pretty cool if you think about them, but you have a lot of downtime in some of them. You generally have limited interactions with Natalia, but she does grade one of the intro reports and you can ask her questions. She is a very nice professor and will take the time to explain instruments to you since she also teaches this course in the spring. Some wisdom for this course is choose your lab partner carefully since you have to write the reports with them. If for some reason your lab partner doesn't write their parts, Natalia will make you write the reports individually, and that sucks.

Peter Nemes
CHEM425

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/16/2024

If you take him for instrumental, he is a super funny lecturer, but at the end of most classes, his 'real world' example is one of his publications. His exams are totally random and weird. You have to do a lot of prep for them anyway, and he'll ask you a mix of super general and super specific questions and sometimes about things he didn't talk about at all. Overall he's not the worst chemistry professor in the department, but he has a huge ego and is sometimes mean. He was usually considerate of the greater stresses people were having which was nice. He also did this strange thing where he allowed no one to ask questions during exam at all, and he didn't show up to our exams, having Natalia proctor them. The lab is run by Natalia White (such a queen), so Nemes will never talk about it.

Peter Nemes
CHEM425

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/19/2023

this is probably the weirdest class i’ve ever taken. the lab part is super helpful and i’ve learned a lot, but i think the lecture was utter nonsense. there’s so much dense information and the exams are not indicative of the material. the final was like maybe 10 questions all worth 20 points and only covered a small section of the material. i feel like i studied all of this for nothing. the grading is harsh and you have to predict what he wants you to write very carefully or else you will have no credit. i do think this is one of the more useful and important classes in biochem/chem, but the way they test your knowledge is upsetting and unfair. averages were generally low as well. he also talks a lot about his own research which is not very useful for us but i understand him trying to flex. decent guy i guess but he is not a super great lecturer

Neil Blough
CHEM425

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/23/2013

Dr. Blough is an excellent professor, and potentially the best one I have had at Maryland as a biochem & neurophys double degree. His lecturing style is the clearest of any professor I've had thus far (in 7 semesters), he's enthusiastic, and I could readily and easily recall all of the material he lectured about during exams, even if I hadn't studied a particular topic intensely. Your TAs are usually sympathetic towards you (you're taking 6 hours of lab a week for this one class, after all) - just make sure you keep up with the lab reports (which are VERY time intensive), attend lecture, and the lecture will basically do the work for you.

Natalia White
CHEM425

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/19/2013

CHEM 425 is the most difficult class at the University of Maryland period. Mrs. White is the lab coordinator for this course, which has 10, 12+ instrument printouts page lab report due every week on a new laboratory instrument. There are prelabs every week. The biggest problem I had with Mrs. White was that the answers for the prelabs were not given. This is a problem because you have to write a 12+ page lab report on the topic of the prelab. The grading of the lab reports is very strict, when I was in this class I spent approximately 40 hours a week doing work for the laboratory portion of the course. There is also a lecture portion of top of the lab. The course is not curved. This class was extremely helpful in teaching me how to write lab reports. For that I am very thankful. If you are not an expert scientific writer go to the writing center every week! Read scientific papers to see how it is done. Grading is tough.

Neil Blough
CHEM425

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2013

Amazing professor. You dont need the textbook. Just attend lecture and take notes. exams are super straight forward. There's a curve. Our year an 84% was an A. Lab reports are the killer just make sure you see a Ta before submission. Start strong, thats the trick.

Reviews for CHEM425