[cannaceo]

I appreciate your thoughtful response. Some of the concepts you mentioned, such as Gibbs free energy, are covered in intro physics, intro biology, and biochemistry courses that are also required as a physician. I believe one biochemistry class as an undergrad and one year of biochemistry instruction in the first 2 years of medical school.

A simplified organic chemistry course could cover the theory of SN1/SN2 attacks, orbitals, some ochem principles, some medical-focused examples of organic chemistry, and some basic mechanisms. It would not require students to creatively solve synthesis questions on exams or memorize long lists of reactions. To that extent maybe even the first of the two part classes is enough.

I never heard of anyone talk about organic chemistry as anything other than a filter class for pre-meds. It's a bit of academic hazing to wash out weaker pre-meds from the undergrad program. Maybe because it effects the university's match rate. Students care about their undergrad's medical school match statistics when they apply. From what I remember hazing does wash out the weaker students who don't have as high of general intelligence or work ethic.

[Siddarth1977]

My school had weed out classes in my program, but it had nothing to do with graduate admissions or competitive rankings.

The point was that it's better to have a student struggle and make adjustments earlier rather than later in their education. Regardless if that adjustment is "spend more time studying" or "change from STEM to something easier", it's better for it to happen in a students first year than fourth year in college.

The system seemed to work well to me. Lots of smart kids who didn't have to work very hard in high school learned early that they were going to have to work harder in college. Other kids realized they were better changing majors. Everyone who was still in the program their junior year had the confidence that they could graduate.

[hilbert42]

"Lots of smart kids who didn't have to work very hard in high school learned early that they were going to have to work harder in college."

Some don't learn early either. I was smart enough to coast along for quite a while doing little and then I suddenly had to apply myself (it was a bit of a shock). I had to relearn how to apply myself and it was harder than I anticipated.

Of course, this never applied to truly brilliant kids (they're the ones I envy). It also doesn't help when one's parents kept pointing to a couple of brothers who lived several blocks away from my home and saying to the effect 'why can't you stop mucking around and just apply yourself like them'. (They were in different classes to me and a year's difference separated them. Trouble was my mother and theirs used to associate with each other (mother's club and all that stuff), so such comparisons were easy.)

It turned out later that it wasn't that they just had normal brains but with lost of application to study—but more. Some years later (perhaps a decade or so) I opened the pages of Scientific American and started reading a fascinating and informative article, it was then that I turned to the author's name only to realize that I knew that 'bastard'. Also a check of the references showed that he had a string of publications about the subject in other advanced publications.

As they say, that's life.

[cannaceo]

My experience in medical school is that your success is based on your ability to memorize large amounts of information that is of low conceptual difficulty in short periods of time. This isn't a trait that is selected for in passing ochem. Furthermore, ochem is the last time in your undergrad or medical school training where you'll be faced with that level of conceptual rigor.

You could just as easily ask all the undergrads to train for a marathon and see who has the discipline to follow through. It would probably be more relevant because at least its health-related.

I think overall we want our doctors to have high general intelligence so we'll continue to demand o-chem. We all have our biases against the kids who couldn't pass o-chem.

[hilbert42]

"It's a bit of academic hazing to wash out weaker pre-meds from the undergrad program"

In undergrad chemistry my lab partner was a med student whereas I was doing science and engineering. In essence, there were unavoidable common core threads for everyone.

I'm not saying that's good or bad but it was problem for my co chem student not because he was doing poorly but because he was overloaded (his workload was definitely much heavier than mine).

His experience is the reason why I'm not in favor of that approach because it also filters out good students who do badly for other reasons. For example, some students have family commitments and don't have as much time available for study. Others have less time because they have to travel long distances to lectures.

Take my situation, for a part of my studies I used to travel the better part of 200 miles round trip by train and bus each day. I'd leave home when it was dark and also arrive home when dark—that was nearly 6 hours traveling per day.

Making up time studying on the train wasn't an option as I'd just fall asleep. If I'd been doing medicine and that weeding out process adopted then I'd not have stood a chance.

Edit: at a different period when I eventually managed to get closer to uni my flatmate was also a med student and he too always had a much heavier workload than I did.

If I'd been a med student under those conditions, I reckon I'd have wanted to ditch organic chemistry if given half a chance.