Upper Level Chemistry Course?? - which one?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

demize

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Hi I go the University of South Florida. To fulfill my degree requirement I must take an upper level chem course either this upcoming fall or spring. Due to previous constraints, both of these semesters will be quite busy. Here are my options:

Inorganic Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry w/Lab
Clinical Chemistry w/Lab
Medicinal Chemistry
Biomolecules (Orgo 3)
Physical Chemistry
Biophysical Chemistry

For those who took these courses or know about them I would appreciate it if you can rank them from easiest to hardest with descriptions if you want. I am thinking of taking Histology and Microbiology in the same semester so I do not want to be boggled down by a hard upper level chem course. Thanks a lot!

Members don't see this ad.
 
Hi I go the University of South Florida. To fulfill my degree requirement I must take an upper level chem course either this upcoming fall or spring. Due to previous constraints, both of these semesters will be quite busy. Here are my options:

Inorganic Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry w/Lab
Clinical Chemistry w/Lab
Medicinal Chemistry
Biomolecules (Orgo 3)
Physical Chemistry
Biophysical Chemistry

For those who took these courses or know about them I would appreciate it if you can rank them from easiest to hardest with descriptions if you want. I am thinking of taking Histology and Microbiology in the same semester so I do not want to be boggled down by a hard upper level chem course. Thanks a lot!


Easy vs. hard is subjective, and depends on what you like, what classes you've had, what the professor is like, etc. I tend to do better in classes I'm very interested in, and along that vein I'd choose biophysical chem, biomolecules, or med chem.
 
Hi I go the University of South Florida. To fulfill my degree requirement I must take an upper level chem course either this upcoming fall or spring. Due to previous constraints, both of these semesters will be quite busy. Here are my options:

Inorganic Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry w/Lab
Clinical Chemistry w/Lab
Medicinal Chemistry
Biomolecules (Orgo 3)
Physical Chemistry
Biophysical Chemistry

For those who took these courses or know about them I would appreciate it if you can rank them from easiest to hardest with descriptions if you want. I am thinking of taking Histology and Microbiology in the same semester so I do not want to be boggled down by a hard upper level chem course. Thanks a lot!

Stay away from P-chem. I found inorganic to be pretty interesting
 
Members don't see this ad :)
I would suggest NOT taking physical chemistry, analytical chemistry/lab, or biophysical chemistry. Those are generally math intensive (especially physical chemistry) and will often include a significant amount of work/time.

Inorganic chemistry can also be that way at some schools (where they focus on a quantum treatment of material). I have no clue what you mean by biomolecules (Orgo 3)....is it biochemistry, or is it organic 3 (which would often be a physical organic class...I'm assuming the former)?

Overall I think medicinal chemistry would be the easiest time wise, but like the other poster said, it'll depend on your interests and the professor.
(I wouldn't suggest any class that requires a lab)
 
Physical chem with full treatment of quantum mechanics and the math involved is brutal. Biophysics is pretty interesting-Youll learn things there that you wont learn in any other class, but it is difficult. I have never taken inorganic nor analytical, but unless you are a chemistry major I would stay away from those.
If you have a good understanding of biochem, and organic, biomolecules should be a breeze.
Ive taken a clinical biochemistry class (no lab), and although it was hard, it was also pretty interesting....and come on you want to be a doctor so.
If i were you, I would either take medicinal chemistry, or biomolecules.
 
Medicinal Chemistry is awesome. I'm taking it junior year, but I already got a sneak preview from my Gen Chem prof.
 
Yeah I would say medicinal chemistry.
It's basically advanced biochemistry, you'll learn alot about the recent chemistries being developed for application in pharmaceutical design for therapeutics. I wish I had time to take it next year (it's called chemical bio at my school) but unfortunately the prof won't be around :(
 
I would suggest NOT taking physical chemistry, analytical chemistry/lab, or biophysical chemistry. Those are generally math intensive (especially physical chemistry) and will often include a significant amount of work/time.

Inorganic chemistry can also be that way at some schools (where they focus on a quantum treatment of material). I have no clue what you mean by biomolecules (Orgo 3)....is it biochemistry, or is it organic 3 (which would often be a physical organic class...I'm assuming the former)?

Overall I think medicinal chemistry would be the easiest time wise, but like the other poster said, it'll depend on your interests and the professor.
(I wouldn't suggest any class that requires a lab)

yea biomolecules is organic chem 3 in our school... I've already taken biochemistry and there is another upper level chem course which I did not mention which is Advanced Biochemistry, I already have info on it so I did not find it reasonable to put it in discussion. Adv. Biochem is basically Biochem 2 which is a pretty interesting course.
Thanks for all the info guys! So basically right now the trend is Physical Chem is the hardest while medicinal chem is very interesting... thanks once again and I hope to see more input!
 
Not pchem. I found inorganic to be interesting, but your best bet would be biochem. it will be applicable in med school
 
if you've done well in Organics, and "get it," then I'd take the Orgo 3 class without a doubt.

Analytical and Physical Chemistry both suck. Like the top end of classes that suck.
 
Not pchem. I found inorganic to be interesting, but your best bet would be biochem. it will be applicable in med school
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I've heard that it helps a tiny bit, but you'll basically breeze through the material you learned in undergrad biochem in only a few classes of med school biochem.
 
I found inorganic chemistry to be really interesting. You'll basically learn exactly how Molecular Orbitals are found, learn how catalysts work (most of them are d-metals), and other random interesting stuff.
 
