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snwbrdr18

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If you knew what you know now about orgo, (with regard to study habits/techniques) what would you do differently if you were able to go back in time and retake the class? I'm taking it next year and wanted to hear what you guys had to say. Would you just ready the book? Or the lecture notes? Would you make index cards? Would you make outlines?

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The best thing you can do is review formal charge, lewis acid & base, and buy orgo as a second language... oh and subscribe to freelanceteacher on yotube. He'll probably function as a better lecturer than your professor half the time.

I would have probably done more practice problems.. And attended more group review sessions with friends.
 
I would have done WAY more practice problems and gone to office hours. Lecture doesn't help very much for organic, at least for my class. If you have a good textbook you don't really need to sit and watch your professor draw mechanisms for an hour. Don't make outlines of the chapters though. I tried it at the start of orgo 1, and it was a giant waste of time that could have been used to do problems. I've also done the whole index card thing, and it kind of helps, but at the same time it encourages you to memorize, which DOES NOT work for organic. Check out khanacademy.org too. He has tons of videos that might help.

tl;dr - read book, do practice problems, ask questions
 
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For me, reading the book was huge. While doing plenty of practice problems is also important, learning the concepts behind the reactions makes generalization much easier. Often, professors will give you practice problems for a specific type of reaction, then tweak it just enough to throw you on an exam. However, if you nail down the fundamental concepts then you can easily apply them to novel situations.
 
Having already taken and passed orgo, I remember essentially nothing about orgo. Some things have lazy-assed electrons sitting around not doing anything useful. Some things are a little short on electrons electrons since payday is still a few days away. Those two things tend to make friends. That's about all you need to remember...after you're done in those classes. In the other 14,374 threads about how to not suck at orgo, I always recommend Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, because it is vastly more valuable in getting you to understand what's going on than your textbook.
 
Practice. Practice. Practice. Reactions and mechanisms can be tricky at times. The only way you're going to master this stuff is to practice it. If you hit a bump in the road, go to your professor's office hours.

In all honesty, orgo has been a challenging class, but it is not as bad as people make it out to be, and out of all the pre-reqs, it's by far my favorite one.
 
I always recommend Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, because it is vastly more valuable in getting you to understand what's going on than your textbook.
Everyone recommends the second language books, but I would suggest checking out your textbook before you buy them. I have both of them, and they really don't correlate with what we were expected to know (especially the one for second semester). When it does, the problems it gives you are really basic, which is pretty misleading. It makes you think "oh I get this, it's easy." And then you get owned on the exam. :mad:
 
Stayed up on the homework so I was not sitting down every Thursday night and doing 50 problems with 10-20 parts to it and then turning it in the next morning. Other than that I would say have a good understanding of nucleophile and electrophile and how they attack and learn to picture resonance structures in your head so on tests your not trying to write them out trying to figure things out.

I would also recommending writing out every reaction mechanism in your book (as you get to them) and keep them in a binder and have an organization to them. So like how to synthesize and carboxylic acids go in one section, how to synthesize alkenes goes in another, alkyl halides in another and so on. Writing them out is helpful and them being able to reference them quickly is also helpful. Writing the chapter or page they came from can also useful so you can also find it in your book.

I also kept a list of every reaction learned (w/o mechanism) with some notes about it so I could easily review before a test, and if I could not come up with the mechanisms I could reference the mechanism sheets
 
Practice problems! The review books are helpful for understanding the basics especially if your textbook is pretty theoretical (which mine was). But I agree they don't have challenging problems. Do a bunch of basic ones and then move up to the harder ones (my textbook had them separated by difficulty). I found those were usually harder than the ones on the test but they really got me thinking about using the basic concepts in different situations so it made the tests easier. Of course, I only figured this out halfway through Orgo 2. LOL.

Oh and for us, Orgo 2 was a LOT of memorization. I broke out the flash cards for that and I just made myself write the reactionsout a bunch of times.
 
-Make sure you get a good professor if possible, a good professor will teach the concepts well so that the necessary memorization of reagents/mechanisms that takes place will be much easier b/c you can make sense of them. There are some gray areas in orgo that a good teacher can really make or break you on.

