Organic Chemistry and the MCAT

[JRWPREMED]

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How much in depth knowledge of Organic Chemistry is needed for the MCAT? The reason I'm asking is because I'm a Biochemistry major, but I haven't taken O-Chem yet. At my university there are two different courses that I can take for Organic Chemistry. I can either take:

General O-Chem I and II - Typical O-Chem course

or

Organic Chemistry I and II for Majors (This one is restricted to Chem, ChemE, and Biochem majors) - Emphasis on fundamental principles, theories, synthesis, and reaction mechanisms

If I don't need to know a whole lot for the MCAT, I'm not going to put myself through the majors version of the course. It is known to be quite a bit harder than General O-Chem.

tl;dr Biochem major. Can either take general or more in-depth version of O-Chem. Would the more in-depth help all that much on the MCAT?

 

[kpcrew]

Taking the in-depth version isn't necessary and it can possibly hurt because you learn a lot of other things which might make you overthink questions on the mcat. It's useful for getting a better understanding of what's happening but if you'll probably need a good background in chemistry to keep up and do well.

 

[orthomyxo]

Just take the regular o-chem classes. That's really all you need for the MCAT, and taking the more advanced one is probably not worth the added stress.

 

[Ruhroh]

You can still easily answer most MCAT ochem questions with normal ochem.

Worst case scenario you might take the advanced class, cause yourself a lot of stress, and then get exactly 1 ochem passage on the real thing

 

[bigdogrob4284]

I would take the regular one.

 

[Irish Football]

Take the regular one. I got B's in O-chem and it was BY FAR my weakest subject. I ended up with an 11 on BS on my MCAT because there are usually only like 2 passages of o-chem and most of it is usually pretty straightforward.

 

[SpacemanSpifff]

Take the regular one. I got B's in O-chem and it was BY FAR my weakest subject. I ended up with an 11 on BS on my MCAT because there are usually only like 2 passages of o-chem and most of it is usually pretty straightforward.

Agreed. Organic is a fairly minor portion of most people's MCAT experience it seems. I did not have any passages that were completely based in o-chem, and only saw a couple discrete questions and a few passage based questions.

 

[Mdtichen]

I actually disagree. Yes, the basics are important but I took a third, more advanced, semester of organic and I think that it helped tremendously. My MCAT had more organic than bio on it though. The organic was not easy stuff like the basic classes offer. I ended up with a 14 on the biological section and I attribute some of that to my extensive background in organic.