Orgo with M. Sanford

UMgoBlue
Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:14:26 +0000

Oh, freshmen. This is fun.

1) Sanford is ok. You could do better, but you could also do a whole lot worse. Sadly, neither Nolta nor Coppola will be doing 210 in the fall, because they are the best. Never heard of Kiste, Carroll is terrible, and I’ve heard that Montgomery is ok but I’ve never been to a lecture of his. Keep in mind that while you are free to try out different lecturers and see which you like most, you should try to pick one and stick with it, because all of them move at slightly different paces.

2) How you did on the Gen Chem placement test doesn’t really have much to do with how you do in orgo. Orgo requires a different type of thinking and a different approach, and requires a lot of studying (the grade is 100% exams, so you need to keep up with everything on your own). I know people who aced the placement test and then bombed orgo, and people who did poorly and still did fine.

3) Never heard of Kessenich, but 215 is ok. It’s multivariable, so you need to be pretty good at visualizing (you will need to draw paraboloids, boxes, and other 3-d solids), and triple integrals can be tricky. However, the class is not too hard, though the lab can be quite annoying.

4) Most classes will be listed as staff, which means that, as the person above mentioned, they do not know who will be teaching it yet. This should change to the name of the professor/gsi a couple weeks before classes start.

Cheers