Organic Chem Advice

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
21

<p>"My 16 yr old could take orgo (a 1 semester course) as a senior in high school. However, her work ethic may be a little suspect. She wants to take organic chem, but she is also taking physics (the hardest, calculus based), calculus 2 and then 3, and PE and English and a social studies course, and a foreign language."</p>

<p>Honestly, your daughter is SO lucky to have someone to teach her those classes in high school. If I were her, i would take those classes, and even more if things like linear algebra, quantum mechanics or biochemistry were available. Learning ahead will help you a lot for college, and build a work ethic that you can keep while in college. It's not about how much time you study. It's about how well you study. If she messes up, at least it's high school. You don't want to fail out of college after paying thousands in tuition. </p>

<p>She may not realize how lucky she is. It is so much harder to sit and do orgo problems without any teachers, and even harder to sift through Schrodinger's equation by yourself (which I'm doing right now).</p>

<p>Moral of the story: Don't wiggle your excuse that AP's/college classes are too hard, and will destroy your life. Instead, learn to manage your time efficiently, and to study. You'll have more time for fun, learn more, and be better prepared for college.</p>

22

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Anyone have a recommendation for a really good textbook that explains the concepts clearly?

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My class used Carey, and I thought it did an excellent job of explaining things.</p>

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<p>Organic chemistry becomes quite "easy" if you learn to push electrons and figure out "why" x + y yields z</p>

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<p>A friend of mine who's beastly at chem says the key to understanding orgo is asking "acid, base, nucleophile, electrophile, oxidant, reductant?" or BORANE</p>

<p>It's not impossible to take ochem in HS, some people (or rather, a select few) take it as early as 9th or 10th grade.</p>

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<p>orgo is killing me. i have straight A's in linear algebra, physics, and econ, yet have a B in orgo. it's not that it's intellectually challenging in a physics kind of way; rather, there is just so much stuff to know and understand that is not really intuitive so that you have to spend a ridiculous amount of time to really get it.</p>

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<p>I second the suggestion of Organic Chemistry I as a Second Language and (when the time comes) Organic Chemistry II as a Second Language. They were a huge help for me. Other than that, my suggestion is to do all the practice problems, and if you don't understand the answer, ask someone about it (teacher, TA, tutor, etc).</p>

27

<p>I read all the posts, and let me add my couple cents.</p>

<p>GoldShadow had the best advice: you have to work consistently.</p>

<p>I recently finished Organic Chemistry as a freshman, and I doubled up in Organic Chemistry and General Biology this year (so yes, four sciences and I’ll be done with pre-med requirements at the end of my sophomore year along with my graduation requirement exception of art and gym). I maintained A in the first semester and currently, I do not know how my final went but I received As in all three exams this semester and got 96% in lab.</p>

<p>I memorized NO reaction. I bought NO additional book. And I had NO Organic Chemistry class in high school except nomenclature which I barely remembered in undergrad.</p>

<p>I love Organic Chemistry because it is easy once you set your mind on the right path. I think that many people do not realize the importance of fundamentals. The Organic Chemistry courses are all related to this axioms: minus goes to plus, nucleophiles and electrophiles, and whatever you start off with must be present at the end (usually).</p>

<p>People tend to focus on nomenclature (IUPAC or common names), then mechanisms, and synthesis. They make flashcards, look up guides online, and just try to do many problems repetitively. But many still fail. Why? Because you don’t really see the Organic Chemistry!
To succeed in Organic Chemistry, you have to think like Organic Chemist. Ask yourself why such reaction would occur. Don’t just read the book and say the carboxylic acid needs to protonated first before it can be attacked in the Fischer Esterification. Understand why. Question yourself as to why it cannot be protonated after it was attacked by another carbon. The worst thing you can do is Organic Chemistry is take everything for granted. You need to question everything that moves, and when you do that, everything will make sense.</p>

<p>I recommend that if you are really struggling with Organic Chemistry, go back to the first Chapter in your textbook and just read slowly and understand why somethings happen and others don’t. If you just try to memorize reactions or simply remember which reactions produce what products, you will fail at some point.</p>

<p>–I share this view with my adviser and instructor for Organic Chemistry, who received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from UPen.–</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>(Just as a side note, if you ever get confused between meta, ortho, and para forms of benzene… Just remember acronyms: metaphor, orthodox, and paradise :P)</p>

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<p>I’m a Cal student and I just finished my first semester of organic chem with an A+. What really helped me was studying my notes, constantly. Try to avoid cramming as much as you can and try to review the mechanisms on an almost daily basis (maybe 45min a day). This will make your midterms and finals practically painless! : )</p>

