O-chem without gen chem-what was it like?

oneeyeddeacon
Fri, 02 Apr 2010 03:13:58 +0000

Well I had Ternansky for 140A, and apparently he’s one of the tougher ochem professors at UCSD with averages in the 30-40%. Apparently he curves it so that the average is a C, but he says he bumps it up a little (whatever that means). His tests for 140A really weren’t that bad though, as long as you did your homework. I pulled an A- despite slacking off a little bit towards the end. I have him for 140C this quarter, so we’ll see how that goes. BUT BEWARE, his genius TA staff decided to deduct 100 points for no reason from both my midterm AND my final. If I didn’t get that fixed, my final grade would’ve been 200 points lower than it should’ve (out of 1000). It took forever to get my final grade fixed because of that.

I had Burkart for 140B, and that class was definitely easier than Ternansky’s 140A. He passes virtually everyone, since a 61/600 was a C-, and his averages were around 55%. I stopped going to lecture because they were so crowded, but I did listen to his podcasts while reading the book. His practice tests were exactly like his actual tests, so I just worked on those a couple days before the exams. Now that I look back, the class was kind of a joke.

The curve and difficulty basically depend on the professor you take. Check ratemyprofessor.com if you want to selectively pick the easy/good ones, or you can be like me and basically sign up for any class that fits your schedule and doesn’t have a waitlist.