What is the hardest pre/med req. class?

[JoyKim456]

Personally, I feel as if Physics makes every other pre req seem easy.

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[Ace Khalifa]

At Wash U, every premed requirement is a weed out class. Gen chem, bio, orgo, and even physics to a lesser extent. I'd say that orgo is the worst because you either get it or you don't. Gen chem and physics can be worked around like any math class by doing practice problems. Bio just depends on your memorization skills.

 

[SN12357]

The one that's taught by a terrible, disorganized professor.

In other words, different subject(s) at every university.

 

[doc4lax]

I loved organic, but my hardest class was ecology. Using excel worksheets to code population tracking for a theoretical bird population made me like:

 

[Zelda840]

organic for me. no contest.

 

[ciestar]

The first semester of organic was the worst for me.

 

[infinitessimal]

I agree that the hardest is the one with the crappiest professor. I had an amazing teacher for organic that made the entire year fly by, but a conglomeration of researchers for bio who switched off every two topics and did not know how to teach a large lecture course. Consequently, test questions seemed to come out of nowhere and a 77% was an A. That class was the hardest to deal with by far, not for content but for how much work and stress it required.

 

[ciestar]

I agree that the hardest is the one with the crappiest professor. I had an amazing teacher for organic that made the entire year fly by, but a conglomeration of researchers for bio who switched off every two topics and did not know how to teach a large lecture course. Consequently, test questions seemed to come out of nowhere and a 77% was an A. That class was the hardest to deal with by far, not for content but for how much work and stress it required.

Stress and anxiety regarding that course legitimately crippled me when I took that class. I ended up having to drop it to pull myself together.

 

[Rhino1000]

Biochem = pretty much a prereq now, especially with the new MCAT coming up. I would say biochem, by a fair margin.

 

[musicalfeet]

Biochem = pretty much a prereq now, especially with the new MCAT coming up. I would say biochem, by a fair margin.

I agree--I had a lot of trouble retaining biochem information. Although it could be more a problem of the class structure/professor rather than the actual course...

It was just so hard to care about citrulline and oxaloacetate and blah blah blah. I cared more about the molecules I learned in Ochem..hahaha.

 

[optimistic3]

Physics for me. I enjoyed my organic class.

 

[deleted407021]

Apparently, biology I is considered a weed out course at my school.

I'd say physics I was the least enjoyable of my pre requisites. Ochem I was the most difficult, but it prepared me well for ochem II, which was technically more challenging.

 

[Gauss44]

Some would argue English. It's subjective!

 

[deleted407021]

Some would argue English. It's subjective!

 

[Tappinfool66]

Some would argue English. It's subjective!

+1

 

[allantois]

Orgo lab for me. Ridiculous and unrealistic expectations.

 

[LMBLBM]

Analytic lab for me. My lab TA wanted us to be Heisenbergs. 30% deduction for anyone falling below 90% yield

 

[FutureOncologist]

Organic Chemistry II for the lecture. It pretty much jumped 10 steps from Organic I. Going from intermediate one to two-step syntheses to Proton NMR, IR Spec, UV Spec, Carbon NMR, aromatic compounds, Class I-III carboxyl groups, and blah... blah... blah.... It was an insane amount of knowledge that we needed to know to just get a C (I don't know how I pulled out with a B in the class).

For me, Organic Lab I was the most difficult lab. Every fall, at the beginning of gen chem I and orgo chem I, they want you to do lab as if you're a graduate student--they tried to weed everyone out. If we got 85% yield or better, we got the A for the week. Anything below and the yield % = your grade % in that week's lab. The hardest lab I had to do was a multi-step synthesis that involved organic chemistry concepts from graduate-level books. We got a 36% yield (highest in the lab), so they set that as the 100% and had to configure a chart to determine everyone's grades.

 

[frosted_flake]

I loved organic, but my hardest class was ecology. Using excel worksheets to code population tracking for a theoretical bird population made me like:

_____________________________
On the other hand, physics was.... physics.

I am still bitter!

 

[SDsequence]

For me so far it was Gen Chem II. Probably because I hate math and it is a huge weed out class at my school. I found physics much easier for some reason. But I haven't taken Ochem yet so I'm sure my opinion will change

 

[STLMako91]

Organic 2. So many mechanisms. So many subtleties and nuances to remember and apply appropriately. The other science subjects were just plain conceptual. As long as you can wrap your mind around those, they weren't hard.

 

[baconcures]

For me it was gosh durn CALCULUS ughrhghr Would rather look at a poop hotdog than take that nightmare of a class again.

 

[RTC19]

Physics hands down. As a hard science major myself(Chemistry), I should have an affinity for Physics, but I just don't.