-UNDERSTAND the mechanisms and major concepts from Orgo 1 PERFECTLY. This includes off the top of my head, acid/base chemistry, formal charges, nucleophilicity/electrophilicity, stereochemistry/regiochemistry, 3D orientation/rotation with regards to isomers, stability of leaving groups/nucleophiles/products, solvent/temp. effects on reactivity (SN1/SN2/E1/E2), and then the basic reaction pathways/mechanisms regarding various reagents. This is not an exhaustive list, just a couple examples.

-IT IS NOT ABOUT MEMORIZATION! Sure you have to know WHAT the reagents are there will be a couple odd mechanisms that just do what they do but as a whole understanding HOW and WHY mechanisms and synthesis proceed as they do will allow mastery of the material, not just regurgitation on test day.

-ITS NOT HARD! There are relatively few major concepts that play out over and over in regards to different functional groups/reagents and there respective reactivity. These concepts are not that difficult and understanding them allows you to approach any unknown problem with certain tools to solving them.

-KEEP UP WITH THE MATERIAL DO NOT CRAM! There are hundreds of reagents and plenty of mechanisms to learn and cramming them in your head a couple days before the test will not work well. It will force you to memorize and not understand the material.

-Get the Orgo as a Second Language book and read it before/alongside your curriculum. It really helps reinforce the basic concepts aforementioned that are CRITICAL to your success. It it NOT designed to mimic testing difficulty, only to reinforce the essential concepts/language of orgo.

-ENJOY IT! It really is an enjoyable class if you approach it with the goal of understanding and not memorization. Approach with confidence!

-Learn Orgo 1 well, many of the same concepts apply regularly in Orgo 2 material.
 
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I would have done less studying, worked more, and had more fun.

I can say this b/c I had an awesome foundation in gen chem and ochem is really just a matter of watching protons and electrons intermingle, have one-night stands, go out on a few dates on occasion, blow each other off...etc.

Oh, wait, are we really talking about ochem here? Yes, we are. E-Z class. I never quite got what all the fuss was about honestly. And for the MCAT -- I really wish they would put MORE ochem on there! MCAT ochem is like the ultimate exercise in "no ****, Sherlock" moments.

My best advice to you is to know gen chem well and not fall for all the crap about it being such a tough class. It's really not. It just gets hyped up by people who never caught onto the 5 or so central topics, which are mentioned in the first couple of weeks usually and were covered quite thoroughly in gen chem, really (just under different names): acid/base (opposites attract/Nuc-s & E+s), steric hindrance, induction & resonance effects, carbocations & stability, stereochemistry.... If you understand those basics, you can probably pass the OChem ACS standardized exam with flying colors (i.e., the standardized ACS test that many schools use for the Ochem 2 final). Really, nothing in UG Ochem goes beyond those basic topics. You simply practice identifying what's what. Remember that Ochem is ALL a giant logic puzzle. There's really nothing to it.
 
I personally hate memorization, so I'd have to say note cards. The mechanisms were really easy for me, but I had such a hard time with the memorization of reagents and types of reactions (E1, E2, all greek to me). Note cards break up the material into manageable bits instead of a mass of disorganized notes.
 
E-Z class. I never quite got what all the fuss was about honestly. And for the MCAT -- I really wish they would put MORE ochem on there! MCAT ochem is like the ultimate exercise in "no ****, Sherlock" moments.
:thumbup:
 
Nothing different... aced both semesters.

Attended lectures, read the text, did practice problems & memorized mechanisms by writing on our whiteboard walls.

The class is not rocket science. Don't let yourself get stressed out (the cortisol inhibits memory... or something like that). Just set aside substantial blocks of time to study & you will be just fine.

Most people I know who did poorly simply didn't put in the time. The other person who did poorly (C) had terrible test anxiety and freaked herself out every time. So... study and relax!

Oh, and purchase the answer guide for your text if it is available online. It was expensive, but really nice to check practice problems. Sometimes there is an easier solution explained in there than you'd been thinking of.
 
A-, A in Organic Chem. I sit down with a stack of blank, white printer paper and draw out every problem in the chapter. We move a chapter a week, so I go through every mechanism in the chapter about 4 times a week. If I need to review "notes" I look at the problems I drew. 10-15 hours a week ALONE for this class. It works though 'cause I'm a PHI major.
 
Pretend your prof says you're stupid and you're going to fail.

That way, if you're a somewhat typical premed, you'll wig out, try to prove yourself, study every day (like you're supposed to for orgo).

Then, once you get your first A you can relax, see that you have what it takes to succeed, and drink during class because you're going to teach yourself 100% of the material anyway.
 
