Organic chemistry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Not if you audit the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1
Orgo is VERY differently tested across schools. William and Mary is known for being closer to how rigorous schools like Hopkins run the course, vs other state schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

what does orgo even mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1
Orgo is VERY differently tested across schools. William and Mary is known for being closer to how rigorous schools like Hopkins run the course, vs other state schools

this goes to the well-deserved perception (denied by DCUMoms) that W&M makes everything harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

How would you be forced? How would medical school even know you did?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

Not according to the American Medical Association

https://www.ama-assn.org/topics/physician-shortage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to Cal and took organic chemistry with Peter Schultz. I fell in love with it to the point of thinking for a while that I was going to drop medicine and pursue a PhD in chemistry. Pete’s brilliance as a teacher (for me) was constantly connecting the dots between what we learning at the moment and bioorganic applications. I still remember a lecture from 35 years ago where he showed that washing vegetables to remove putative pesticides didn’t make sense given the logP of the targets. Kills me that kids don’t enjoy this subject, it’s truly awesome and made studying pharmacology in medical school tremendously more interesting and efficient.

Can you explain what this means for a typical veggie eater?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Cal and took organic chemistry with Peter Schultz. I fell in love with it to the point of thinking for a while that I was going to drop medicine and pursue a PhD in chemistry. Pete’s brilliance as a teacher (for me) was constantly connecting the dots between what we learning at the moment and bioorganic applications. I still remember a lecture from 35 years ago where he showed that washing vegetables to remove putative pesticides didn’t make sense given the logP of the targets. Kills me that kids don’t enjoy this subject, it’s truly awesome and made studying pharmacology in medical school tremendously more interesting and efficient.

Can you explain what this means for a typical veggie eater?

you should still wash the veggies before you eat them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Cal and took organic chemistry with Peter Schultz. I fell in love with it to the point of thinking for a while that I was going to drop medicine and pursue a PhD in chemistry. Pete’s brilliance as a teacher (for me) was constantly connecting the dots between what we learning at the moment and bioorganic applications. I still remember a lecture from 35 years ago where he showed that washing vegetables to remove putative pesticides didn’t make sense given the logP of the targets. Kills me that kids don’t enjoy this subject, it’s truly awesome and made studying pharmacology in medical school tremendously more interesting and efficient.

Can you explain what this means for a typical veggie eater?

you should still wash the veggies before you eat them

Will do, but does this mean you really can’t just wash off the pesticides, even with an organic veggie wash soap?

[Anonymous]

Organic Chemistry is a combination of strategic problem solving and memorization. Most other classes are one or the other but not both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

My kid is currently at a T10 where "orgo" is the term used.

Kid is an engineering major toying with the idea of taking orgo at the T10 over the summer, just for "fun" because one or more of his nerdy friends may be taking it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

I work with med students, and have mostly heard orgo, but some - especially those from state schools - call it O Chem

The terminology “O chem” makes more sense if you are a chemistry major because the sophomore year spent doing “O chem” is followed by junior year doing “P Chem” (stands for “physical chemistry”). P chem was the trifecta of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics (each of which was a semester). There was a separate class junior year called “inorganic chemistry” which covered reactions with compounds that don’t contain carbon. We also took biochem junior year as well as lots of long lab courses. Junior year as a chemistry major was a bad year….

It is interesting to me that our current med students are still so traumatized by orgo that they continue to allude to it years later - long after they survived and made it to med school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

How would you be forced? How would medical school even know you did?

https://www.reddit.com/r/prenursing/comments/11mdpj5/what_happens_if_i_dont_send_in_transcripts_from/#:~:text=Schools%20are%20audited%20often%20so,mean%20it%20doesn't%20happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

How would you be forced? How would medical school even know you did?

https://www.reddit.com/r/prenursing/comments/11mdpj5/what_happens_if_i_dont_send_in_transcripts_from/#:~:text=Schools%20are%20audited%20often%20so,mean%20it%20doesn't%20happen.

are they saying that when you apply to any selective institution, they will demand all previous college transcripts and even look you up on clearingbouse to see where you went? That's very strange

Just from personal experience, I took two correspondence course in high school. I didn't send that transcript when I applied to college or grad school and no one mentioned

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who calls it orgo?

My kid is currently at a T10 where "orgo" is the term used.

Kid is an engineering major toying with the idea of taking orgo at the T10 over the summer, just for "fun" because one or more of his nerdy friends may be taking it.

Bio majors. We all called id orgo. I still shudder thinking about it.