Master Organic Chemistry Membership
Understand 180+ organic chemistry reactions & mechanisms inside and out, eliminate exam-day surprises, and confidently pass (or ace) your next organic chemistry exam
Over the past few years, thousands of organic chemistry students told me how painful it is to learn and memorize 180+ organic chemistry reactions and their mechanisms for their exams.
When I asked them what were their biggest challenges with organic chemistry, 7 themes kept coming up over and over again:
Reactions
- Understanding and memorizing all the different reactions and their rules and conditions
- Knowing what the end result of reactions will be
- Keeping all the reactions organized and knowing when they need to be applied
- Learning nuances of reactions and understanding special cases
Reagents
- Remembering the different reagents, their uses, functions and effects
- Knowing when to use a certain reagent to produce the desired results
- Reagents are confusing, there are too many reagents to remember
- Identifying how the reaction proceeds based on the reagents used
- Understand how the molecule changes when a reagent is added
- Textbooks show a reagent but leave out what solvent the reagent needs to be used in
Mechanisms
- Understanding, memorizing and remembering all the different mechanisms is tricky
- Understanding why certain mechanisms happen and why others don’t
- Learning reactions and mechanisms logically and efficiently
- Drawing the mechanisms on my own
- How to predict what type of a mechanism will occur
Nuances and difficult concepts
- Fundamentals of organic chemistry
- Resonance, basicity and acidity
- Difficult concepts like stereoisomerism
- Stereochemistry and Lewis structures
- Multistep synthesis problems
- Retrosynthesis problems
- Differentiating and nuances between SN1, SN2, E1 and E2
- Basic things like arrow pushing and how to draw ring expansions / epoxide openings
- Visualizing some of the molecules and orienting them in space
- Figuring out how to produce a compound from another with multiple steps in between
Exam questions are harder than practice problems
- Solving exam questions that professors make up that are worded differently / unfamiliar / tougher than practice problems
- Not knowing where to start when faced with a problem and blanking out on tests
- Missing one key detail and getting the exam answer wrong
- Connecting the dots and applying knowledge to accurately answer questions
- Understanding general reactions and mechanisms and not recognizing them when real examples are presented
Information overload
- It just is like learning a whole new language in 6 weeks, it all sounds like gibberish to me
- Working through a seemingly insurmountable volume of material I need to learn
- There’s too much information, I mix up my reactions
- Amount of content covered in such a short space of time with not enough time to process it all
- Retaining immense amounts of information in a short amount of time
Insufficient explanations from professors and textbooks
- Professor in university made it seem really hard and didn’t explain it well, so now I’m scared of ochem and doubt my abilities
- Professor was not explaining concepts well enough, the explanations didn’t work for me
- We never went in-depth during classes, so I’m lacking the foundation
- The textbook I have isn’t the best and sometimes the professor leaves things out of the lectures.
I understand. There’s a lot to take in over the course of 6 weeks, and I can see how it might all sound like gibberish or feel like learning a new language to you.
You said that you just want to deeply understand how all the reactions and mechanisms fit together, be thoroughly prepared for your exam and confidently pass or ace it without endless memorization and exam-day surprises.
You told me you’re tired of studying to death, browsing through endless lecture notes, Wikipedia pages, textbooks, and Youtube videos, and wasting your valuable time.
You’re not alone.
I experienced all of the above a few years ago when I was tutoring a student in Florida and she forwarded me this email from her professor:
To: CHM 2231 students
> > > From: [Vanessa’s Professor]
> >
> > If you feel somewhat stressed by organic II, it is because at this
> > point we should know 132 reactions for chapters 1-24 plus the
> > additional ones in 21 and 22 for exam #3 and the final. I have written
> > these out and have copied them below. You need to know all of these
> > reactions to do well on the final exam. Start studying now and you
> > will be prepared for the cumulative final ACS exam on December 10th.
This was followed by the list of 132 reactions that Vanessa’s professor expected her to know for the exam.
I helped Vanessa pass her exam, but it got me thinking… I can’t tutor everyone who needs to know 132 reactions for their final exam, there has to be a better way to solve this problem.
Since I couldn’t find a good resource online for students like Vanessa and you, I decided to create one myself.
I knew that learning all the different reactions and mechanisms shouldn’t be a nightmare that keeps thousands of students up at night. So I created a resource that will help.
First, I created a “Wikipedia” with 180+ organic chemistry reactions, their reagents, and mechanisms
I did the hard work for you. I collected over 180 reactions from real organic chemistry exams and wrote down step-by-step, easy-to-follow explanations for them. I grouped them together and laid out the patterns that will help you see that 180+ reactions are actually *not that many*. Once you know a few key patterns, the majority of reactions will click and fall into place.
The result was a “Wikipedia” of organic chemistry reactions that was written especially for introductory organic chemistry students like you and Vanessa.
