<p>^Sounds the same for my D. She did not go to prof. much, but she had to work very hard. And it is very good experience, she learned to go over material in her head while walking from class to class, the skill that she uses all the time at Med. School, while walking from her apartment to classes. Orgo as hard as it was is still much easier than material at Med. School anyway. So, Orgo is a very good class to have to sharpen your study skills, develop new technique if this type of material calls for it, and test yourself if you are up to it.</p>
<p>So my son took his last Orgo midterm before the final this week and he said half his friends are dropping the class and taking a W. The class average was 26%. :o He scored above the average but you think there might be a few C’s or lower grades? He says the professor puts random unimportant questions on there and only a few kids who memorize everything in the book get decent scores. I just don’t get how this is helping kids. I know it’s supposed to be a weeder class but obviously this is extreme. The only good news is he has a different professor for next term. ;)</p>
<p>Im just glad there is no ochem in med school</p>
<p>No OChem, but enough biochem to make OChem look like child’s play.</p>
<p>Not really. Med school biochem is pretty easy</p>
<p>I loved ochem. The exams were tough, but fair. I took Physical Organic Chemistry this fall, and I still love it :)</p>
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<p>In DS’s year, I heard a large percentage of students who had taken orgo I successfully (with not so bad grades) decided to not take orgo II immediately (i.e., jump from the spring sequence to the fall sequence) by postponing taking orgo II for one semester becuase of the difficult professor who taught it. DS’s orgo II class turned out to be very small. I think many students also complained about the uncontrollability of getting a good grade from this professor due to too few problems in the test (and yes, many problems could be very obscure ones that might not have been covered by the professor in class – that might be exactly the reason why the professor put that test item in the test due to its “distinguishing power” to separate the “good” students from the “bad” ones.) Oh, by the way, one simple trick in the sleeve of some professor is to test something the professor WILL teach and has not yet.</p>
<p>KDog, be prepared that many CCers will still claim that your son’s school is “easy” in terms of grading and they honestly believe that.</p>
<p>DS heard of a class average of 46 in the introductory bio 101 (where a very high percentage of students in the class had AP 5 in bio under their belt) in one year. The class average of 26 is a new low to me.</p>
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<p>That’s interesting. D1 was at a different school fr year and only decided sp sem to start taking premed courses. So she took Orgo 1 at her old school and Orgo 2 fall of soph year after she’d transferred to the ‘easy’ school. Guess she lucked into the easy prof at the easy school ;).</p>
<p>Agree with trapzeius. As an MD/PhD student, I took the graduate school biochem course which was much more difficult than the Med school one and the PhD level biochem course was child’s play compared to Brown’s intro to organic. </p>
<p>The orgo class at Brown has two sections taught by two different professors. One of the exams I took had a synthesis question so hard that the prof who didn’t write the question said even he couldn’t figure it out.</p>
<p>^My honors orgo exams second semester were 75% complex synthesis problems. It was pretty terrifying. But on the bright side, I met my 3 best friends while taking/suffering through that class, and the professor is arguably my best mentor. How he can make you feel like you really worked your tail off to get a B in a 5h class is beyond me, but taking that class was arguably the best decision I made in undergrad.</p>
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Just thought of this: For a class in which the students drop the class like flies toward the end, depending on the grading policy in the end, there could be a real danger of not getting the grade you thought you should have got.</p>
<p>Suppose that 50% of students drop the class. Your 60% percentile before these students drop out all of a sudden becomes 20% percentile after these students drop out. This is a brutal aspect of some of these weeder classes, if the professor chooses to grade their end-of-semester grade in this way.</p>
<p>Talking about premed scheming trick here (How do I become so low here?! I bet DS had never thought of this as his mind was intentionally tuned out of any messy premed affairs during most of his time as a premed – I think he had never given any thought about MCAT till almost senior year. Compose the list of schools to apply to? Maybe one or two days before he submitted his application! That is the reason we badly needed curm’s help for the list at that time.): If you take a class at a school where there are many students are allowed to take it P/NP, the such a class happens to attract many such P/NP students, your grade might not be in such a danger as these students may not drop (and they may be on the lower part of the curve, that boost your chance of getting a better grades.)</p>
<p>See, the choice of the class to take and the school to attend could matter. (A big “if” is whether a prereq class could attract any such students.)</p>
<p>@Mcat2,
I don’t think this would be a real world problem. Most of my profs use a sigma based curve, so the formula should react to the drops. I would hope those using informal/ad hoc methods would adjust to the new reality which I assume would only involve the final.
