Not sure what is the right forum for this. My friend is hell bent on taking ochem senior year at a community college instead of taking AP physics at our high school. I have heard that most colleges will make you take ochem at their college anyways if you are majoring in biochem. His top schools are Berkeley and ucla. Is this a good idea for him or is it a waste of time?
While you are waiting for someone who knows the answer to this, I will throw in some thoughts. You don’t mention whether your friend has already taken a lower high school physics course so that he has biology, chemistry and physics covered, as colleges like to see. If not, I would choose AP Physics.
Getting an A in a community college Organic Chemistry course would be impressive to colleges, and might help your friend get more and better quality acceptances (scholarship offers, first choice major). In addition to better acceptances, if he has to take it again in college, he would be more likely to do well in it because of having taken it before. The question is, would he make an A? If not, it might work against him if he would have made an A in AP Physics.
I’m sure you know this, but I will mention for those who might not that, if he takes OChem at a community college, whatever the grade, it has to be reported to all future colleges he applies to.
Not the conventional path, but if your friend is motivated out of interest, and not as a college admission strategy, then I say go for it. If he really likes organic and is doing well, then he would continue and finish the semester/year. If he struggles and doesn’t like it, then he should drop before the deadline–and he will have learned the critical lesson that he probably doesn’t really want to be a biochemistry major. While biochem is definitely different from organic chem, if you struggle with organic or find it distasteful, then you might not be a natural for biochem–at least maybe you’d want to veer over towards molecular or cellular biology. Having said that, I think it’s a travesty that the only chemistry that most people ever study (in high school) is inorganic/physical. Organic chemistry is all around us, and most people don’t have a clue.