It includes:
- all the reactions you would ever be expected to know in an introductory course
- multiple examples, reagents, and mechanisms – in plain English, hand-holding, not-taking-anything-for-granted detail
- explanations for trick questions, taken directly from real-world exams
- an index with all the reactions organized by functional groups, so every reaction and its explanation is just a few clicks away
- visual, step-by-step explanations for reaction mechanisms with easy-to-follow arrows and color codes that help you understand how each reaction happens
Here’s an example of a reaction page:
You can see all the reactions I included here:
Note: The reactions in red are publicly accessible to everyone, so anyone can check them out.
Now you have everything you need to thoroughly understand and remember all the organic chemistry reactions, their reagents, and mechanisms in one place.
Then, I created 1500+ practice quizzes based on real-world exams to make sure no “trick” question ever surprises you again
Knowing the reactions is great, and being able to recognize the reactions is great, but if you want to confidently pass or ace your exam, it’s not enough. During your exams, your professors will ask you to apply the knowledge you’ve learned in ways you might not expect.
They’ll intentionally give you harder problems to solve or present them in a different way than during the lectures, to see if you really “get it”.
To many students, this presents a big problem, as they don’t know how to tackle the problems they’ve never seen before.
What I don’t want to happen to you is to spend hours and hours preparing for your exam and then get a worse grade than you want because of a handful of questions you’ve never seen before.
To help you prepare for your exam in the best way possible and eliminate exam-day surprises, I created another resource for you:
- I went through hundreds of real-world organic chemistry exams and wrote down the question and answer for every question I could find.
- I created a bank of 1500+ practice quizzes with questions from real-world exams that will help you apply the knowledge to real-world exam questions.
- I covered both common and trick questions, easy and hard problems.
- I added the quizzes to the bottom of reaction explanations, so you can instantly test yourself and see if you understand the reactions and their mechanisms.
- I organized them into 25 sections that cover every theme you need to know for your exam, containing problems from the beginning of Org 1 (Structure and Bonding) to the end of Org 2 (Amino Acids) and everything in-between (Stereochemistry, Alkene & Alkyne Reactions, SN1/SN2/E1/E2, Dienes, Alcohols, Aldehydes and Ketones… you get the picture.)*
*except spectroscopy. Working on it.
Each quiz has a question and answer, and you can just click on it to reveal the answer.
Click to Flip
With access to my quizzes, there will be no more exam-day surprises and you will no longer struggle with exam questions that are harder or different than in your lectures, practice problems, and textbooks. As a student of mine once said: “If you’ve seen a trick question before, it’s no longer a trick”.
Finally, I added 200+ printable flashcards that will help you further test yourself and bridge the gaps in your knowledge
You told me that you want to be thoroughly prepared for your next exam, and I noticed that a lot of my students spent hours and hours creating their own flashcards to further test themselves and identify gaps in their knowledge.
I wanted everyone to have access to flashcards that you can print out and take with you anywhere, so I created 200+ printable flashcards that will help you reinforce your knowledge.
This way, if you suddenly realize you need more information about a reaction while you’re studying the flashcards – like the mechanism, or more examples – you’ll have it in a matter of seconds.
You can get unlimited access to these resources by joining the Master Organic Chemistry Membership.
The Master Organic Chemistry Membership will help you:
- Develop a deep understanding of all the different reactions, reagents and mechanisms: With my Reaction Guide, I’ll help you understand 180+ reactions, their mechanisms and nuances, step-by-step, so the key concepts “click” in your brain.
- Apply the knowledge to real-world exams and eliminate exam day surprises: I collected 1500+ practice questions, with answers and explanations to all common (and trick) questions you’ll find on your exams. A trick question is only a trick question until you’ve seen the answer to it.
- Identify and plug the gaps in your knowledge: You’ll also get access to 200+ printable flashcards that you can use to test yourself, identify and plug the gaps in your knowledge and thoroughly prepare for your exam.
With it, you’ll have everything you need to confidently pass or ace your organic chemistry exams.
The Membership costs $9.95/month. No commitment, no contract, cancel anytime.
Join the membership by clicking the purple button below:
What Organic Chemistry Students Are Saying about The Master Organic Chemistry Membership
Over the past few years, 5516 members joined the membership (at the time of writing this page). Roughly 2000 organic chemistry students join us in the membership every year.
I received hundreds of thank you e-mails and messages about how the membership saved them time, helped them understand reactions and mechanisms and get better grades, and I wanted to share some of them with you.
Here’s what they said:
Join thousands of students in the Master Organic Chemistry Membership by clicking the purple button below:
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does the Reaction Guide have lots of examples of each reaction?
Yes. With examples, and especially examples which make for common trick questions on tests and exams.
I was really stressed out about understanding mechanisms and how to memorize the overwhelming amount of reactions but the specificity, and clarity of the Reaction Guide helped me so so much and get a passing grade in Orgo. – Anna P., Rutgers
Q: What about mechanisms?
Covered. With mechanisms. Written out, arrow by arrow, describing in bond-by-bond detail exactly what is going on – in plain English.
