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I took orgo as an undergrad from a brutal professor. His name is Marcus Tius, and he is legendary at UH Manoa for being hard. He got his Ph.D. in organic chem

I took orgo as an undergrad from a brutal professor. His name is Marcus Tius, and he is legendary at UH Manoa for being hard. He got his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Harvard from EJ Corey. Most people on here probably don't know who EJ Corey is, but he's widely considered to be the greatest chemist alive. And Corey's lab is insanely intense. A few of his grad students committed suicide in recent years from the pressure. Supposedly, I don't know if this is urban legend, but EJ Corey told several others that Tius was his best student ever at the time. Anyways, I just wanted to share a few of my orgo stories. Our first exam mean scores were in the 20%'s. Only 10 of us got above 70%. There is NO curve in his class. He talked about this after the first exam, and he said, "Many of you are asking me if there's a curve. I wouldn't hesitate to call 90% and above an A." The first test was so brutal, that after he called the 15 minute left mark, a whole sea of "HOly shit! WTF?!" spread throughout the lecture hall. It was shortly after that, one of the students was escorted out by a grad student proctor because he peed his pants. I was already light headed from the intensity of the exam, but seeing a guy literally pee in his pants almost made me pass out. In retrospect, orgo isn't that bad. If I had taken it the previous year with another professor who was using the McMurry textbook, I would have even said it was pretty easy. But, no. I was stuck with Tius, and I was stuck with an entry level graduate textbook on organic chemistry--this part is no joke. However, in retrospect, I also realized Tius wasn't bad either. I realized that if I just worked on his assigned problem sets and studied those for the exams, I would have done fine. The exam mostly consisted of the problem set. So, he was very fair. However, all of the urban legend stories made me so scared, I was doing all the problems in the chapter which often took 50-60 hrs a week to complete. For anyone thinking about taking orgo, it's really not that bad. However, like any other course, the professor and books can make it incredibly hard. Just be wary of that. BTW, I did get an A in both orgo courses. I majored in math and chemistry, and I have to say, that class with Tius was by FAR the hardest shit I ever had to go through. And that includes a general chemistry course with another brutally hard chem professor in which I stood up three nights in a row to study for the third exam because I was so behind. I got an A in that class too.

revelation 13y ago
It seems necessary to make exams that hard when they do not determine the grade anyway (the OP got an A- with a B on the final exam). Let me expand on how it works in a German university. There are no curves, the concept is completely foreign here. Your grade is 100% determined by a final exam. You do exercises only to get approval for writing the final exam in the first place.
- pmiller2 13y ago
  I think you might misunderstand. Typically there are at least a midterm and a final exam, and sometimes homework counted into the grade. So, depending on the respective weighting of each exam and the homework, a B on the final with an A- in the class is entirely plausible.
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  It sounds like your exams are more like Microsoft Certifications rather than US university exams. At top US universities, it is common to include questions that only one person in 100, or zero in 100 will get right. I took plenty of Math exams with 10 questions, where getting 5 would earn an A, and 8 is how many grad students would get right, and the 10th question was a joke, like Fermat's Last Theorem. The exams were not to demonstrate you are certified in a subject, but rather to show your ability and limits. Not grading on a curve is a horrible idea. It means the exam must be limited to material that is taught, rather than limiting it to known knowledge in the universe. German University sounds like a big ass certification program, not a real university.
  - revelation 13y ago
    I don't know how you would arrive at that conclusion from the information I've provided. Exams are not at all restricted to the material taught; usually, knowing all the covered material and being able to reproduce it will only get you as far as 50%, allowing you to pass. Points above that will come from novel applications of the material you learned, or tests on the general concepts and approaches you should have learned.

revelation 13y ago

It seems necessary to make exams that hard when they do not determine the grade anyway (the OP got an A- with a B on the final exam). Let me expand on how it works in a German university. There are no curves, the concept is completely foreign here. Your grade is 100% determined by a final exam. You do exercises only to get approval for writing the final exam in the first place.

pmiller2 13y ago
I think you might misunderstand. Typically there are at least a midterm and a final exam, and sometimes homework counted into the grade. So, depending on the respective weighting of each exam and the homework, a B on the final with an A- in the class is entirely plausible.
jcampbell1 13y ago
It sounds like your exams are more like Microsoft Certifications rather than US university exams. At top US universities, it is common to include questions that only one person in 100, or zero in 100 will get right. I took plenty of Math exams with 10 questions, where getting 5 would earn an A, and 8 is how many grad students would get right, and the 10th question was a joke, like Fermat's Last Theorem. The exams were not to demonstrate you are certified in a subject, but rather to show your ability and limits. Not grading on a curve is a horrible idea. It means the exam must be limited to material that is taught, rather than limiting it to known knowledge in the universe. German University sounds like a big ass certification program, not a real university.
- revelation 13y ago
  I don't know how you would arrive at that conclusion from the information I've provided. Exams are not at all restricted to the material taught; usually, knowing all the covered material and being able to reproduce it will only get you as far as 50%, allowing you to pass. Points above that will come from novel applications of the material you learned, or tests on the general concepts and approaches you should have learned.