Seeking Advice for Organic Chem Requirement

[Sundance]

I'm going to apologize in advance for the lengthy and possibly confusing nature of this post. That said, here's my situation:

 

I'm something of a non-traditional applicant in that I returned to university after completing my undergraduate degree in order to fulfill the course prerequisite requirements for gaining admission to medical school. No problem there really, except for the way my schedule had to be arranged (and the school I was taking classes at) did not allow me to take a full year of organic chemistry.

 

From what I can tell, organic chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan (where I did my undergrad and my prereq courses) is done a bit differently than most other schools. Instead of teaching the basics (nomenclature, stereochemistry, acid and base reactions, spectroscopy, alkanes, etc.) in the first semester and building on that material to study more complex reactions in the second semester, the U of S introductory o-chem course touches upon the entire spectrum of reactions that is covered in nearly every other full year course I've read about (starting at the basics mentioned above and moving up through reactions of the various functional groups). Of course, in order to do this in one semester they have to omit certain material (such as any mention of spectroscopic techniques, carbohydrates, proteins, lipids),

and probably tone down the coverage on other topics.

 

The problem I'm having is in deciding what to do about taking another organic chemistry course in order to fulfill the requirement that I have a full year of o-chem. Of course I can't find a one-semester course that covers all of the material that my previous coursework missed (that would be far too convenient), so I'm stuck having to choose to either:

 

a) take a first-half introductory course to get the material on spectroscopy that I've missed (although I have my doubts if I'd even get credit for taking another first-half year course)

take a second-half introductory course because another first-half course probably wouldn't look good on my transcript, even though it means missing out on the material on spectroscopy

c) bite the bullet and take a full year of o-chem and grind through a lot of material that I've already covered to get a little bit that I haven't

d) some other option that YOU might have for me

 

Wow, was that ever a hand-full...If anyone has any advice for me on what route I should take to satisfy the requirements, please let me know; I'd REALLY appreciate it! I'm going to see if the Admissions office has any advice for me, but I don't have a lot of luck getting useful answers when I do that.

 

Thanks for your patience!

[JAdlCruz]

Hi Sundance,

 

From what I understand, courses will be deemed equivalent if they match the content and *depth* of the posted prerequisites. It sounds from what you have described that the course you took was comprehensive though the admissions people might not feel it has the same depth of study.

 

My suggestion is to bounce your question off MD admissions. They will probably say that they will need to see your application before giving you advice, but they will probably also give you some general guidance.

 

Or maybe, ask UBC Registrar's Office for a course transfer evaluation and see what they say.

 

If you end up having to repeat the entire course, all is not lost - you might get laboratory exemption (at least for one semester) if you explain your situation to your profs before you register.

 

Good luck.

[Sundance]

Hi JAdlCruz,

 

Thank you very much for your reply. I have asked the admissions office a similar question in the past and was told that they would have to see my application in its entirety before they made a decision on whether or not my courses would satisfy the prerequisite requirements.

 

I'm fairly certain I'm going to need to take at least one semester of Organic Chem, now it's just a matter of deciding where or how I'm going to do that. I've heard that UBC has no problem accepting distancing learning courses from Athabasca U, so I think I'll look into that in more detail and see if I can keep working while I take the course I need...

 

Thanks again!