<p>How much harder is orgo 2 compared to orgo 1?
I am taking orgo 2 as an elective but i was wondering if it is worth it?</p>
<p>What is your specific major? What are your near-future plans/goals?</p>
<p>mechanical engineering. I was pre med but i dont think i am doing pre med anymore</p>
<p>Do you have a particular industry or mechanical engineering field that interests you?</p>
<p>I would like to work in the medical field?</p>
<p>A lack of second semester organic chemistry would eliminate you from consideration for a lot of graduate and professional schools in the medical field including pharmacy, dental, medical and biomedical graduate schools. To answer your question, I found first and second semester organic chemistry to be quite different. First semester focuses on electron pushing, reactive groups, modeling and naming, types of reactions whereas second semester was less generalized. Second semester focused on synthesis. You can simplify it into learning general rules and then applied mechanisms. Both semesters were challenging but I wouldn’t imagine doing one and not the other</p>
<p>Check a course syllabus for Organic 2 at your school and see what topics are covered. I thought Organic 2 was more difficult because I found it less interesting. I also agree with belevitt’s statement about rules in the 1st term and application in the next.</p>
<p>FWIW, the instructor said, during the first moment of the first day of Organic 1, “Engineers typically don’t do too well in this course.” I’m not an engineer, but I generally think like one, and I just didn’t care for the subject. But a lot of folks liked the course, and a few fell in love with Organic.</p>
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Rubbish. No biomedical PhD program will care if you don’t take a second semester of orgo.</p>
<p>I don’t know about your undergrad institution kryptonsa36, but mine required both semesters of organic chemistry as prerequisites for the general biochemistry course. You would have a pretty tough run of it trying to find a phd program in the biomedical sciences that doesn’t care if you have no basis in biochemistry.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just take it and be safe rather than sorry? There might be a couple grad schools out there that don’t require second semester of orgo, but it’s really not that hard if you focus.</p>
<p>From my experience with OChem, the second term tends to be the toughest. My school used the quarter system so we had three classes in our OChem series. OChem1 was mostly about nomenclature, properties of organic molecules, and stuff like chirality. Ochem2 was basically memorizing a laundry list of reactions containing organic molecules. Ochem3 was sort of an intro to Biochemistry.</p>
<p>OChem2 was by far the most difficult as the sheer number of reactions you had to memorize required a lot of patience and time. In my OChem2 class, there was a very noticable decline in the number of students enrolled at the beginning semester compared to those enrolled at the semester’s end.</p>
<p>If you’re going into medicine, you absolutely need to complete the OChem series. In my experience, you were unable to take biochemistry and other upper level bio and chem courses that required the OChem series as a prereq. It’s fairly difficult compared to most of the courses you will have taken, but not THAT bad. If you really want to enter medicine you can find the will to pass it.</p>