A-, A in Organic Chem. I sit down with a stack of blank, white printer paper and draw out every problem in the chapter. We move a chapter a week, so I go through every mechanism in the chapter about 4 times a week. If I need to review "notes" I look at the problems I drew. 10-15 hours a week ALONE for this class. It works though 'cause I'm a PHI major.
? I definitely don't find the course to be this demanding... I study for a total of 1-2 days before an exam and don't have trouble learning all the reactions (really just reagents). The mechanisms for orgo 2 are just different combinations of things you theoretically should have already seen from ochem 1. idk, maybe it's easier at my school? :confused:
 
I would have tried to understand concepts rather than memorizing reactions. I also would have done more practice problems!!
 
? I definitely don't find the course to be this demanding... I study for a total of 1-2 days before an exam and don't have trouble learning all the reactions (really just reagents). The mechanisms for orgo 2 are just different combinations of things you theoretically should have already seen from ochem 1. idk, maybe it's easier at my school? :confused:

That's always what I think when I see these people who study for 15-20 hrs...but then, I see them at my UG too. They'll study for like 20 hrs/wk and end up w/ a B and no real understanding of the subject matter. A lot of them do nothing but memorize, memorize, memorize.... You have to understand and that's probably something you're doing and some others on this thread aren't. The MCAT will kick their butts, though. You, OTOH, will skate on through.
 
Asking for advice from people on orgo, keep in mind it's going to be like blind people telling you about the elephant. They'll relate their own experience.

Your own experience will be 100% dependent on your instructor. Organic chemistry can range from being nothing special in terms of difficulty, to being way off the scale in terms of hours spent and high stress levels.

Seek out previous exams from your instructor to get a good gauge of difficulty, and talk to students who've taken the exact same course. They'll have the best perspective.
 
Asking for advice from people on orgo, keep in mind it's going to be like blind people telling you about the elephant. They'll relate their own experience.

Your own experience will be 100% dependent on your instructor. Organic chemistry can range from being nothing special in terms of difficulty, to being way off the scale in terms of hours spent and high stress levels.

Seek out previous exams from your instructor to get a good gauge of difficulty, and talk to students who've taken the exact same course. They'll have the best perspective.

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No, seriously...WTF you talkin' about?

Yes, courses vary but, really, there are some principles to go by for ochem. Many of them have been mentioned here. Yes, instructor matters, but, honestly, the classes all teach the same basic things. The variation isn't that great....
 
There is some excellent advice in this thread!

I agree with practicing, the best way for me to learn ochem was to work through problems, and making sure I understood what was happening, and also why it was happening. The better you understand the concepts, the easier time you'll have with the unconventional problems that professors will throw at you.

Everybody learns differently; try a bunch of approaches and then stick with whatever seems most comfortable to you.
 
No, seriously...WTF you talkin' about?

Yes, courses vary but, really, there are some principles to go by for ochem. Many of them have been mentioned here. Yes, instructor matters, but, honestly, the classes all teach the same basic things. The variation isn't that great....


The variation is HUGE. This is WTF I'm talking about:

I've tutored students online in o-chem in close to 50 schools across the country and I can start to see some patterns repeat. As far as I can see there are basically three main categories of courses in orgo. It's an oversimplification but I'm still in the process of really learning the variations in how orgo is taught.

Type I: . Exams will involve active thought and problem solving. Very time intensive courses. These are the ones that give nightmares. Do problems. Understand concepts. Write and rewrite notes. Get a good supplementary book like Ochem as a second language. Find a well-matched, disciplined study partner if possible. Get a whiteboard for drawing out mechanisms and structures. Practice synthesis. Keep track of little mistakes, with eye on eradicating them. Small mistakes kill. Some of the tougher ones I've seen (in no particular order): NYU, Rice, USC, UCLA, UGA, Syracuse, SUNY Binghampton.

Type II: And then... every once in awhile I come across profs from well respected schools who are basically mailing it in. Especially in Org 2. Their way of testing people is just to throw up 3 dozen reactions and have people give the products. No concepts tested. You have to know where the arrows go, but a straight up memorization approach would work here. No real push from the instructor to apply concepts. To prepare for these, get access to prior exams: questions often repeat. Problems are good practice, but less important as preparation than knowing reactions and synthesis. That's what's tested.

