delete@delete

So I have heard Trost is and I quote "an evil teacher"
Are the curves really that bad, and if so is it wise to take 35 in the fall then 131 the next fall with kool or is that too big of a gap for the material?

Pistachio

I, too, had heard similar things about Trost and how "evil" he was. Again, like you said, people mostly referred to his allegedly harsh grading, with people throwing around claims that he curved to a C/C- and that very few people got As.

I can say with confidence that, at least with regards to this curve, this was not true when I took it with Trost. It's possible that things have changed over time, but I took it this past winter and the TAs emailed us at the end of the course saying, "The average of the cumulative grade is 69.5/100 and the std is 13. The average of the class is about B-/B," which seems on par with other chemistry classes I've taken (maybe a bit lower, but by no means evil, and I have no clue if Kool is any nicer with regards to the curve).

As far as skipping ochem for a year, I took more than a year off between Chem 33 and Chem 35, so it's definitely doable, but I did have to refresh my memory on a lot of things. However, ochem is definitely cumulative and there were a lot of problems in Chem 131 that definitely required retaining/relearning things that we had covered in Chem 35.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

edwinksl

Haha, I don't think he is evil, but you definitely need to attend Trost's lectures to take down notes. I highly recommend that you take CHEM 131 right after you take CHEM 35 since you need to be able to remember stuff in CHEM 35 while taking CHEM 131.

bluephish

Someone on Courserank said "Professor Trost gives 45% of students C, D, or F. This is not a guess, this is what he told me when I asked why I was given a C."

That does sound pretty harsh, and it puts the median at around B- or so I guess. I did slightly worse on 131 tests than I did on 33 and 35 tests, so I did slightly worse in my grade overall. (I like to blame this on his lack of clarity and the fact that 136 consumed my brain and soul.) But my main problem with him was that he wasn't as clear as Professor Huestis and didn't have an awesome course reader. It was kind of hard to take good notes in his class but it was important. boo. I didn't think he was that evil though.

The class does use a lot of material from 35, so it might be hard to take it a year later, but I have heard that Kool is really...cool (dorky laugh) so it might work out to put it off if you are good at brushing up. good luck!