<p>Hi, </p>
<p>I'm wondering if any of you know what the curve for Chem 343 is generally... a girl told me it's 66% could be a B but that seems kind of... way too low.</p>
<p>I just want to know how much above the curve I should try to aim for...</p>
<p>For my 343 the average was set to the lowest BC. So if you are at all below the average you get a C. I had professor Clauss. I ended up with about 68% of the points and got a BC. So the average was about 1 to 2 percent lower. It depends what grade distribution your professor is going to use as well. I would look at the old grade reports. 80 was about the cutoff for an A on all of our tests. </p>
<p>[Office</a> of the Registrar - University of Wisconsin-Madison - Course Grade Distributions](<a href=“http://registrar.wisc.edu/course_grade_distributions.htm]Office”>http://registrar.wisc.edu/course_grade_distributions.htm)</p>
<p>The best strategy is to aim for doing the best you can- ie doing the best work, studying for tests et al. Trying to see the minimum work you can do to game the system for a given grade is ridiculous- it can backfire. The purpose of taking any course is to gain the knowledge provided- for those who take courses because they are needed for medical school or a major the reason for the requirement is that the course knowledge is deemed important. It often seems as though course material is irrelevant but a thorough understanding of the principals of a course do matter later in understanding material- even decades after one’s formal education is complete. also, since a person tends to forget a great deal of material the more you truly know the more will be there later. Everyone comes across those times when they wish they had really learned something in a previous course as it would make current problem solving easier.</p>
<p>I know you didn’t want a lecture. It’s a pet peeve of mine when students work for a grade, not to learn- the grade comes with the learning. An understanding of basic organic chemistry is useful in surprising ways.</p>
<p>So does Zimmerman still teach this course? Back when I was in this class, my wife had gone to her parents home and went to see their dentist. He had attended UW some thirty years prior. He mentioned having an awful ochem professor when he went and my wife said hers was awful too, and that his name was Zimmerman. The dentist said in shock, that he “couldn’t believe Zimmerman was still there” and that “he was old(italics) when I had him”</p>
<p>A friend of mine did her Senior Honors thesis with Zimmerman back when- early 1970’s. Different experiences based on one’s liking of a subject and abilities in it. I never had him, but I think he is still active or barely retired from the news in my annual Badger Chemist that came last week (sorry- it hit the recycle bin and gone by now). We could bother to check the UW departmental website… </p>
<p>I remember how old all of the professors seemed when I was still a teenager, decades later I realized some were fairly new faculty (those get the intro courses more often it seems) and not much more than ten years older than we were, if that. That was also the time of great generational mistrust- “don’t trust anyone over 30” era. It was a time of huge changes in American society. TA’s were often as young as some of the new HS teachers we had just encountered even though they were just a bit further along in the pipeline than we were. Professors, like others, can change with experience and be different for different generations of college students. Although I suspect those who had Larry Dahl (he taught 115-116) decades later would still love him- he went emeritus a few years ago. </p>
<p>College years come at the transition stage from child to adult. I still remember entering private practice as a physician and training myself to consider physicians as old as my parents to be peers. </p>
<p>Sorry for digressing from the Organic (we Chemistry majors never called it OChem like I’ve seen elsewhere) curve. The bottom line is still to do your best and the appropriate grade will come.</p>
<p>Is Organic a tough class at UW? It should have been an easy one for a chem or bio major…</p>
<p>D2 is fighting the battle in 343 as we speak. I will say that she isn’t a chem person, but needs Organic for her health sciences requirement. Fortunately, there appear to be office hours, TA workshops & study groups to help in the cause. Crossing fingers!</p>
<p>I don’t know if tough is the correct word, it requires the right mindset, high tolerance for tedium and clearly articulated reasons for making it through the class. I will say in four years of college and three years of a phd in the biomedical sciences, it is the only class I ever got a C in and judging from online grade distributions, it isn’t a terribly uncommon result</p>
<p>So one C will ruin my chances of getting into the Medical School?</p>
<p>No, one “bad” grade never ruins chances. However, the less you learn in a class that is a foundation for susequent work the harder it will be to learn that material. In other words- those that learned more in the basic course will have a better foundation for the next course. In medical school there were times I wished I knew more of some basic sciences- would have made the current work easier. Memorization is not fun, but helpful later on. My college C was in Thermodynamics (upper level physical chemistry course, I always remember it with Statistical in front of it but a friend tells me I am wrong)- I disliked it and fortunately did not need to pass Chemistry prelims…</p>