Organic chemistry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The professors also all hate organic so you often don’t get the best instruction.
My kid is at a top 10 school and getting bs and cs in orgo — her chem advisor says she’s doing fine with those grades. Her other classes are all super easy for her—this is the only slog. But it really depends a lot on the school — it’s hard everywhere but in some schools, it’s really hard and C is considered a pretty good grade. Some other top schools grade inflate a little more and do like a B curve instead of a C curve.

I’ll never forget an orgo test with the top score setting the curve from a 36/100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my sophomore year, I withdrew from orgo 2 weeks in and made arrangements to take it at summer school. I couldn’t manage the bandwidth it took to think through the reactions plus 4 other courses. Once I was in the summer class and thinking about nothing but orgo (and my mindless 2nd shift job), it finally made sense and came together.

Finding a summer orgo class that you can transfer may be the answer. I was not pre-med but my class was 98% pre-meds who knew the secret.

Another option, is to find a OC class at a community college that the university will accept. My brother did that years ago and it was the only way he would have made it through pharmacy school.
I have a PhD in Chem and hated Organic.

I’m the PP you’re replying to and I was at an Ivy. We were allowed to transfer in 2 outside classes so I went home to a local small, private university with a strong nursing program to take orgo. I chose it based on affordable cost and reputation of the course and professor. Kids from my HS passed down the info about the class.

Start asking around- kids who are seniors in college or in med school who went to your kid’s high school will have local recommendations.

Even if your college accepts the transfer, how do you know the medical school you apply to will view it as the same rigor?

Orgo is the same rigor whenever you go. This isn’t high school honors history vs. regular history. Score well on your MCATs, get a great GPA and get As in all your pre-reqs and no one will question rigor.

Now if you had a lot of Cs in pre-reqs at your Ivy and an A in a pre-req at a non-Ivy, then yeah, it would raise red flags

Having taught and taken orgo at different universities, this isn't true. The basics are the same, but amount of content covered and the difficulty of tests can vary a lot.

Just as examples, my experience was that William and Mary covered a ton of material, including graduate level content, and was very comprehensive. U of Arizona had a easy curriculum and tests. UCLA was super over-subscribed so the tests were multiple choice and focused on minutiae to weed out pre-meds and didn't really test understanding. Berkeley had difficult exams that focused on problem solving and reaction mechanisms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chemist here, yes orgo is hard, and for non chem majors it will probably be the hardest class they ever take. For chemists, I actually thought quantum chem was a nightmare.

They call it a pre-med weed class, and my bro couldn't hack it and dropped his desire to be a doctor. and I think this is why it's a weed class...

It teaches a level of logic you don't see in other STEM majors in that it involves both visual and order awareness, which I think is a necessary skill if your ever want to be a surgeon. Orgo also requires more memorization then needed in maths or physics. I honestly trust doctors who majored in chemistry better than other docs lol.

I had flash cards for orgo that I still have in my desk! Each reaction had it's own flashcard and I memorized those cards until I could visualize each one in my head, so when I saw the rxn on a test I could draw it with no prob at all.

I have heard some say that BioChem is harder than Organic Chem.

Maybe for a few rare professors, but biochem is mostly an intro level course that is just getting kids started on the concepts of proteins, structure-function, enzymes, metabolism and other basic concepts. It gets very hard at the graduate level, but the intro class usually isn't too bad.

In thought orgo was far easier than biochem. In orgo the reactions follow rules that make sense.

In biochemistry most of the action is by enzymes, which can easily break the “rules” - for instance, there are hydronium ions (H-) all over the place in biochemistry, which is nuts.

Orgo = learn some rules and reason it out
Biochem = memorization

DC also thought BioChem was harder. Not sure why, could have been the professor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The professors also all hate organic so you often don’t get the best instruction.
My kid is at a top 10 school and getting bs and cs in orgo — her chem advisor says she’s doing fine with those grades. Her other classes are all super easy for her—this is the only slog. But it really depends a lot on the school — it’s hard everywhere but in some schools, it’s really hard and C is considered a pretty good grade. Some other top schools grade inflate a little more and do like a B curve instead of a C curve.

