Professor
Hung Pham
1 of 1
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - I personally loved Prof. Pham. OChem is undoubtedly a hard subject, and honestly whether you do well or not in it kind of depends on if it clicks with you or not, which really sucks. That being said, I liked how structured Pham's course was. The problem sets were really helpful for the exam since they were past exam questions, so really make sure you understand the problem sets. The TA worksheets are also really helpful for extra practice, so definitely do those before each exam. I found TA office hours to be really helpful when going through problem sets and understanding the mechanisms/reactions. Sometimes the TA will also give you the answers which is nice since you don't know which questions will be graded on correctness. For this quarter at least, I didn't even go to my specific TA's office hours, and found the other TA to be really helpful so really all of the TAs were good, and make sure to take advantage of that (especially because A LOT of people go to Pham's OH, and it's not really helpful). Some people read the textbook, but I personally didn't use it because I found it to be confusing/complicated/unhelpful. The BACON assignments are basically free points so make sure you do well on those. For the problem sets, make sure you check with a lot of people in the class because they can help you catch small mistakes that might cost you points. He does drop the lowest BACON score and the lowest PSet score, which is nice. He also give A LOT of extra credit opportunities, so do them, even if you think you don't need it. The class gets to the harder content after the first midterm (mechanisms/reactions), the first half is mostly basics. OChem is hard, but it's not impossible - really the biggest piece of advice I can give is to do a ton of practice, because then you start recognizing patterns which almost always show up on exams. Take advantage of all the resources out there (TA worksheets, LA review session worksheets, optional textbook practice, TA OH). Good luck and you got this!!
Spring 2025 - I personally loved Prof. Pham. OChem is undoubtedly a hard subject, and honestly whether you do well or not in it kind of depends on if it clicks with you or not, which really sucks. That being said, I liked how structured Pham's course was. The problem sets were really helpful for the exam since they were past exam questions, so really make sure you understand the problem sets. The TA worksheets are also really helpful for extra practice, so definitely do those before each exam. I found TA office hours to be really helpful when going through problem sets and understanding the mechanisms/reactions. Sometimes the TA will also give you the answers which is nice since you don't know which questions will be graded on correctness. For this quarter at least, I didn't even go to my specific TA's office hours, and found the other TA to be really helpful so really all of the TAs were good, and make sure to take advantage of that (especially because A LOT of people go to Pham's OH, and it's not really helpful). Some people read the textbook, but I personally didn't use it because I found it to be confusing/complicated/unhelpful. The BACON assignments are basically free points so make sure you do well on those. For the problem sets, make sure you check with a lot of people in the class because they can help you catch small mistakes that might cost you points. He does drop the lowest BACON score and the lowest PSet score, which is nice. He also give A LOT of extra credit opportunities, so do them, even if you think you don't need it. The class gets to the harder content after the first midterm (mechanisms/reactions), the first half is mostly basics. OChem is hard, but it's not impossible - really the biggest piece of advice I can give is to do a ton of practice, because then you start recognizing patterns which almost always show up on exams. Take advantage of all the resources out there (TA worksheets, LA review session worksheets, optional textbook practice, TA OH). Good luck and you got this!!
1 of 1
