<p>Everyone talks about how O Chem is a killer, so why don't people take it during their last year of undergrad? Because you apply for med school during the summer or at the beginning of senior year don't you?</p>
<p>I think med school adcoms may be suspicious about this if you do this without a very good reason. Also, if you want to be a competitive applicant, you want to take advantage of any opportunity to demonstrate your academic strength – getting an A in orgo could help you to do that.</p>
<p>Also, for many science majors, this is not an option. For example, for DS’s major, I believe at least orgo I is a prereq class for his major, meaning that, if you have not taken orgo I, you are not allowed to take almost any REQUIRED upper division classes in his major, thus can not be graduated. – This may be one reason that more and more premeds choose non-science major route.</p>
<p>Many premeds who have received very good grades in science prereq classes and who happen to have other talents often choose to major in non-science as their sGPA is already good enough (and no point for them to take risk of having additional science classes?)</p>
<p>With this said, I heard once that a very high percentage of premeds from Penn take their orgo labs in senior year. Even though this is mostly because it is hard to schedule it in other years, I suspect that there is some “premed strategy” here (i.e., save time for EC, studying for MCAT or other classes.)</p>
<p>Several well-known premed strategies: Taking as many “research credits” as the school allows, postponing taking Evolution/ecology/plant bio class (Intro Bio 2) that may not be relevant to MCAT, and taking the time-consuming labs after MCAT.</p>
<p>OChem represents a significant number of the questions on the MCAT. You really can’t take the MCAT without it. (Well, you could, but you’d likely tank it.)</p>
<p>Also OChem (and physics) are reportedly the key courses that adcomms look at when deciding who to offer interviews to. Many (most?) schools won’t even consider applicants who haven’t taken OChem. Their applications get an auto-reject.</p>
<p>The main issues are being pointed by wowmom and mcat2.</p>
<p>If one can’t hack one class and survive it, are they suitable for med school?</p>
<p>Listening to my nephew (MS2) this weekend, I would agree with texas. If you can’t manage Orgo, you really need to consider something else. Med School is just a ton of work and exams that don’t stop. MCAT, exams throughout MS, USMILEs, boards, residency, etc. Even now, my friend’s son, in his 2nd year of Fellowship, studies 2-3 hours a day (on top of his very long hours).</p>
<p>Organic chemistry is a prerequisite for many courses (especially if the student is a biology or chemistry major or something similar, which is what many premeds are). Also, many universities require the student to take certain classes at certain times (for example, a biology major might be forced by the department to take ochem before the end of junior year or they won’t be allowed to get the degree).</p>
<p>You need it for MCAT and most are taking MCAT after junior year. I am not sure if Orgo was the hardest UG class at all. It was very hard but the very first semester of Bio derailed most who were not meant to be there anyway, it was a shocker. The upper Bio classes were even harder. I would say that Orgo was just one of them, no more than that. And all of them were helpful for MCAT (but not the killer weed out first Bio, that one was just a background for all other Bio classes).</p>