I’ll never forget an orgo test with the top score setting the curve from a 36/100.

What is the point of an exam where the best student only gets 36%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The professors also all hate organic so you often don’t get the best instruction.
My kid is at a top 10 school and getting bs and cs in orgo — her chem advisor says she’s doing fine with those grades. Her other classes are all super easy for her—this is the only slog. But it really depends a lot on the school — it’s hard everywhere but in some schools, it’s really hard and C is considered a pretty good grade. Some other top schools grade inflate a little more and do like a B curve instead of a C curve.

I’ll never forget an orgo test with the top score setting the curve from a 36/100.

What is the point of an exam where the best student only gets 36%

I had a Kinetics exam where the class average was 15. Mind you this wasn't a pre med class, only established Chem and Chem E majors took this class. Chem professors can be nuts.

[Anonymous]

Who calls it orgo?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

It was called Orgo by all the premeds at Georgetown in the 90s. This isn’t new.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my sophomore year, I withdrew from orgo 2 weeks in and made arrangements to take it at summer school. I couldn’t manage the bandwidth it took to think through the reactions plus 4 other courses. Once I was in the summer class and thinking about nothing but orgo (and my mindless 2nd shift job), it finally made sense and came together.

Finding a summer orgo class that you can transfer may be the answer. I was not pre-med but my class was 98% pre-meds who knew the secret.

Another option, is to find a OC class at a community college that the university will accept. My brother did that years ago and it was the only way he would have made it through pharmacy school.
I have a PhD in Chem and hated Organic.

I’m the PP you’re replying to and I was at an Ivy. We were allowed to transfer in 2 outside classes so I went home to a local small, private university with a strong nursing program to take orgo. I chose it based on affordable cost and reputation of the course and professor. Kids from my HS passed down the info about the class.

Start asking around- kids who are seniors in college or in med school who went to your kid’s high school will have local recommendations.

Even if your college accepts the transfer, how do you know the medical school you apply to will view it as the same rigor?

Orgo is the same rigor whenever you go. This isn’t high school honors history vs. regular history. Score well on your MCATs, get a great GPA and get As in all your pre-reqs and no one will question rigor.

Now if you had a lot of Cs in pre-reqs at your Ivy and an A in a pre-req at a non-Ivy, then yeah, it would raise red flags

orgo is hard everywhere but it is not taught with the same rigor everywhere. Ask professors who have taught it at ivies versus below T50s. I live with one. Even the teaching of difficult subjects is tailored to the ability of the students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

every premed at my kid's ivy as well as every nonpremed engineer and chem major in there. we called it O Chem in my day, state school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

It was called Orgo by all the premeds at Georgetown in the 90s. This isn’t new.

I was a ChemE major and I never heard Orgo before DCUM. We call it OChem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

It was called Orgo by all the premeds at Georgetown in the 90s. This isn’t new.

I was a ChemE major and I never heard Orgo before DCUM. We call it OChem.

We called it Orgo in college in the 90s. I've seen OChem more recently, so I adpated. Like moving from Pop to Soda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

It was called Orgo by all the premeds at Georgetown in the 90s. This isn’t new.

I was a ChemE major and I never heard Orgo before DCUM. We call it OChem.

I was a chem major in the early 2000s and we called it Orgo and never Ochem.

[Anonymous]

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

The bottleneck is residency spots, not orgo.

[Anonymous]

My sister is a doctor and she had to withdraw from o-chem twice. It is a joke in our family that she was in the class so long that they changed the textbook. She ended up taking it over the Summer and it really helped to concentrate just on that. She attended an excellent medical school, and she is a subspecialty doctor so it did not affect her long term.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A trend now is to take OChem in the summer at a community college and then repeat it at your 4-year. You aren't using the CC class for credit, but to prepare you to get a good grade in the one that matters.

you have to submit the CC grade to med school apps. NOT a good look, at all.