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<p>You don’t want any study tips from me, but I do want to provide one piece of advice: it’s not the end of the world. I got a C+ in organic chemistry and still had a very good admissions cycle.</p>

30

<p>I heard the only way to make up for a C+ is to sell one’s soul to the (blue) devil.</p>

31

<p>According to my D., who got either A or A+ in Orgo, STUDY HARD. Sometime she needed to give up doing other homework, and she had a lot, since she has 2 minors in addition to her major. She also said that Orgo is completely different from Gen. Chem, which has been so far my D’s easiest class. Orgo is plain HARD, need to spend tons of time. D studied for 30 hours for one of her Orgo exams. She said, she was repeating Orgo material in her head while walking from class to class. I am not trying to scary, but be prepared to spend a lot of time if you want a decent grade.</p>

32

<p>The only fool-proof way to succeed in organic chemistry is to do problems. The more problems you do, the more prepared you are on the exams. After all, the exams are just problems. In order to do problems, you need to know every single reaction in the book. This does NOT mean you need to know every single mechanism in the book. Mechanisms make sense, however, so if you are more of a mechanism person than a synthesis type of person, you can show the flow of electrons to get to the indicated product. So write problems for the heck of it, then share it with a friend. Have a friend write problems for you. Mechanism problems, synthesis problems, reaction problems… after a while all mechanisms become nucleophile-electrophile-esque things.</p>

33

<p>My experience with college chemistry, organic in particular, was that my grades were directly correlated with the number of relevant problems I worked before the exam. </p>

<p>I remember doing ALL the problems at the end of the chapter in Morrison & Boyd, rather than just the ones that were assigned, and being pleased to discover that the professor used variations of the unassigned problems as his test questions.</p>

<p>Speaking of professors, don’t be afraid to go to a professor during office hours and ask them to go over something with you when you did not understand it in class. Their job is to explain the course material so that you CAN understand it and they know that not every student understands difficult material when they first hear it. Also, this helps the professor get to know you personally, which could be helpful when you need a letter of recommendation written.</p>

34

<p>most problems can be broken down into electrophiles and nucleophiles, which if you want to really really dumb it down are just positives and negatives. Positives and negatives attract - when this appens you get a reaction - that’s basically orgo. If you ever get stuck on a complicated problem - especially mechanisms, and also synthesis, just go back to this most basic aspect of orgo. Then are several other rules, but most of them are just easily memorized and many are variations on stability and can even be common sense. Markovnikov gives you the most stable carbocation intermediate (which is just tertiary beat secondary beats primary), sterics is just a common sense matter of how much space you take up, shifts are just annoying, RESONANCE, aromatic rules on ortho, para, and meta (which goes back to resonance), EWG vs EDG (which goes back to electrophiles and nucleophiles anyway and lets you know pretty much how aromatics and carbonyls work), SN2 inverts stereochemistry, SN1 and E1 are carbocation intermediates, E2 is antiperiplanar. Syn and anti addition are just a matter of spatial arrangement. That’s basically it. If you get those things, you get orgo. Almost all orgo you learn will be variations on all that.</p>

35

<p>Organic Chemistry really is a class that taps into your natural learning ability. If you can get an A at a high powered school then you can consider yourself rationally superior. Medical and Graduate Schools look at Organic chemistry to see how naturally bright you are. Simply put… if you struggle with organic chemistry you shouldn’t be a doctor. Would you want someone operating on you that got a C or D in organic chemistry? Of course not. This class is the reason why numerous individuals drop Pre Med. I luckily got an A- both semesters but I remember my classes going from about 200 to around 75. It really is a weed out class. Best of luck</p>

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<p>Does being good at organic chemistry have anything to do with surgery? I’m no doctor, but I bet it doesn’t. If medical schools really cared that much about your analytical ability, they’d weigh more technical majors a lot more heavily than other majors for admission. I don’t think they do this.</p>

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<p>IIRC, someone who posts here and is now in medical school got a C in Organic Chem.</p>

38

<p>That’s me. Had six medical school admissions when the time came, so one bad grade didn’t seem to set me back too badly.</p>

39

<p>Dr. Hoya,
Surprizing comments, since D. felt that while Gen. Chem require analytitcal skills, Orgo has been pure memorizaion, not necessarily pointing how bright you are, but how hard you can work. Her ‘A’ in this class was definately not the same as ‘A’ in hard but very interesting Bio classes or 'A" in fun and easy Gen. Chem class. She is just happy it is behind.</p>

40

<p>what stats does it really take to be in med school?</p>