Organic chemistry

[Anonymous]

I heard that's a rough class. Some STEM students get tutors for tough classes. I did. Get 2 or 3 for same class if she must.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do they need to weed out pre-med? We need more doctors!

Having weed-out classes save lives, because they keep stupid ones out.

Not true. It keeps out good doctors and promotes useless textbook memorizers.

[Anonymous]

Where did you go to college OP?

What grades did you get?

[Anonymous]

My kid is a freshman taking ochem at a “grade inflation” Ivy. Makes me laugh, not a thing in our experience. Top student at a rigorous high school with perfect sat cold and they will be white knuckling that A until the end. Lab being combined will help, exams are incredibly difficult. They claim their pre-med reqs prepare well for MCAT and they’ll thank them later, hope so!

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, a terrible (or even not-that-great) professor can make orgo difficult. If you have a good professor then it will click right into place.

Orgo is different than the kind of chemistry classes the kids are used to. Intro chem is just a series of topics that are not really very interconnected. So if you don’t really understand crystal structures, well you’ll still be OK when you get to thermodynamics, and won’t bomb the class.

Orgo, however, is the class where the whole point is to build molecules (that contain carbon). The topics in the course build upon one another. For instance, if you don’t understand R and S and enantiomers in the beginning, then you’re kind of screwed because you will be using these topics the whole way through. You also have to learn how to “push electrons” - this is particularly important when double bonds and benzene rings come into play in the 2nd semester. However, if you understand how to push electrons and know some basic ways to, say, make a ketone or an aldehyde or do syn & anti hydrogenation etc., then you’re good to go!

I had a horrible time in Orgo my first semester, where I had a pretty lousy professor. But the professor in the second semester was just brilliant at conveying what we were learning and why (shout out to Dr Jacobi at Wesleyan university back in the 90’s!). It turned a class that I hated into a class that I loved, and I ultimately worked as an organic chemist for a few years before med school.

I really grew to love orgo - when taught properly it makes a lot of sense and it’s so much fun – it’s like a series of little puzzles, and it’s exceedingly satisfying to build a complex molecule from basic building blocks.

I think your niece might benefit from a tutor. Someone who really knows how to TEACH it, and is not some famous chemist who is being forced by their chairman to run an introductory class. Believe me, a good teacher here can make all the difference. I went from terrible at orgo to loving it based on getting a new prof for the 2nd semester.

[Anonymous]

I absolutely loved Organic Chemistry and went on to get a PhD in it. I taught it to undergrads for a few years.

The kids who struggle the most in Organic Chemistry are usually premeds who try to memorize it like they would anatomy. They think if they just study enough that they'll memorize everything. That's not the right approach.

You have to treat it like a math class and figure out how to push electrons to solve problems. You need to do problem after problem, picture structures in 3D and think about what would happen next. It's hard but really fun when you start to understand how molecules would behave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I absolutely loved Organic Chemistry and went on to get a PhD in it. I taught it to undergrads for a few years.

The kids who struggle the most in Organic Chemistry are usually premeds who try to memorize it like they would anatomy. They think if they just study enough that they'll memorize everything. That's not the right approach.

You have to treat it like a math class and figure out how to push electrons to solve problems. You need to do problem after problem, picture structures in 3D and think about what would happen next. It's hard but really fun when you start to understand how molecules would behave.

Just posted about my kid white knuckling the A. This is exactly how my premed described it to me, that she’s not memorizing and learning processes, and those that don’t have more trouble. However, it’s been very challenging regardless. Can’t help but wonder how orgo 2 will compare next semester. I thought maybe I read some do better in it?

[Anonymous]

Ochem involves tons of deep understanding on how molecules react with each other. Throughout the year you learned various types of reactions that have been discovered in the past. The hardest part comes toward the end of the year, when you began to design synthesis route for producing a target molecule--sometimes highly complex ones. That's the test of intelligence.

[Anonymous]

Reading these descriptions of the class makes my brain hurt, but I know I am not that kind of smart.

[Anonymous]

I honestly don’t know how I passed. I don’t think I did but I didn’t ask questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know how I passed. I don’t think I did but I didn’t ask questions.

I’m 100% sure I was “gifted” a C. Thanks Prof K.

[Anonymous]

For colleges which have weed-out courses for pre-med students, organic chemistry and physical chemistry often are weed-out classes.

Often, not always, there is a separate organic chemistry course (different course # and maybe slightly different material) for the Chem E students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard that's a rough class. Some STEM students get tutors for tough classes. I did. Get 2 or 3 for same class if she must.

+1. Tutors, outside supplemental materials, possibly student study groups, meet with professor during office hours, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do they need to weed out pre-med? We need more doctors!

Becoming a doctor should be very difficult to do!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do they need to weed out pre-med? We need more doctors!

Wait until med school after they've obtained hundreds of thousands of student loans?