<p>I would love to start a discussion relating the experiences of life science concentrators, pre-meds, or anyone else required to take these courses.</p>
<p>D is an intended Neurobiology Concentrator. Freshman year combined with LS1a and LS1b were fun. Now it is fall of her sophomore year and she, along with many of her friends, is taking Chem 17, organic chemistry. I never took chemistry to that level in college. Is the topic of organic chemistry really as difficult as the course makes it? One always hears, at any school, the horrors of organic chemistry. It can unfortunately cause a life science student to doubt their intended concentration.</p>
<p>Comments?</p>
<p>Anyhow know how Chem 27 compares to 17?</p>
<p>What about MCB 52 and 54? D likely will be choosing one in her concentration planning this week (LS2 and OEB 53 are also options).</p>
<p>Does anyone also have any knowledge/experience at how grades from there classes/years impact eventual grad school acceptances (BTW I'm talking of hopefully only a low of a B in select classes)?</p>
<p>Organic chemistry is pretty different from the types of chemistry most students have seen prior to taking organic. Some people intuitively get it, and others don’t (and I include myself in the latter group). </p>
<p>I don’t know the Harvard curriculum as thoroughly as I know the MIT curriculum, but there almost certainly isn’t much organic in MCB 52 or 54. After hating organic chemistry as an undergrad, I took the MIT equivalent courses (7.05 and 7.06) and really enjoyed them – biochemistry is very different from organic chemistry. </p>
<p>Is she thinking of grad school? Or med school? For grad school, a B in organic certainly isn’t any kind of issue.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about people’s experience at Harvard, but I can commiserate. My son went to the University of Chicago intending to aim for medical school. He had always been good at science, loved chemistry, won his school’s biochemistry prize, worked in a paleontology lab during high school. He was fine his first year taking Gen Chem. He didn’t mind Biology as much as he thought he would. And he completely foundered with Organic. The biggest mistake we made as parents/advisors was to guilt-trip him into staying with it longer than he wanted to. Nothing got better, and B was not the floor.</p>
<p>The good news was that when he finally got out of Organic, he started to be happy and successful again.</p>
<p>For those “top PhD programs”, do you have any comments on what kind of a final GPA is needed?</p>
<p>It is interesting and relieving to know about others experiences with Orgo and the fact that its results did not have to define an academic career.</p>
<p>I got in everywhere I applied with a 3.3 from MIT (including a B in organic :)). I don’t have any reason to think I was barely scraping by – nobody mentioned my GPA during interviews or anything.</p>
<p>What will matter more than GPA is a slate of interesting, challenging courses, outstanding professor recommendations, and (ultimately) research experience. In addition, all of these programs will have an interview weekend for candidates who pass their initial evaluation, so the ability to talk about previous lab work and anticipated graduate thesis work is also important.</p>
<p>I took OChem in freshman year at Harvard (Chem 20, not 17), and found it the most difficult course I’d ever taken- it just wasn’t for me. It can be hard to predict how you’ll do in it- I had done very well in chemistry up to that point, including making it to the national round of the Chem Olympiad in high school. I definitely agree that some people get it and some don’t.</p>
<p>I would urge your daughter that this doesn’t mean she should necessarily give up a concentration in life sciences if that’s what she’s interested in. (My concentration ended up being the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology track in Statistics, but my undergraduate research and graduate school have continued to be in biology).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My experience was the same when applying to computational biology graduate programs- I received a B in Organic Chemistry and got into MIT, Columbia, Yale, and Rockefeller. I’m currently at Princeton in Quantitative and Computational Biology (and really enjoying it :)).</p>
<p>I found Chem 17 (taught by Jacobsen at the time) to be challenging, but not overwhelming. In the end, it turned into a giant puzzle (how to turn this molecule into this molecule) which I really liked.</p>
<p>Then, I took Chem 27 (co-taught by two profs whose names I’ve blocked from memory) and really loathed it. Material was much more bio, much less “puzzley”, lectures were more boring, my TF was worse, etc. </p>
<p>I’ve heard from quite a few people that most people are similar to me and have a strong preference for 17 or 27. That might be a good sign for your student in 27 (especially if they’ve revamped the class since I took it in 2007).</p>
<p>How is Chem 2 compared to various college-level chemistry courses such as orgo, etc.? I am currently taking Chem 2, and finding it quite difficult already. :(</p>
<p>adchang - I am guessing that to get an answer you need to define what “chem 2” is. In my daughters high school there was chemistry (honors, or academic) and AP Chemistry. D took both AP Bio (scored a 5) and Ap Chem (scored a 4) and did not find LS1a, or LS1b easy. Orgo is even harder.</p>
<p>Just<em>forget</em>me - Interesting insight into chem 17 and 27. I’ll pass that on to my daughter.</p>
<p>Admiral & Mollie - thanks for your input and PMs</p>
<p>D met with her neurobio concentration advisor. He seemed to fell that if D opts for a path that does not include Chem 27 that it will not shut doors down the road in grade school. He did advise though that if she were to take Chem 27 next semester that she not add on MCB 54. Not sure then what courses she should plan on and of course this year students are to fill out the preplanning from. Curious what she’ll choose.</p>
<p>Yes, I am taking AP Chemistry. I was doing quite well until we got 200 pages on hybrid orbitals and intramolecular forces. According to khanacademy, which I used to study, it fell under the category of organic chemistry, so I was just curious.</p>
<p>I just finished chem 17 and must say that orgo is a very polarizing subject in terms of how students feel about it. Some people absolutely love it, and others completely hate it. From what I have heard from people who have taken 27 in the past, how people react to 27 results from the mixture of bio and orgo. Without speaking too generally, students who love biology tend to warm to 27 because of the biological basis of the chemistry, while students who enjoy a more chemical approach dislike 27 for the narrow field of interest and the fact that water is assumed to be a universal solvent in all reactions. What I’m really worried about is the lack of a text book and the past reputation of the professor.</p>
<p>While not taking 27 might not close any doors for grad school, it might be helpful to take in case your daughter wants to open other doors in the future. I hope she did well on her exams. (Btw, does her first name start with an “r”?).</p>
<p>@adchang, the focus of orgo is on arrow pushing and mechanisms. From past experience, AP Chem is quite different from orgo. Hybridization and intramolecular forces definitely come into play when thinking about how molecules interact in reactions, but that is just a small part of it. However, if you master those topics now, so much the better when you start taking orgo and inorganic chem in college.</p>
<p>roy - thanks for your insights and well wishes for my daughter. Yes, you are correct who my daughter is. Seeing your member name, I recognize you as one of her friends - room 13?</p>
<p>All I know is that the chem 17 students here worship the 20/30ers as “orgo warriors” or on a similar status. Chem 27 is a joke if you’re a 20/30er looking for an easy biochem class to fulfill requirements. Plus, you don’t have to do 27 lab. </p>
<p>Also, GPA is only relevant if you’re applying to rhodes/goldwater/marshall/etc. Otherwise, staying above a 3.5 (provided you’re in a science concentration above biology, aka chem and above) is good enough.</p>