Hi! Im from GSU and I got accepted to Georgia tech with a chemistry major. I was wondering how hard it is… Any tips would help! Im planning to become a pharmacist, but I plan to finish a chemistry major and go to pharmacy school afterwards…
Or, Should I just go to UGA, since I also got accepted there?
UGA has a pharmacy school. Do they give preference to students who take their pharmacy prerequisites there?
I’m not quite sure. They probably would? But I would like to finish with a chemistry degree before going to pharmacy school, since I am still lacking some prerequisites. Would you happen to know if chemistry is hard at GT?
No, I’m sorry I don’t know. But I’ve heard engineering is hard at GT and some students are losing their HOPE scholarships because of the GPA requirement.
My D has to take Bio 1 and 2, Chem 1 and 2, Ochem 1 and 2 for prepharmacy. Maybe a Biochemistry major would work well for you?
Did you contact both schools to ask average gpa of chem majors?
Also ask UGA if it would give you an admissions boost for the pharmacy school if your undergraduate degree is from UGA.
Go to GT. While I can’t speak for chemistry in particular, the difficulty at GT is largely overblown. If you manage your time well and are reasonably intelligent, you’ll be fine. Just do your work as it’s assigned and don’t hesitate to go to office hours if something is confusing. Most professors are more than willing to help.
@SomniumCrepitans : For chemistry, the two (UGA and Tech) may actually be similar especially for courses like organic and general chemistry(though Tech covers more content, the exams given by instructors are multiple choice and are relatively straight-forward). Difference is that classes at UGA are larger and that Tech may require more lab work to get degree. Not really a bad thing. This is what I gather from actually seeing some course content from the two.
Engineering majors seem to be difficult at Tech (based on content and course materials) and lesser so the sciences (except physics). This could come from the fact that intro, intermediate, and a few advanced courses are so larger because they host both chemistry/biochemistry majors and engineering majors, whereas engineering major classes shrink and level off as level increases. Teachers of extremely large courses are less inclined to give unusually challenging out of class assignments or exams due to the burden of grading that is incurred. This applies for any school whether it is elite (like Tech) or not. There are always exceptions, but often things like exam format (like how much close-ended vs. problem solving questions to put? How open-ended should problem solving questions be?) are influenced by how easily the instructor thinks it is to grade. Unless they have a large team of graders (like several graduate students) relative to class size, you won’t see as many open-ended and/or difficult/tedious exam items (ones where a lot of fine judgement must be used in grading) or HW assignments for that matter.
I’m not sure that the rigor at GT is over blown. My son is a chemE major at GT and just got Cs in both orgo 1 and orgo 2. This is a kid that had a 33 ACT, and 5s on both the AP chem and calc bc exams. His honors chem teacher nominated him for the governors honors program in chemistry. A daughter of a friend of mine got As in orgo at UGA. She is a very smart woman, but she is not as smart as my son. The classes at UGA are easier. If you want to go to pharmacy school, I would go to UGA.
@Panthergirl : Your son, as a chemE major, likely had a harder courseload overall than a pre-pharm student at any school while he was taking ochem. In addition, unlike the ACT, most teachers do not write mostly multiple choice exams so an HS standardized exam is not going to compare well to a less predictable sophomore organic chemistry exam (you don’t study months for each midterm in college and likely do not have previous exposure to organic chemistry through all of middle and high school. You are learning a challenging, new subject that differs dramatically in approach to learning vs. say biology, general chemistry, and calculus). There won’t really be much of a correlation. Most ochem instructors only find a loose correlation between general chemistry (supposedly equivalent to AP) and organic with many students scoring A grades in general chemistry not being able to draw Lewis structures at the beginning of ochem.
