<p>A lack of second semester organic chemistry would eliminate you from consideration for a lot of graduate and professional schools in the medical field including pharmacy, dental, medical and biomedical graduate schools. To answer your question, I found first and second semester organic chemistry to be quite different. First semester focuses on electron pushing, reactive groups, modeling and naming, types of reactions whereas second semester was less generalized. Second semester focused on synthesis. You can simplify it into learning general rules and then applied mechanisms. Both semesters were challenging but I wouldn’t imagine doing one and not the other</p>