Ann Mcdermott

I love this woman. She is a mess, but in the most incredible way. Homework is not graded, the curve is generous, and she will spend half of the class talking about her own research on Lead, meaning the amount of content you are actually tested on is very little. I wish I could take more of her classes; she's genuinely brilliant, kind, and understanding of the workload of other classes.

This is one of the easiest classes I've taken at Columbia! Professor McDermott often goes indepth during the lecture on topics that are not tested on except on the final. The curriculum only covers a few basic chapters of chemistry and is thus significantly easier than AP Chemistry in high school. McDermott gives practice exams before each midterm, which are great practice and are almost identical to the real test. Quizzes are identical to homework problems with just a change in numbers, so it's extremely easy to score well in the class. The class is broken down into 6 sets of 170 points, with the worst set being dropped (totaling to 850 points). Each midterm is 170 points, and the weekly quizzes in recitation combine into 170 points. Your worst quiz of all your quizzes is also dropped! The final counts as 2 sets, and if that is your worst, then it only counts as 1 set for you instead. I ended up with a 99.8% in the class and I'm a comp sci major, only took honors chemistry in high school, and put much less effort into this class compared to multivariable calc or comp sci. Do keep in mind that you will be learning a lot of this material on your own and doing practice on your own, as you don't need to pay attention in class. She has these OWL clicker points, you just have to show up and click a button it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong

John is BRILLIANT!!! He is very helpful and supportive. Ann is really nice, however she isn't that knowledgeable of the material and couldn't answer many of the questions asked in her review sessions if they weren't from the material that she was assigned to review. (ie if she was leading a review session about chapter 10, and someone asked a question about a concept in 9, she usually could not answer it). So I suggest you go to John's review sessions and just pick up Ann's review session handouts. ;)

Ann is a great professor! As you can tell I loved this class and I didn't even get a grade I like. If you don't have a good background in chemistry (no AP course or it was all over your head) this class is for you. Ann keeps the work at a moderate pace and tries to make sure everyone understands the material before moving on. This means if you already have a good grasp of chem and really want to get a strong science major approach with the concepts -take TURRO. A few students complained for harder material and many students were able to pass the exams without attending class. Ann posts her lectures on-line and does follow the text material (no surprises). (Shows you how nice she is.) Ann truly cares about the students understanding the material; is always available and approachable; keeps good TAs; and is straightforward with the work. This felt like a chem class for non-science majors. A great thing for those who don't have a strong science background. Her grading is very fair and even lienient.

I learned a lot of experimental methods and some statistical analysis methods for proper biophysical characterization of proteins and polymers.

This course provides very helpful theoretical and practical knowledge to understand and conduct NMR experiments.

Non-optional review of STAT week; sadly it repeats most of it without going in greater depth.

I learned about important applications in Chem - specifically NMR spectroscopy, which was really interesting!

Professor McDermott reads a lot off the slides and I never felt like she actually taught much. Professor Gonzalez was much better as a lecturer as he added useful information that couldn't be found on the slides. Sometimes, the content was quite confusing and hard to follow with his slides, and maybe sometimes more than we need to know, but overall I enjoyed him more. The course overall was a little boring and unorganized. Communication about deadlines and homework assignments were not clear at all and the TAs were confused too. Ellie was great and often gave hints about what we need to know about weekly quizzes and midterms. There is a weird lead paper that needs to be done, due at the end of the semester. Directions and deadlines weren't clear at all. However, grading is somewhat loose on it. It just seems kind of BS to me. Overall, though, would recommend to take if you want to get chemistry done in one semester instead of two. It's not that hard of a course.

Oh, Ann McDermott. Let me start off from what I got in this class, a high B. I had an A- before the final exam. I'm a premed and had other science requirements to fulfill. If you are taking other science-heavy courses with this, it is not easy to get an A. First off, she makes you hate the word "lead." Lead this lead that -- nowhere in the textbook did we learn about "lead concentration determination in soil of nyc." If this topic sounds fascinating to you, go ahead and click to enroll. If not, please don't, because : 1. you won't understand what she is talking about 2. you'll find yourself digging through soil and you really have no idea why (except for the sake of participation points that worths 15% of your grade) 3. these seemingly irrelevant topics come up on your exams and tear your soul apart She is very research-focused, like comments below, and inserts random questions on exams that you've never seen hw assignments or practice exams. At the end of the day, you hate yourself for not being an overly passionate science scholar -- because if you were, you probably asked lots of questions in lectures (that you have no idea what she's saying since she gets distracted easily + you get distracted) and did all the hw problems *and* was so interested in her projects and other textbook-irrelevant chemistry. We didn't take this course because we were so interested in your project…