Type III I'd say is the community colleges. You still have to understand the concepts and to be able to push electrons. Again, focus is really on knowing the material in the lectures, not so much on applying concepts. If it isn't in the course notes, it won't be on the exam. There's a ton of material regardless, and knowing the reactions is paramount, but if you do the work and apply yourself the course shouldn't give you nightmares.

You're right - there's lots of great advice on this thread and the concepts you have to learn are basically the same. That being said, the examination style of the instructor matters tremendously to the difficulty of the course as well as to some of the strategies people find optimal for doing well in it. That's why you get a lot of seemingly conflicting advice like "don't memorize, learn the concepts", and "Orgo 2 for us was a lot of memorization".

I shouldn't have said "100% dependent", on the instructor though. There's a lot that's in your control.

tl;dr There's an enormous difference in study strategy between taking Orgo with Maitland Jones at NYU and taking it at Northern Virginia Community College.
 
The variation is HUGE. This is WTF I'm talking about:

I've tutored students online in o-chem in close to 50 schools across the country and I can start to see some patterns repeat. As far as I can see there are basically three main categories of courses in orgo. It's an oversimplification but I'm still in the process of really learning the variations in how orgo is taught.

Type I: . Exams will involve active thought and problem solving. Very time intensive courses. These are the ones that give nightmares. Do problems. Understand concepts. Write and rewrite notes. Get a good supplementary book like Ochem as a second language. Find a well-matched, disciplined study partner if possible. Get a whiteboard for drawing out mechanisms and structures. Practice synthesis. Keep track of little mistakes, with eye on eradicating them. Small mistakes kill. Some of the tougher ones I've seen (in no particular order): NYU, Rice, USC, UCLA, UGA, Syracuse, SUNY Binghampton.


tl;dr There's an enormous difference in study strategy between taking Orgo with Maitland Jones at NYU and taking it at Northern Virginia Community College.

This is what I do. I learn the reactants very well, and then get with a friend in the library and think of the hardest synthesis problems possible. I mean, stuff that takes way more steps than would ever be asked on an exam. It definitely works, and I get every synthesis problem right on exams. So I recommend others do this after memorizing the material. I'm not sure how hard it is at my uni compared to other schools, but this strategy should work regardless.

MJ wrote the textbook that Vanderbilt uses! Didn't know he was a prof still...
 
Honestly I would study less. I studied everyday for 4 hours a day for orgo I and got average scores. Now I study 3 times a day for 2 hours each for orgo II and have been getting much better scores
 
Kill myself on day one. I seriously hate organic.

edit:

I would have skipped all lectures and bought a textbook and solutions that doesn't suck. Don't ever buy Loudon's Organic Chemistry unless you like spending 30 minutes reading 10 pages to figure out that the answer is "resonance" or looking in the solutions manual to find a question in the answer.
 
IMO Maitland Jones textbook is pretty horrible
 
Remember:

Anatomy >>>>>>>> Ochem

So, just work as hard as you can 4-5 days a week on Ochem. If you can't get an A in that course then it will probably be hard to do well later.

Advice:

-- Previous Exams
-- Ochem as 2nd Language
-- Talk to students
-- Do all practice sets you can and if you don't do well, do it again

There really is no secret. It's just hard work.
 
Having already taken and passed orgo, I remember essentially nothing about orgo. Some things have lazy-assed electrons sitting around not doing anything useful. Some things are a little short on electrons electrons since payday is still a few days away. Those two things tend to make friends. That's about all you need to remember...after you're done in those classes. In the other 14,374 threads about how to not suck at orgo, I always recommend Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, because it is vastly more valuable in getting you to understand what's going on than your textbook.

This.
 
IMO Maitland Jones textbook is pretty horrible

Eh, it's not so bad. I haven't been using it as much 2nd semester though. My prof makes the notes easy to take, so I just re-read and rewrite them a few times, as well as use MIT opencourseware/make up my own problems to practice.
 
Asking for advice from people on orgo, keep in mind it's going to be like blind people telling you about the elephant. They'll relate their own experience.

Your own experience will be 100% dependent on your instructor. Organic chemistry can range from being nothing special in terms of difficulty, to being way off the scale in terms of hours spent and high stress levels.

Seek out previous exams from your instructor to get a good gauge of difficulty, and talk to students who've taken the exact same course. They'll have the best perspective.

No, seriously...WTF you talkin' about?

