For those that did well in Organic Chem

I know this is totally from left field but up at Hunter there is a brillant tutor Marty Gluck MD. He is pretty much the best teacher I've ever had. He runs essentially a course for small groups of private students. I have no idea what he charges now but it was pretty reasonable.
Bottom line he is just a great teacher, it was hugely beneficial to attend two different presentations of the material. If you want I can PM his contact info. And no I have no vested interest.

The difficulty of ochem is overrated. It was one of the more reasonable premed courses for me, and it is not heavily emphasized on the MCAT. I wouldn't blow a dime for an ochem tutor. You don't need supplemental books and such either. Your tests will be based on what was lectured and assigned for study. Put good effort and time into practice problems and studying for exams and you'll do fine.

The trick to Ochem is to just to do the work. If you don't get it then you are not putting in the hours. Its that simple. You might want to look into organic chemistry tapes like Standard Deviants.

I actually had 8 months between Ochem 1 and Ochem 2. In order to "brush up" I just scanned thru my book and reviewed a few questions at the end of each chapter to make sure I still knew the concepts and basic mechanisms. If you have mastered the material well enough to do the questions out of the book from all of the chapters covered in semester one, you will be more than prepared for semester two regardless of the difficulty of the tests or the quality of the lectures.

I found that my ochem 2 class didn't overlap that much with my ochem 1 class, believe it or not. General ideas were there but we didn't get nitty gritty into details and any reactions we needed the second time around (very few!) were gone over again. I wouldn't kill myself reviewing. Like the above poster said, Ochem is not as bad as it's cracked out to be if you study. By the end of second semester I'd finally learned this lesson and studied just a little everyday up to the final and I made an A with much less stress!

stoleyerscrubz said:

I'm taking organic chem 1 this semester and I am wondering if anyone is able to suggest supplemental material to help me prepare for my final. If you used a website, supplemental book, or anything else that may help I'd appreciate the advice. things are going well but I really need to know what I'm doing for Ochem 2 since I have a professor known for giving easy exams and being a poor lecturer. Thanks!



My class is using the John McMurry 6th edition and Pushing Electrons by Weeks is included.

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I am an organic TA and tutor, and my advice to students is to approach studying organic like you'd approach studying a foreign language. Some students mistakenly believe that they can memorize their way through the course. But this is impossible, because there are an infinite number of possible reactions out there. You do have to learn the vocabulary and "grammar" (mechanisms) of organic chem, which requires some memorization. But the real test of fluency in these types of subjects is whether you can now take what you've learned and apply it to new reactions (or make up new sentences) that you've never seen before.

That kind of ability can only be achieved by working a lot of problems, just as learning to speak another language can only be done if you spend a lot of time practicing speaking it. Ideally, you should spend an hour every day studying organic if possible. Forgo re-reading the chapters in favor of working every problem in your book (yes, all of them, even the challenge ones) and really try to work them out yourself before reading your solutions guide. Ask your TA for help as needed, attend all of the problem sessions and classes, and go to your professor's office hours every week. Students that put in this kind of effort invariably do well come finals time. Plus you have the added bonus that the prof will actually know your name and can write you a letter when you go to apply for med school.

Do the associated homework.

It's just that easy.

my organic text was bruice's "organic chemistry," which wasn't bad but i supplemented it with wade's "organic chemistry" text. wade's text was really good imo

I was an orgo tutor last year. I think the best way to do good in it is to just memorize the reaction mechanisms. There really isn't that many and lots of them are very similar to each other.

Like most everyone said, just practice doing reactions and you'll see patterns arising. You might then be able to predict how the reaction will go without knowing the mechanism. I had no problem with organic or biochem and found it to be much like working through a math problem. The variables and conditions change but with enough practice, it's almost predictable. Of course, I took these courses 2 years ago so any frustration I had is glossed over by the fact that I did so well. At the time, it was all about doing the homework.

Misty said:

my organic text was bruice's "organic chemistry," which wasn't bad but i supplemented it with wade's "organic chemistry" text. wade's text was really good imo

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I HIGHLY agree!! I had the CAREY text which explains things almost in too much detail....Wade seemed to make the concepts a lot clearer!!

Try Columbia review High Yield O-Chem. It is a good review and goes really quick. Also, the problems come after every topic.

I forget which website I used, but I know it was not McMurrys. Try one of the other main books, search Amazon for titles. There is one that has some awesome cartoons and conceptual review...

stoleyerscrubz said:

I'm taking organic chem 1 this semester and I am wondering if anyone is able to suggest supplemental material to help me prepare for my final. If you used a website, supplemental book, or anything else that may help I'd appreciate the advice. things are going well but I really need to know what I'm doing for Ochem 2 since I have a professor known for giving easy exams and being a poor lecturer. Thanks!