A chemE person may be more oriented toward math based learning of chemical concepts so may struggle more with ochem than a pre-pharm student who may be more into pattern recognition and puzzles. It may have nothing to do with how naturally “smart” someone is despite students wanting to always tie their intelligence to performance in organic chemistry and make it some ego boost if they do well. It is much more of a hit or miss class for students and students with certain styles of thinking excel while others do not. It does not matter their incoming credentials. As a tutor, I’ve seen gen. chem “C” grades go to high B or near A grades in ochem even when the student chooses the most difficult instructor for the course. Some people with high SATs/ACTs and AP chem credit flounder in organic or even general chemistry in some cases for multiple reasons (complacency, overconfidence, lack of study skills, taking class in context of other difficult courses, learning style, thinking style, extenuating circumstances, etc).
You are comparing apples to oranges. BTW, I’ve seen ochem exams at UGA and at Tech and they are actually quite comparable. The only advantage UGA “may” have is that the curve may be bigger because the competition is not quite as fierce as at schools on Tech or Emory’s level (with many more students coming from more difficult high schools perhaps from out of state). They could be more likely to screw up a difficult test VERY badly whereas students at Tech may achieve a higher average and thus have a less generous curve.
If one said that their child did well on this (International Chemistry Olympiad Problems):https://acswebcontent.acs.org/icho2012/problems/TheoreticalExam.pdf
And then struggled or broke a sweat to do well in organic or general chemistry, then there is an argument to be made that the course is very challenging. I had such an instructor and know what schools with others who give problems like those seen on the exam above (or higher), are. Hint: they aren’t at UGA and Tech. Maybe if we talk math or physics, then we are having a different conversation but not for ochem. AP chem nor the SAT prepares one for the level of complexity seen on that exam (made for very elite high schoolers in the discipline BTW) or even for the less complex ones given by most college instructors (yes, I’m saying most college instructors will NOT give general or organic chemistry problems at the level of complexity and difficulty seen above).
In full interest of evidence, I have used a certain website to pull exams from one class at UGA and one at Tech. They are very comparable and in this case, I think UGA’s is a little harder. And note I chose sort of randomly for UGA (whatever they had available). This could be an easier instructor at Tech. However, if that is the case (Fahrni regarded as easy- not clear, RMP only has him rated for gen. chem where he was rated as difficult), then apparently Baron, who taught the same semester, is regarded as easier (I intentionally did not choose his material because I did not want to be unfair).
UGA:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BZW01ZVhZNGI3Vm8/view?usp=sharing
Tech:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BQUFZUG9HTm83NW8/view?usp=sharing
Compared to what I’ve seen, both of these instructors would fall on the “medium” (basically, they are standard level organic courses with maybe like a single item there to truly challenge top students, but nothing awe inducing. Again, seems Tech physics and math teachers are more likely to give such problems) side for organic . I hear Schuster(sp?) at Tech is hard, but if people consider Fahrni difficult, I am unsure of what the threshold for a “hard” organic chemistry teacher is at Tech, because the above exam is not hard whatsoever (it is the epitome of “just demonstrate to me that you learned exactly what I told you in class and you should do well”). No higher level problem solving or application is required to succeed on either of those exams and I’m sure both sections were huge enrollment wise (meaning they served a decent chunk of students that semester). Just very standard problem types on not so complex molecules. No truly multi-concept problems and no deep levels of analysis needed to succeed on either of these.
I agree with@bernie 12’s comments about organic chemistry. Doing well in general chemistry is not an indicator of who is going to ace O Chem. Also, O chem student body is dominated by premedical wanna bees (and those poor chem engineers who are sweating through it, and chemistry majors who usually do well in it ) . Premeds will do anything for an A including memorizing the entire textbook, etc . General Chemistry has a much less grinding set of students, at some campuses where general chem is part of the “math and science core”. So of course general chem is a much easier class.
I have found that any class with premeds may have a tougher curve than other classes, because premeds are willing and able to memorize factoids, patterns and entire textbooks of information. Too bad as doctors really need to be able to THINK to diagnose a disease in a patient. Its not just memorizing anymore but thats what gets kids into US medical schools, an A in O Chem. And a perfect MCAT score.