Yes, courses vary but, really, there are some principles to go by for ochem. Many of them have been mentioned here. Yes, instructor matters, but, honestly, the classes all teach the same basic things. The variation isn't that great....

I actually agree with OrgoHacks. The variation is huge. I know some Ochem profs that tried to trick people like crazy and others who were straight forward. Once you finish and tutor you get to know the 4 or 5 Ochem professors at your school. Makes a huge difference.
 
I actually agree with OrgoHacks. The variation is huge. I know some Ochem profs that tried to trick people like crazy and others who were straight forward. Once you finish and tutor you get to know the 4 or 5 Ochem professors at your school. Makes a huge difference.

That is true, I suppose. At the same time, though, while I had a good professor, a lot of students still struggled. There are certainly variations and it's important to identify what a professor cares about (i.e., is going to test on) and why, but beyond that, I think when you're talking about high-caliber students, the quality of the instructor should matter less and less. I've experienced great profs and not-so-great ones and, honestly, the classes on both sides were definitely manageable.

Nevertheless, I'd always suggest doing your homework and finding the best (don't assume that means "easiest") professor you can find.
 
That is true, I suppose. At the same time, though, while I had a good professor, a lot of students still struggled. There are certainly variations and it's important to identify what a professor cares about (i.e., is going to test on) and why, but beyond that, I think when you're talking about high-caliber students, the quality of the instructor should matter less and less. I've experienced great profs and not-so-great ones and, honestly, the classes on both sides were definitely manageable.

Nevertheless, I'd always suggest doing your homework and finding the best (don't assume that means "easiest") professor you can find.

:thumbup:
 
I wouldn't really have done anything differently. I'll tell you what I did do, though, because I managed to do well (A in Orgo I, 99 average in Orgo II right now).

-Definitely read the book. Don't worry about remembering every single detail, but reading the text and seeing the reaction mechanisms really helps before you try practicing problems.

-Try to understand why reactions happen instead of just memorizing the different reactions. Try to group them by 'type' and recognize the patterns instead of trying to remember every, single reaction individually. Obviously, you have to be able to remember which reagents/catalysts/solvents to use in which reactions, but if you're able to understand why things happen, you'll have much less to memorize. You should be able to (theoretically) look at any problem you're given, recognize the characteristics of the compound(s) you're looking at and predict what will happen.

-Do plenty of practice problems. In my mind, if you do enough practice problems, nothing should really come as a huge surprise to you on an exam. There will almost always be portions that you are slightly uncomfortable with, but if you've practiced enough, you'll be able to breeze through the easy problems with confidence and work/reason your way through the harder ones.

-Don't be afraid to ask your professor for help. They are there to help you. And if you have a bad professor, you can always ask another professor. Bottom line - don't be afraid to ask for help. Orgo is usually the class that most people find the hardest.
 
I agree with those who said it depends a lot on the instructor. If you get to choose your orgo instructor, make sure you talk to former students and choose wisely.

For example, the instructor who I took orgo with was fantastic. She didn’t just teach us orgo, she taught us how to learn orgo. She had a knack for anticipating what students might struggle with. For example, she knew that students might have a hard time visualizing 3-dimensional structures, so she spent enough time explaining how to go from one representation to another, and how to use sawhorse projections to simplify some of the complex 3-D structures. She gave us detailed notes during class (which made reading the textbook optional), and provided tons of helpful problem sets (with detailed solutions).
 
Get a bunch of practice exams from ppl who took it b4.... Also, get prep books and stuff and do plenty of practice problems. It's basically all about problem solving, so more problems you do, the better.
 
Read the book, try to commit all the reactions in the chapter to memory AND UNDERSTAND THEM, and then do A LOT of practice problems. You will never succeed if you don't do practice problems. The other things are important, but you will literally fail if you don't practice.
 
6a00d8341c652b53ef010536a8be2e970b-800wi




No, seriously...WTF you talkin' about?

Yes, courses vary but, really, there are some principles to go by for ochem. Many of them have been mentioned here. Yes, instructor matters, but, honestly, the classes all teach the same basic things. The variation isn't that great....

I must disagree as far as variation goes. True, it's the same concepts but difficulty varies dramatically. For organic chem I, I studied last minute for exams, never went to lecture and still got an easy A+, all because I had a blowoff professor. For OChem II, even when I kept up with the material as it was presented, I just barely got my A. The highest average was a 92. The exams were always totally different from anything covered in the book or in lecture so you really had to know your stuff
 
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