My class is using the John McMurry 6th edition and Pushing Electrons by Weeks is included.

Click to expand...

If you have access to Wade's organic textbook, that really helped me out. They do a really good job of explaining what is going on and where the electrons are pushing. Also, if you have time to make a huge list of reactions and write the mechanisms out for each of them, it helps a lot in seeing the electron pushing and understanding what reagent is used for. Good luck!

I was discussing this with some others but I'm curious as to what's the consensus here.

What's the best orgo textbook that illustrates and emphasizes mechanisms over just listing products(read: Carey)?

Thanks in advance.

stoleyerscrubz said:

I'm taking organic chem 1 this semester and I am wondering if anyone is able to suggest supplemental material to help me prepare for my final. If you used a website, supplemental book, or anything else that may help I'd appreciate the advice. things are going well but I really need to know what I'm doing for Ochem 2 since I have a professor known for giving easy exams and being a poor lecturer. Thanks!



My class is using the John McMurry 6th edition and Pushing Electrons by Weeks is included.

Click to expand...

I was in the same boat as you. I had a piss-poor professor for O-chem I who only endured one semester at my university and as luck would have it...I was placed in his class. I didn't go to his lectures and decided that I would study on my own. Suffice to say that plan tanked pretty bad and I wound up with a C+ as my final grade. The second semester I had a much better professor and truth be told I think I actually put in more time. The first mistake I made was trying to memorize all the reactions...it don't work like that. My advise to you would be to zero in on the properties of functional groups i.e. carbonyls undergo nucleophilic addition, its polarity etc. By knowing the functional groups, you can easily figure out the product of a seemingly complicated compound. Like other posters said before you gotta put in the time for orgo.

Fermata said:

What's the best orgo textbook that illustrates and emphasizes mechanisms over just listing products(read: Carey)?

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For undergrad level, "Electron Flow in Organic Chemistry" by Paul Scudder. Fantastic book. You can check it out at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_1/103-0411739-5224647?v=glance&s=books

This is not a book for people who've never seen organic before, but if you already have some organic background or are taking the course now, this book will help you really understand mechanisms.

"Organic Chemistry as a Second Language" by David Klein.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...30/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-6173290-8954446

This supplement is so easy to follow. Klein explains everything in plain english and the concept sinks in easily. There are so many practice problems to solidify the material. If you do not have this book, you're missing out on a lot. You will never find a negative review on this book.

Ochem II is actually easier in a way because so many of the mechanisms are exactly the same.

Our teacher had us memorize 4 basic schemes, and pretty much all carbonyl chemistry followed one of the 4. It turned into a freaky sort of math/new language thing from there, but it's much easier to learn something when it makes logical sense (rather than just rote memorization). Most of the rest of ochem II, at least the way my class was structured, wasn't really on the MCAT.

My basic advice in learning o-chem is to work through the mechanism over and over again and make sure you understand what's going on and why. If you do that, then you'll be a lot quicker with synthesis AND mechanism problems because you'll have the background and won't be searching through an endless file of memorized pictures and phrases.

For me i would review all the old tests that my professor has posted and I would also do as much of the problems in the end of chapters as well. If i felt i need additional help I would find additional problems online from other schools. Another thing I found helpful was to just have a piece of paper with all the relative synthesis and mechanisms that i can just read whenever i had some sparetime.

Personally i think doing well in organic chem is all mental. Alot of people go in thinking the class is too difficult and only the geniuses will understand. But as long as you read teh book and apply yourself it really isn't that bad. This, of couse, is speaking from my own experience with orgo at my school and professor so im not sure how your prof does it.

Thanks for the book recommendations.

Orgo was actually very easy, although I did use an odd study plan.
1-Go to class w/o doing the pre assigned reading
2-After class, skim through the chapter (I say skim because I notice that when I read somewhat briskley (sp?) it seems almost like I am getting the entire content of the lecture in 10 mins... this helps me recall the information quicker... somehow)
3-Take the "concept quiz" in your book, CD, or on your book's website
4-Do a few problems at the end of the chapter, all while thinking about what you are doing (e.g. "I am drawing moving these electrons from a strong base to a hydrogen b/c the base is negatively charged and thus is wants to form a bond)

There you go... 1 chapter in 1.5 hrs (note: doesn't work for spectroscopy chapters)