I wish more premeds would major in physics which requires THINKING.
Too many med school wanna bees and not enough medical school slots. Maybe GT needs their own med school?
@Coloaradomama : I think Emory’s chemistry department (where I went) is pretty solid in terms of undergraduate teaching, but it services the life sciences and chemistry majors in general (a significant chunk of the chemistry majors actually consider doctoral programs and jobs in chemistry as opposed to being uniformly pre-health or having engineering students pass through), so that may be why more instructors are willing to take more risks with the difficulty. I’ve been reading about the nature of certain service courses at selective schools and the quality does indeed tend to correlate with how many constituents you are serving. Like if Differential equations is a service course serving math, physics, and engineering students, then they are more likely to have a very rigid and standardized curriculum that doesn’t step on too many toes. If the course actually serves many students who will major (which, organic at “some” schools may) in the subject, then instructors may not feel this pressure to cater to so many parties by ultimately watering the course down into a content based course. They teach a more rigorous problem solving and thinking based course and let stronger students self-select into the section and weaker students avoid and take instructors who give more of a standard course. So chemistry courses at lower divisions “can” require higher level thinking, but it depends on who they serve and whether or not some instructors are under pressure to teach very specific content in very specific ways (like how this Washington University Saint Louis diff. eq instructor tried to avoid teaching a “cookbook” style course but department heads, former teachers had always done it that way because they were competing with the engineering version for enrollment. Needless to say, they nor students liked the new more proofs based and applied course).
One key way the top teachers shake up the memorizers is by simply going far beyond the textbook’s level in lectures, problem sets, and exam types. Test problems are not tricky, they are flat out challenging and require sound problem solving strategy and improvisation starting from foundational concepts. Also, a perfect MCAT score cannot really be achieved if students don’t learn to problem solve. The question types on the MCAT far exceed the cognitive demands of many undergraduate biology instructors for example (which may require only memorization). Sadly, I think that many faculty members have bought into this idea that the MCAT is about memorization/content knowledge and that a content heavy course with not much high level thinking can actually help prepare students. Of course, without asking students to know it at high levels, they will achieve higher grades, but be less likely to retain the content. Some students (mainly non-engineering science majors) will continuously dodge instructors demanding use of higher cognitive skills and then have a high GPAs and get relatively disappointing (if not very) MCAT scores.
The key is to balance by basically taking problem solving oriented courses in subjects related to the MCAT and perhaps finding less related courses that play to the students’ comfort zone to ensure a solid GPA, but many students rather just cruise by taking teachers that allow them to succeed only using methods of learning used constantly in high school (surface learning and rote memorization- if simply recalling the answer or problem solving methods in the book or problem set isn’t enough to succeed, then the course is too hard apparently). Students are also not used to reading problems in science which is a problem since the MCAT and other exams like GRE biochem/biology is passage based and contains lots of data figures, etc. Many undergraduate courses (many biology teachers can be very guilty) will have exam items that are much like the simple one line multiple choice or short answer questions in HS exams rarely requiring students to learn something and apply on the spot or to sift through information to compose an answer. And when teachers requiring this exist, many (if not most) students will avoid as if taking the class will put them in the hospital or something. And again, these are the elite students at places like Tech.
One can only imagine much less selective schools but then again, elite students are more insecure and prone to doing anything that will preserve the appearance of brilliance. Feeling challenged may be much more uncomfortable to them, hence the avoidance. Students at less selective schools may more or less somewhat upset but indifferent enough to simply take “whoever” and just try to pass or accept their fates. Lots more GPA management schemes at elite schools from what I’ve observed having gone to Emory and having TAed at GSU for these past 2 years. It seems instructor and course selection is much less calculated at the latter. More so about what fits in their schedule which may involve a demanding part time job. Amazing how unwilling many elite students are willing to engage higher than normal levels of academic rigor since, outside of ECs and socializing, they are basically full-time students.