 

[sharkbyte]

Ochem I was very tough for me, it sailed over my head and didn't make sense for a long time. Then I finally figured it out and did pretty well in Ochem 2.

I only found physics manageable because my professor wrote easy exams. If the exams were more difficult I'm certain I would have found physics harder.

 

[DoctorSynthesis]

Analytic lab for me. My lab TA wanted us to be Heisenbergs. 30% deduction for anyone falling below 90% yield

Heisenberg's baby blue was way higher then 90

 

[DoctorSynthesis]

My hardest class was bio 2. Lab practicals had me like

Fortunately I figured it out in a & p. Orgo is the stereotypical weed out class.

 

[Letrie]

I agree with the person who said the bad professor is the hardest class. I had the same professor both semesters of gen chem and I did terrible with her. Then when orgo came around I had an amazing professor and I found it to be a breeze ironically.

 

[Letrie]

Organic Chemistry II for the lecture. It pretty much jumped 10 steps from Organic I. Going from intermediate one to two-step syntheses to Proton NMR, IR Spec, UV Spec, Carbon NMR, aromatic compounds, Class I-III carboxyl groups, and blah... blah... blah.... It was an insane amount of knowledge that we needed to know to just get a C (I don't know how I pulled out with a B in the class).

For me, Organic Lab I was the most difficult lab. Every fall, at the beginning of gen chem I and orgo chem I, they want you to do lab as if you're a graduate student--they tried to weed everyone out. If we got 85% yield or better, we got the A for the week. Anything below and the yield % = your grade % in that week's lab. The hardest lab I had to do was a multi-step synthesis that involved organic chemistry concepts from graduate-level books. We got a 36% yield (highest in the lab), so they set that as the 100% and had to configure a chart to determine everyone's grades.

dear god that orgo lab grading scale sounds terrible. I would have failed that class because my experiments never worked properly haha, but thank god they just let you redo it in my lab and didn't penalize you.

 

[DielsAlder]

Either biochem or organic chemistry. I feel like organic was difficult in the sense that it was a ton of work, while biochem was difficult in the sense that I had to think more intelligently to get an A.

 

[swolebrah]

Gen chem.... Learn it well though it's going to be on the MCAT . Like others said , Ochem is a hit or miss. I personally really enjoyed it , but again I hated gen chem .

 

[Angel252]

Gen chem for me. I believe it was partly the professor. Although, after studying for the MCAT and going through everything for a second time really opened my eyes and helped me understand a lot of the material.

Love organic, actually enjoyed the puzzle-like reactions.

 

[Lamel]

I really don't know many people who were weeded out by one class. Either they did fairly well in all of them, or they did fairly poorly in most of them. I suppose the freshman who dropped pre-med after first semester due to chem/bio is a different story, but I have a feeling they would have been weeded out by any one of the pre-med classes.

 

[Time Table]

Haven't taken Biochem yet, but Bio II is supposed to be extremely difficult at my school because of the professor. Orgo itself was difficult because it was something I was never exposed to.

 

[frosted_flake]

My hardest class was bio 2. Lab practicals had me like

Fortunately I figured it out in a & p. Orgo is the stereotypical weed out class.

What did you cover in bio 2? Plants/animals/ecology?
I loved bio 1 with molecular/cell/evolution/physiology!

 

[DoctorSynthesis]

What did you cover in bio 2? Plants/animals/ecology?
I loved bio 1 with molecular/cell/evolution/physiology!

My schools bio 2 was weird. Its a big marine bio school so had to do a lot of that.

We mostly focused on like fish stuff.

 

[godawg300]

I like to think of premed classes in terms of workload. I didn't find any class hard conceptually.

In order of workload
Bio > Chem > Ochem > Physics

Bio - tons of memorization with some application stuff. Hardest core classes in my undergrad. Very few As
Chem - mainly practice problems, but you need to see a bunch of different types of questions.
Ochem - first semester pretty easy if you master some basic concepts. Second semester more memorization (except NMR/IR)
Physics - If you are good at word problems, setting up equations and understanding some basic principles, this doesn't require too much work.

Will be taking Biochem this fall so I'll have to see about that one.

 

[didymus]

The condensed, 4-week long combined organic and biochemistry class I took one summer was a kick in the ballsack.

 

[Lamel]

The condensed, 4-week long combined organic and biochemistry class I took one summer was a kick in the ballsack.

That just sounds like a bad idea.

 

[didymus]

That just sounds like a bad idea.

