Thomas Katz

Prof. Katz is not a nice man by any means. He belittles students both in the class and outside of it. He also just doesn't know how to communicate to the class or convey information to it. He just seems to be on a very different wavelength, a really different world from the rest of us. This seems too bad. It's rare to see a teacher enjoy what it is that he does so much, and he's having an incredibly good time up there. He can also be quite helpful, in, for example, office hours--that is, he can explain material there and he knows the material extremely well. So this just seems too bad that he doesn't really seem there with the students.

i didnt believe people when they said Katz would be an easy A...all throughout the semester I felt I would be getting a B+ at best scoring 5 pts above the mean..in the low 80s...until the final and I somehow got an A in the class.... so this is not reflective of everyone's story (i know a lot of people who were surprised and disappointed with their grades) but i never went to lecture, stopped reading the textbook after the first exam(the textbook is horrible..). only things that helped me were my TA and his homeworks... he tends to be tricky on exams but it benefits those who really understand the basic concept, and hurt those who just memorized the mechanisms. and the final was surprisingly easy... if you are willing to work on your own to learn the material, take katz. i know so many people who took cornish and live to regret it...

All the reviews of Katz so far say he is either wonderful or horrible. I think heÂ’s somewhere in the middle. He really does seem interested in the class and in helping students. His cheesy (and repetitive) jokes, whether you think theyÂ’re funny or irritating, definitely lighten the atmosphere. His exams could be worse. On the other hand, I found his lectures tended to be disorganized and sometimes confusing. Although he wants to help, heÂ’s not the most spectacular teacher in the world, so sometimes he doesnÂ’t know how. In his effort to get students not to stress about the class, he sometimes brushes off important questions. His problem sets are graded and often devilishly hard, but the TAs were quite willing to help with them.

Don't expect to learn anything from Katz's extremely hard to follow lectures. All teaching is done by the TAs and from the book. Although Katz is obviously extremely intelligent and talented in his field as well as a nice and amusing guy, he sucks as a teacher. He couldn't understand that to most of us organic chemistry is not really common sense. Get a tutor (if you can afford one) and go to the TA help sessions. The exams are not extremely hard for orgo.

hw 5%, weekly quizzes 10%, 5 exams and a final (two hour units dropped) not too bad..

I just want to respond to the negative review, which I think is ridiculous. Professor Katz is the single most inspiring professor I've had at Columbia, enough to convince me to major in chem. He just bleeds enthusiasm. He was always engaging and clearly knew the material inside and out. He seems to really get a kick out of dyes and their pretty colors, and the way he taught the lecture on conjugation was as if it was the single most wonderful thing in the world. I think you'd have to be a pretty hardened premed drone not to appreciate the energy he puts into lecture. Incidentally, he was also friendly to me outside of class. Just a great professor in general.

Katz is clearly the lesser of two evils when it comes to Orgo I, but don't be fooled...his class is no walk in the park. His lectures were sometimes informative, but he frequently rushed through or even skipped topics that were covered on homework and exams. I walked out of many of his lectures feeling confused and had to learn a fair amount of the material from the TA's in recitation and on office hours. The structure of the class was also not very student-friendly. The TA's gave quizzes in recitation almost every week (including some exam weeks) that sometimes were extremely difficult--simply looking over the material before recitation would not nearly be enough to get a good grade. Homework also came fast and furious--problem sets were due every week and a couple of weeks had two problem sets due. These problem sets were extremely time-consuming (usually 2-3 hours) and frequently required attendance at TA office hours to figure out. In a couple of instances, he gave problems on topics that were neither in his lectures nor in the textbook--a major annoyance. I thought his tests were fair, but the grading was not. Make sure you have every little detail right on the reaction questions, because on some he will give you zero credit just because your final structure for a three-step reaction is missing one atom. His overall grading system isn't much better--he only calculates the…

This Professor is very much into his own research and could not care less about his students. every question in class is met with complete apathy. What will be on the exam? we ask. his response is "who cares? it's a test. it doesn't matter." Well, med schools beg to differ. Professor Katz is very distant and unapproachable. If you have a problem, only deal with the TA's because Katz will treat you like a little cockroach. He will step on you and squash you. Definitely go with Cornish. She can actually teach, cares about her students, cares about the course, and you will leave the class feeling like you learned something, and not like you just spent $3000 to hear someone tell you you don't matter and that your life doesn't matter for a whole semester. With the therapy you'll need after this class, expect to spend at least 5 grand.

I don't want to write yet another review that focuses on grades, because Katz is right when he says that grades are not the most important thing. I know most people in this class were pre-meds, and grades matter a lot when it comes to getting into med school, but the thing is, if you actually bother to learn the material, you're going to know a little organic chemistry, and there's no reason you shouldn't get an A that way. Anyway, I never went to class and it didn't end up mattering. Just know how to do the homework problems he gives (his personal problem sets.. not the ones in the books) and read the book and you'll be fine. Anyone who says the tests aren't based on the book is really not right. The book provides a nice foundation of organic chemistry, and as long as you understand that, everything else should become clear. A little clarity is all you need to get through this course. Everyone says organic chemistry is such a hard course that's full of memorization. Yes, you will need to simply memorize some things, but everything has an explanation that makes sense. If you understand those underlying principles, you'll do just fine.

Prof. Katz is a wacky, chatty eccentric, endearing to some. He may grade somewhat generously, though I've heard of nothing more than conjecture about that. Exams means for his four midterms were about 75, 88, 70 and 75. Standard deviations are occasionally provided. If a midterm has a low mean, it appears that Katz does not add points to everyone's score to "even out" the midterm scores (thus, if you're 10 points above a 70-mean midterm, and later are 10 points below an 88-mean midterm, your resulting grade may be unduly low, given your performance). Midterms each count as 100-pt units. Final exam seems to be trifurcated into three 100-pt units. Your lowest two of these seven 100-pt units will be dropped. Katz's exams diverge considerably from the McMurry text (or any other text, for that matter), so you'd be very smart to attend class and pay attention. He assigns many problems from the McMurry chapters, but I found that his exams drew far more from both his lectures and his "homemade" problems sets he cooks up and hands out in class (usually very little is posted on CourseWorks unless a TA does so). Lectures are chalk-on-blackboard style (PowerPoint schmowerpoint). Katz's homemade problem sets take about 3-5 hours to do and are often far more complicated than his exams - so try and determine what brief, 5-minute question he could distill from those lengthy 30-minute homemade…