I thought physical chemistry was pretty easy...
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Either you have had linear algebra, differential equations, and some matrix work before taking p.chem (therefore making it fairly easy since you've seen the math before)

or

you took an easier p.chem class.
 
Either you have had linear algebra, differential equations, and some matrix work before taking p.chem (therefore making it fairly easy since you've seen the math before)

or

you took an easier p.chem class.

Nope, I took up to calculus. And gen chem + orgo were the only other chem classes I've ever taken.

But my pchem didn't have any linear algebra or (real) diff eq in it. Just tons of partial differential equations, which are pretty simple.

Which parts used matrices? There weren't any in the book we used:
http://www.amazon.com/Thermodynamics-Statistical-Kinetics-2nd/dp/0321615034/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

I'm guessing they could help with partition functions or counting microstates, but I can't imagine them being very useful for anything else. Maybe for quantum (our pchem was the thermodynamics side of pchem, there's another pchem class for quantum mechanics)??
 
Fellow USF student, take Clinical Chemistry. 2 Caveats:

it is only offered in the Fall
Biochemistry is a prereq

So, schedule accordingly
 
Medicinal Chemistry.

As far as inorganic goes, if you like orgo, you will probably not like inorgo (it's love-or-hate for either one).

Analytical makes your life miserable unless you are super good at statistics. Then, it's not that bad (I hate stats and never took a class for it).

P-chem's a lot of math I heard.
 
Inorganic chemistry is very difficult if you haven't already taken PChem, so I would stay away from it. PChem is very math intensive and time consuming. PChem I however (thermodynamics) is way easier and involves less calculus than pchem II, so it wouldn't be an awful course to take.

Analytical is interesting, imho, but that's just my opinion. I also didn't find it that hard/time-consuming.

Biochem is tough, but at least it'll be applicable to med school. It's really hard to say because I don't know your personal strengths/weaknesses.
 
Medicinal Chemistry.

As far as inorganic goes, if you like orgo, you will probably not like inorgo (it's love-or-hate for either one).

Not really. I liked orgo a lot and I'm doing orgo research. Inorganic comes pretty useful when you're doing organic synthesis. Inorganic catalysts come in very handy.
 
Medicinal Chemistry.

As far as inorganic goes, if you like orgo, you will probably not like inorgo (it's love-or-hate for either one).

Not really. I liked orgo a lot and I'm doing orgo research. Inorganic comes pretty useful when you're doing organic synthesis. Inorganic catalysts come in very handy.

Inorganic is kind of like Gen Chem 3, and really has nothing to do with Organic in terms of subject matter for the most part (considering inorganic is about the chemistry of everything but carbon) - of course there's a bit of overlap, but I think that's the case with almost every chemistry course - you're bound to run into some overlap somewhere.

As someone who loved orgo way more than anyone should (I spent 2 years doing organic research as an undergrad)... I despised inorganic. It was most overlapping, imho, with physical chemistry and gen chem. It did nothing for me in terms of my knowledge of synthetic organic chemistry.
 
Medicinal Chemistry.

As far as inorganic goes, if you like orgo, you will probably not like inorgo (it's love-or-hate for either one).

Not really. I liked orgo a lot and I'm doing orgo research. Inorganic comes pretty useful when you're doing organic synthesis. Inorganic catalysts come in very handy.

Yup. Loved ochem, have been doing inorganic research for over a year now and loving it. Ochem is very applicable for some aspects of inorganic synthesis. Nowadays, organic and inorganic are very interrelated.
 
Medicinal chemistry sounds cool...
 
Medicinal chemistry sounds cool...
It is. The calculations are actually really awesome.

In the example that we did last semester, we used the principles of acid/base chemistry to figure out if aspirin would be absorbed throught the mucus membrane of the stomach or the lining of the small intestine. :cool:

What can I say? I'm a geek :p
 
No clue about clinical, medicinal, and analytical. My school doesn't offer those courses.

As for the other 4:
-Organic 3/Biomolecules is easy
-Inorganic Chem is medium easy
-Physical Biochem is medium hard
-Physical Chem is very hard

(At least this is the case at my school)
 
No clue about clinical, medicinal, and analytical. My school doesn't offer those courses.

As for the other 4:
-Organic 3/Biomolecules is easy
-Inorganic Chem is medium easy
-Physical Biochem is medium hard
-Physical Chem is very hard

(At least this is the case at my school)

Do you know how biomolecules differs from orgo 1 & 2... like is it just more mechanisms or more applied theories?
Also thanks for all the extra input people! This is really helping me out, hopefully others as well.
 
Do you know how biomolecules differs from orgo 1 & 2... like is it just more mechanisms or more applied theories?
Also thanks for all the extra input people! This is really helping me out, hopefully others as well.

The biomolecules component of my organic chem 3 class was the last 5 chapters of my organic chem text (same textbook for ochem 1+2). We didn't cover all these chapters, but it would include carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, and something else...

The only one that we studied in depth was carbohydrates. We had to memorize all the simple sugars (trioses-hexoses), and then we learned the mechanisms for disaccharide & polysaccharide formation (very in-depth, with stereochemistry), and then we learned a few more reactions with these sugars, that felt more reminiscent of ochem reactions, but were not very difficult to understand.

My school doesn't offer an entire course dedicated to biomolecules as they just tack it onto the end of our organic 3. But if they did, I would definitely take it over all those other courses! (But I AM required to take inorganic, which I heard is really easy. And I'm taking pchem right now, unfortunately, and it is extremely paintful...)

Ok I hope this is helpful to you.
 
Top