It was, and I don't recommend it for anyone. 200 pages of reading per week, 150+ practice problems. Did I mention it also had a lab component? No, I don't recommend it for anyone. The only way I was able to get through it with a B was that Organic and Biochem were not difficult conceptually for me. Had I spaced the courses out over 16 weeks like a sane person, I think I could have gotten an A.

 

[musicalfeet]

The condensed, 4-week long combined organic and biochemistry class I took one summer was a kick in the ballsack.

Sounds like an even worse version of the Biochem I took in the summer. It was a 4-week long course where they tried to cram as much into my brain as possible. Unfortunately, I came out of it hardly remembering anything...haha. Just enough to help me with biochem-ish questions on the MCAT, but I guarantee you I can hardly provide any details . We had a midterm every week and just sort of rushed through things. We were a pilot class also, so the professor was just sort of trying things out with us to see if it worked for the class. It's a requirement now (optional for us) for anyone who's in our post-bac program

 

[didymus]

Sounds like an even worse version of the Biochem I took in the summer. It was a 4-week long course where they tried to cram as much into my brain as possible. Unfortunately, I came out of it hardly remembering anything...haha. Just enough to help me with biochem-ish questions on the MCAT, but I guarantee you I can hardly provide any details . We had a midterm every week and just sort of rushed through things. We were a pilot class also, so the professor was just sort of trying things out with us to see if it worked for the class. It's a requirement now (optional for us) for anyone who's in our post-bac program

I feel you! I hate to say it but I only took the course to get familiar with organic and biochem concepts and for the sake of checking it off the list. I think I could work my way around aromatic compounds and carbs and stuff if called upon, but I wouldn't trust my knowledge for anything in-depth.

I can't, for the life of me, figure out how any university even offers these types of classes.

 

[Rhino1000]

Either biochem or organic chemistry. I feel like organic was difficult in the sense that it was a ton of work, while biochem was difficult in the sense that I had to think more intelligently to get an A.

I couldn't be more at odds with these words. In my experience, organic chemistry is for the most part completely pattern-based on only like 10-15 fundamental concepts (maybe 25 including spectroscopy) (induction, resonance, electronegativity, basicity, nucleophilicity, polarity, bond length, radical and ion stability, changes in reactivity post-reaction, and in general electron density differences [plus maybe a few others]) and was therefore a class in which thinking logically to "figure out" problems was a possibility. Biochem tested minutiae such as structures of disaccharides, serine protease mechanisms (which are empirical facts, hardly derivable with logical thinking alone) and pkas of amino acids. Some of the toughest "logical/intelligence based" items in biochem included titrations and pH calculations of protein solutions. I think organic syntheses and in some cases, mechanisms were more intelligent-thinking based; even predicting the product of reactions seemed to me to be partially loaded with logic. Of course, all classes are different, and people do have different strengths. I'm curious what you thought was intellectual in biochem, besides the shtload of memorization required?

 

[TheIslandGuy]

I never found the Biology courses hard at all... they just require memorization and done. Organic Chemistry/Biochem/Bioinorganic Chemistry were the courses that required much more than memorization and were the most challenging.

 

[Omppu27]

I thought physics was the easiest. Ochem labs weren't necessarily hard, but it was so easy to lose points and i absolutely hated attending. Ochem 2 was pretty tough but I had a generous curve. Gen chem 3 (was on quarter system at the time) was bad too but that was mainly due to the professor. The hardest class for me to receive a good grade was HANDS DOWN biochem. I thought it was somewhat interesting, but we had very little to no curve.

 

[NYCdude]

Physics 2 was probably the most challenging. Also probably the coolest class. Time dilation had me like waaat.

 

[DielsAlder]

Some would argue English. It's subjective!

I completely agree. Premeds at my school were stuck taking the hardcore courses for majors. Everyone looked so surprised whenever one of us did not know anyone of the many literary devices in class haha.

 

[Catman21]

lol chem 2 by far, everything else wasnt bad. chem 2 i just hated

 

[JoyKim456]

Do you guys recommend trying to read the organic chemistry textbook and trying to make sense of it (self study basically) the summer before I take it? Would that help at all or make things more confusing?

 

[deleted632431]

Do you guys recommend trying to read the organic chemistry textbook and trying to make sense of it (self study basically) the summer before I take it? Would that help at all or make things more confusing?

Don't do that to yourself. Just work hard during the semester while you are taking OCHEM.. OCHEM is not that bad. It just requires time and effort.

 

[allantois]

Do you guys recommend trying to read the organic chemistry textbook and trying to make sense of it (self study basically) the summer before I take it? Would that help at all or make things more confusing?

Maybe the first chapter so that you stay on top of the material. Many people would recommend purchasing OChem as a second language.