Organic Chemistry

[Awuah29]

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Hey guys,
did anyone of you encounter during their dat test alkylation of simple enolates, michael additions or reactions and the claisen condensation ?
Again what's the best way to drill organic chemistry ? People in the forum say memorization. That's what I did, but did not worked out. Now I am going the other way to understand the meachanism. Any suggestion how I can get this down. I know practice, practice, but how? Does it help to rewrite the reacton over and over again of a piece of paper untill you get sick of it?

 

[luder98]

I wouldn't try to memorize OC rxn's. 1) Too many. 2) Many are similar.

Try to understand the mechanism behind the generic rxn. You'll see that a lot of them are similar. I think Kaplan groups them pretty well.

Of course, there are a few exception that you need to memorize. Make sure you pay attention to those. I believe I encountered one or two on the real test.

 

[bouncy_ball]

I agree w/ luder98 that all you need to do is get a general feel for mechanisms and not just memorize memorize memorize every rxn. (What I mean by a general feel, I mean for instance pi bonds act as an electrophile, so that would be a likely rxn center.)

I think for some of those rxns that are very distinct like Wittig, just remember the reactant-type, reagent, and product -type. So then on the test, if you see Ph3CR as a reagent or reactant you'll know immediately how to procede to answer the question.

As for mechanisms, I would not memorize them in detail as I did not get a single mechanism question (aside from very general ones like SN1 is a 2 step mechanism).

 

[dexadental]

Understand the mechanisms. Know where the electrons flow. Know the bonds broken and formed. If you know this, orgo is cake.

 

[Dr.SpongeBobDDS]

I second that. Understand the mechanisms. If you were unfortunate enough to have a professor who stressed memorization over understanding you are going to have to do a little work on your own... but it will be worth it.

I don't know how much time you have, but here is a good, small book to get started. Pushing Electrons Do every problem in the book, even the ones that seem simple. It will take several days, but when you are done everything will make SOOOO much more sense to you.

My organic chemistry teacher insisted on writing tests where the only way to make an A was to solve not only the rxn types we had discussed in class, but also several we had never seen before. Many people tried reading ahead in the textbook thinking that would help, but the only two people who came out with A's in the class were the two of us who had bothered to read through that book.

 

[DrTacoElf]

I agree with spongebob, if you know mechanisms there aren't many problems that you can't handle -- even if you have never seen the exact reaction before you just automatically have an idea for what will happen and usually you are correct. But i will stress one thing here. I've noticed on standardized tests you aren't exactly rewarded as much for an in depth understanding of mechanisms as you are for memorization. Just don't get TOO bogged down in all of it. I think its really important to be able to predict products not only accurately but quickly on the DAT. Good luck 🙂