where I am, if you use P/F, you forfeit your chance at semester academic honors. This would be a considerable deterrent. </p>
<p>@iwbB,
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<p>Add to this the full mechanism, and then you are in my world :eek:</p>
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I think I have not made myself clear and likely have misled you.</p>
<p>I am not talking about you as a premed taking a class P/F; I am talking about OTHER science (or even non-science) students who take the same class as you but THEY choose to take the class P/F. So, the higher the percentage of students in your class who are NOT grade-hungry premeds, the better (both in the potential of boosting your grade and in the potential of making the atmosphere better.) If THEY, not you, take the class P/F, it is even better.</p>
<p>But this works only when the school has the policy that the professor does not know which students take the class P/F when he gives out the grade, (the school assigns the P/F grade based on the letter grade the professor gives afterwards), and those P/F students are also in the pool of students to be curved in the grading. Some schools are like this, some not. The “evil” (the unfairness of grading between different schools) is in the details.</p>
<p>DS did not take a single class P/F. His premed adviser told him not to so he dutifully complied. Some CCers may argue it is overly strict. But DS tried to be on the safe side just because his advisor at the premed committee said so. (It was not planned in this way; but taking all classes with grade gave him more opportunity to earn A’s, which helped him gain another honor at his school – at his school, i think the top 5 percents or so students in terms of the number of A’s, excluding A-, that they have accumulated, would be awarded another honor.)</p>
<p>This actually points to another premed trick: When you happen to have talents besides those subjects related to prereq, majoring in one of those majors where there are fewer grade-hungry preprofessional students could do you good grade-wise (and also a better learning environment for the sake of learning.) The same could said about going to a school that has too high concentration of crazy premeds (unfortunately, this means almost all top schools or the one with well-known affiliated med schools. As BRM once said, all these top schools are “premed factories” – full of grade-center premeds who tend to have polished their art of standardized tests to the perfection.)</p>
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<p>My daughter had some version of this happen in a pre-req class and ended up with a C+. It was painful but fortunately did not hurt her in the long run. One med school interviewer did ask about it but I would think that at the majority of medical schools have moved beyond looking at specific grades once you have made it to the interview stage. The CC experts can confirm or question my assumption on that one.</p>
<p>correct Ellen. Interview invites are only given to students qualified to attend the school. How you perform in the interview will far outweigh most other things. My guess is how your daughter talked about the C+ was a much larger factor than the C+ itself.</p>
<p>Just a thought/question.</p>
<p>One of my co-workers was saying that her daughter ( a freshman at state flagship) plans to take o-chem next fall…but that this summer, she plans to take an o-chem class elsewhere, although on a not-for-credit basis, such as Coursera or one of the other free online alternatives.</p>
<p>Is this permissible? when I mentioned that I thought it might not be, my co-worker just pooh-poohed me and said that if necessary she would just sign up for the course for her daughter under her name instead (different last name) so that nothing could be traced.</p>
<p>as long as its not at a university/community college, its probably fine</p>
<p>I have couple suggestions. There is no reason under the sky to:
-take the class frrom prof who have a certain reputation of being hard, whatever this means
-take higher level class than required by Med. School and needed for MCAT prep., unless it is required by your major (engineers usually take higher level of science classes). Honors not always means harder though, in many cases it was easier because of prof. being much more accessible. But again, research, talk to current students.</p>
<p>^I agree that this may be a good strategy for protecting your GPA while still having adequate prep for the MCAT.</p>
<p>However, I disagree with it on principle. If you avoid classes because they are tough, or because they are taught by notoriously difficult (and there’s a difference between difficult and unfair; can’t blame you for avoiding an unfair prof) professors, or because you know there will be a lot of competition, I honestly think you’re setting yourself up for a terribly rude awakening should you progress to med or grad school. Med school’s tough and the competition is top-notch, so I think you’re doing yourself a huge favor by becoming familiar with taking and excelling in challenging classes. </p>
<p>Does this mean take pchem after ochem if you hate chemistry? No. But what it does mean is that taking hard classes in disciplines you’re interested in should be good for you as a learner. Challenges aren’t a bad thing! And even if the content itself isn’t relevant to med school, the process of conquering a tough class surely is.</p>
<p>If somebody wants challenges, I have another suggestion. Major in engineering, it will do, you might not get the desired GPA, but you definitely will be challenged, not matter what prof, no matter if you are at the lowest ranked non-ranked college that nobody ever heard. Again, not only you challege yourself much more than other pre-emds, you also end up with the very marketable degree as a back up plan for not getting accepted to Med. School (possibly because your GPA will not measure up, but many end up with 4.0 even in engineering).</p>