“I couldn’t follow along with mechanisms in class to save my life, but this reaction guide was AMAZING. This is the clearest set explanations with diagrams I could find. There is no better reference material out there.” Courtney E, Valdosta State University
Q: What do you mean, “plain English”?
Meaning, the person who put this together (me) has spent over 2000 hours of 1-on-1 tutoring time with Org 1 and Org 2 students from dozens of schools across North America at all skill levels, and understands exactly the types of problems students have and how to address them. It’s written for introductory students – not chemists.
Initially I was having an extremely difficult time understanding the background to a reaction. I could memorize the reaction, but I wanted to know the intricate details. This guide helped me understand the reaction in a more down to Earth way when compared to my textbook. I went from a C to an A- in Organic 1 and acing Organic 2 with an A+. -Julian D., University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Q: How do I know this material is right for my school?
The material is right for your school because the organic chemistry curriculum is essentially the same across colleges in North America. You might not need to know all of these reactions. But just in case you do, you’ll be covered.
Q: Is this useful for the ACS Org 1 or Org 2 Exams?
Yes! It was built especially to help students preparing for that exam. If a reaction is on the ACS exam, it will be in here.
“The ACS exam seemed impossible to tackle because I was struggling to master all the reactions and mechanisms, but the detailed explanations offered in the Reaction Guide helped me prepare in the weeks leading up to the exam, and finally, to earn the grade.” -R.P., SUNY New Paltz
Q: I’m not in North America. Will this help me?
Chances are, it will be extremely useful for you too, but probably less so if you’re a graduate student.
Q: Okay, how does it work?
You pay a monthly subscription fee of $9.95 and then gain access to the vault of reaction pages, the page for downloading the flashcards, and access to the quizzes.
Q: Why should I get this?
You should get this if you have been looking for a guide to the reactions of organic chemistry, collected in one place, with lots of examples, and their mechanisms, and are tired of wasting time searching the Internet for a central resource.
“ I was struggling with organic chemistry mechanisms. I did not understand the methods my textbook used, and I couldn’t follow what my professor was teaching to the class. I needed something that showed me step by step in plain english. I found it through the reaction guide. It is worth it’s weight in gold. Every reaction is in here. I now see how reactions works, and everything is explained clearly. This guide is now my survival guide for organic chemistry.” – G. M.
“In my senior year I took advanced organic after already taken orgo 1 and 2, and I was having a pretty rough time getting by. Before I used the Reaction Guide, I would spend countless amounts of hours just sifting through my notes trying to find a specific reaction and sometimes, the mechanism would be slightly off and I would lose credit. The reaction guide provided an extensive list of common reactions that allowed me double check my notes and answers to. This guide cut down a lot of wasted time and subsequently boosted all of my exam scores”. Eric G., University of New Hampshire
Q: Do you have any sample pages?
Sure! If you go to the index of the Reaction Guide you will see some links in red. Those are sample pages that anyone can access.
Q: Wikipedia is free. Why isn’t this free?
Wikipedia isn’t designed specifically for introductory organic chemistry students. Putting this together took (literally) many hundreds of hours of work in ChemDraw. It was actually kind of nuts to do it. This is a tremendously useful study aid that belongs in the hands of those who understand the concept of paying for value.
Q: OK, how do I sign up?
First, you can “Add To Cart” using the link below. Then, you’ll be prompted for a payment method (either Paypal or Credit Card). After processing, within several minutes you will be sent a link that lets you choose a membership name and password. Once you do that, you’re in!
Q: What if I don’t get the email?
Make sure you check the email you use for Paypal/payment. If you don’t get the email within 30 min, check the spam filter. If you still don’t get it, email me [support@masterorganicchemistry.com] and I’ll set you up.
Q: Do I need a Paypal account?
No, you can also use a credit card, which uses a payment provider called Stripe. It’s super easy.
Q: What if I pay for this and I decide I don’t want it. What can I do?
If you don’t find it useful, tell me 72 hours within signing up and you will get a full refund. Promise.
Q: What if I want to cancel?
You can cancel anytime. There are three ways to do it. You can either go into your Paypal account and cancel the recurring payment, or simply email me [james at masterorganicchemistry.com] and I will cancel your subscription personally.
Q: If I cancel, will I still have access through the rest of the billing cycle?
Yes. If you pay on Dec. 1 and cancel on Dec 2. , you will still have access until January 1.
Q: What if I lose my password?
You can reset your password anytime through the reset password link. Make sure you check the email you used to register.
Q: What if I can’t log in?
Chances are you just need to empty your browser cache. But if you are having problems you can just send an email for support.
Q: How much does it cost?
$9.95 per month. It is a subscription, but you can cancel anytime. If you do cancel, you will continue to have access through the end of your billing period.
Q: Where do I sign up?
Just click on the purple button below!
You can call me on my cell at 615.708.8289 (yes that is my personal number)
– James
