Chemistry · Columbia University
4 quizzes (15 minutes. both multiple choice and open-ended questions in each quiz). 3 midterms each 20% (each 20 questions) Cumulative final 40% (40 questions)
Basics of quantum chemistry, manipulating equations, etc.
Due to the lack of reviews on Professor Delor at the time I took his course, I ended up blindly taking it. Big mistake. I had to drop the course in order to save my GPA. I am writing this review to warn others not to take Professor Delor and choose another professor. Professor Delor barely taught and just read off of the slides. I cannot speak to his research but he does not have a good grasp of the content he is actually teaching and this requires people to self teach. The slides simplify/generalize the concepts and do not prepare you for the difficulty of the quizzes and exams (70% averages on exams). The quiz questions had several mistakes in their wording, which caused people to unnecessarily lose points. One of the biggest issues is that his exams include SEVERAL multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer and that require selection of all the correct answers in order to be marked as correct/get credit for the question. No partial credit is given, so if you do not mark all correct answers under one question (i.e., if you select 2 correct answer options but there are 3 total correct answer options), the whole question is marked as wrong. This significantly hurt people’s grades as each question wrong is a point off of your final course grade (exams were 20% of final grade and 20 questions in each exam). The average for Exam 1 was around 70%. A 70% exam avera…
Gas Laws, Solutions, Kinetics, Thermodynamics. The chemistry of reactions
I liked the way this course was structured and its goals. I learned a lot about what to expect in graduate school, how to read and digest academic articles in chemistry (and related topics), give 'chalk-talks' on related topics, proposal writing, and public speaking/collaboration.
How to approach problems, significance of quantum concepts in research
If you understand the concepts, how different ideas related to one another, and do practice questions you will be all set for the exams. I didn't get the OWL or whatever I just practiced from a pdf of the textbook and I did pretty good. Three exams, a final, and four quizzes. Every exam is 20%, the final is 40% the lowest of the quizzes is dropped and the three together are 20%. Then, you're lowest 20% is dropped of the five (final would be halved).
Equilibriums, acids and bases, thermodynamics, solutions
How to parse chemistry papers quickly and give a chalk talk. How to write grant proposal.
We learned Quantum Theory including building the language to talk it (braket notation, operators) and how to apply this to a variety of systems.