<p>hey, im going to be a freshman at CC this fall. i was wondering if any of you guys could tell me about the comparative difficulty of these two classes. i spoke to a girl who just finished her freshman year and took intensive G chem, did really well in it, but gave me the impression that it's easier to do that well in organic chem. so assuming someone is a really good candidate for intensive G chem, would you suggest they consider signing up for organic chem? </p>
<p>she said that intensive G chem is all the material packed into one semester, so it's "harder" to absorb at that speed, while apparently organic chem has more information spread over 2 semesters, so it's not so overwhelming. how true is that, and how competitive is the organic chem class for someone aiming to get an A, compared to the competitiveness in the intensive G chem class for an A?</p>
<p>Are you going to be majoring in something that requires organic chem? If not, take the 1 semester intensive gen chem and be done with chemistry. If you are, get organic out of the way as a freshman.</p>
<p>Look at it this way. You're going to have to take organic chem either way-- freshman organic is far easier than the regular organic chem class. Organic chem will be relatively hard and relatively competitive no matter what, so it's not like you're avoiding it by taking intensive G chem.</p>
<p>I sort of disagree with that that girl said about intensive G chem -- it isn't ALL of a 2 semester G chem class packed into a 1 semester class. It's a more specialized and advanced class for people who already have a solid background in college chemistry.</p>
<p>Getting an A in a science class at Columbia is more a function of which professor you get than anything else. As a general rule, if you work hard enough and you're pretty smart, you should be able to get an A. If you're really brilliant and put in some effort, you should also be able to get an A.</p>
<p>Feel free to ask anything else if I didn't answer it all. Or PM me.</p>
<p>To be a pre-med/get into med school, Columbia says to take G chem, Organic chem, intro bio, and intro physics. Are those really the only science courses you need for med school or are the any others?</p>
<p>Yeah, plus the labs.</p>
<p>i'm not going to major in a science but it's possible that i might be pre-med. i was thinking that if, in the end, i decide to go for pre-med, it would be nice to get all of chemistry (other than biochem) out of the way by taking freshman orgo. im confident that i'll do well in intensive G chem, but i'm wondering if freshman orgo is "easier" to get an A in, for a reason like "the average in orgo is significantly lower than the average in intensive G chem, so you can get low grades in orgo and still get an A"</p>
<p>I'm not sure why you're comparing intensive G-chem to intensive O-chem. That's not the comparison. The comparison is intensive O-chem versus reguar soph/junior O-chem because you will inevitably have to take organic chem at some point in your 4 years. And yes, freshman O-chem is much easier to get an A in than the regular O-Chem. They baby you a tiny bit in the beginning because you're a freshman who is new to college, and the curve is generally made easier because you're in with a bunch of really smart people.</p>
<p>There's really no significant difference between the difficulty of freshman O-chem and intensive G-chem. If you'll do well in intensive G-chem, you'll probably do well in O-chem. As I said before, it depends on the professor who teaches it that particular year so there's no way to guarantee what the curve will be in that class.</p>