Organic II @ Cornell U

<p>Why MCATS if you aren’t going to take normal Physics. I can see it if you’ll just take MCAT for fun but if the material is significantly less, 1) it wont prepare you as well for MCAT 2) med school probably wont accept it </p>

<p>Orgo and Phys isn’t as crazy as it sounds… It depends on the rest of your schedule. </p>

<p>Taking the course over the summer would increase daily studying time if you do study. But if you cram, you probably dont need to spend more days doing it cause you have more time per day. Probably 3 days before each exam is sufficient. </p>

<p>Since its a Organic Chemistry class… obviously the “reactions” are organic chemistry reactions. Flash cards is a MAJOR waste of time in my opinion. It’s a good way to memorize if you have nothing else to do and have all day free… but it takes a long time to make those cards and if you lose one it might cost you! By the time Final exam hits, you’d be holding hundreds of cards lol…</p>

<p>yea, I took an orgo class at my local 4 year this year and to be honest, if you cannot understand the material well enough to pass, you really should not be practicing medicine.</p>

<p>Ah, I was referring to the fact that the other 3 colleges I was going to transfer to all have what they kind of call ‘Physics for Bio majors’, which they recommend for Biology majors going Pre-med, so I’m not sure how Cornell works it.</p>

<p>I’m not talking about taking like, an extreme basic HS level physics course and have that count, I just wasn’t sure what they offer. I think Cathy Sheils at CALS might have even told me they have a significantly less difficult Physics class.</p>

<p>Either way! Yeah, I suppose it depends on my schedule, I’ll be a Communications major next spring, so probably just going to end up taking two courses in my focal area plus the sciences, or maybe I’ll throw in a lighter class. It all depends on how well my spring semester goes.</p>

<p>then Physics 101 and 102. the autotutorial one. if you meet the deadlines, you should at LEAST get a A-.</p>

<p>nice! thanks man, yeah I plan to kick butt when I get to Cornell, an A- would be right in my zone ;)</p>

<p>So does anyone recommend buying the model kits for studying? and are they even useful to have on exams?</p>

<p>model kit was very useful for Orgo I. not so much for orgo ii</p>

<p>last year the model kit came with the book. as stated previously it is useful for orgo 1, especially the 1st prelim, and not useful for orgo 2. this is basically since orgo 2 mainly involves reactions of planar molecules.</p>

<p>to put it simply for the lectures, jon is not the friendliest guy but is an excellent lecturer. sogah is very nice and friendly, but he is a poor lecturer. you DON’T need to spend 3 hours a night studying orgo. if you are, you are studying it the wrong way. if you study orgo the right way, i.e., by learning concepts of WHY reactions occur, rather than individual reactions, then you should be fine. your studying will be more efficient and it will be easier. flash cards can be okay depending on what they are used for. use them to remember the very specific things, like oxidizing agents like MnO2, KMnO4, Na2Cr2O7, etc. Don’t use them to memorize concepts like reaction mechanisms, resonance, etc. </p>

<p>to give you an idea of difficulty, for the first semester, the prelim means were i believe 73, 51, and 52. for the second semester, the prelim means were 71, 39, and 41. don’t let the means scare you too much - a 39 on the second orgo 2 prelim was a B, and an A was about a 58, so basically percentage wise you could fail the prelim and still get an A!</p>