The course itself was not bad at all. A decent amount of work, but none of it is really too difficult. There is a weekly schedule of assignments containing a chapter reading, a LBLA assignment, Expo work (group work), and a BIT assignment. The LBLA and BIT are just two assignment to tie together the material with a few practice problems. I finished with an A- and found it to be a very attainable A in the course. I studied for about three days before every exam and did fine. The exams also contain a groupwork portion which is nice. This means that exam 1 is 75% group exam and 25% individual, exam 2 is 50% group 50% individual, and exam 3 is 25% group and 75% individual weighted. The final is 100% individual. The part of this course I did not like was the instructor. She was very unforgiving and not lenient at all. On an exam I wrote down option choice 1 instead of option choice A and she gave me 0 credit and refused to even hear me out. We were the only 1410 chem course that had to take exams in person vs all of the other professors who took exams online. She also wasn't good at teaching the material and explained nothing in lecture.

Pretty doable class to get at least an A-, I lowkey sold so I barely missed it but its not a bad class. If your expo group is good then you should be fine. Just do practice problems and try to have a decent understanding of the concepts to review.

As someone who didn't take AP Chem and only ever took chem in sophomore year of HS, this course is very doable if you put in the time. The first few weeks I was tweaking out about how long the textbook chapters took me to read, take notes on, and answer the questions for, it gets a lot easier and quicker as the semester goes on because you get a better sense of what you need to know for the exams.
There are 3 exams plus 1 final exam, all of which are easy if, again, you put in the time to review the chapter and homework questions and have taken thorough notes. The exam questions are the same style as these questions so there are no surprises.
I was not a fan of Columbus herself; her lectures were kind of rambly and did not thoroughly review the readings. She only has one office hour a week, which I was never able to attend because of another class. However, the few times I emailed her, she responded pretty promptly, so at least there's that.
Overall, you can probably get an A in this class if you can take about 5 hours a week outside of class time to work on the assignments + study, so don't be too intimidated by the reviews saying how difficult the class is.

Prof. Columbus is someone I would not recommend having as a professor. She's super contradictive of herself and her problems/ lectures in class. She takes forever going over the material in class and will get through barely 5 questions. As someone who was amazing in high school at AP CHEM, THIS IS not it at all. She does it in a completely different way and major and really makes you question your answer. Someone cheated on our last exam and she has completely made this harder than it needs to be. I would recommend welch, all of my friends have him and ADORE his teaching style. My friends have review and study guides, whereas we have simply a "review" session but I wouldn't even call it that. Stuff on the review does NOT prepare us for her exams. Take Welch if you can but I DO NOT recoomend Columbus! Good luck!

LC is so underrated! She emphasizes understanding the material rather than memorizing trends, which is admittedly harder, but pays off in the end. Her lectures serve as a supplement rather than a review of the reading, so make sure to put in the work to understand basic concepts before lecture and you'll get a lot of this course. #tCFF23

I would not recommend taking this course with Columbus at all. I had a group of friends who were all in her lecture and by the end of the semester all of us had started going to different lectures because, while she does have a nice and outgoing personality, she does not explain concepts well at all and hardly ever uses the projector. I ended up attending Morcowchuck's lectures (which were at 8am instead which sucked) just so I could actually understand the class. Also, she would never respond to my emails until many weeks later (or never) and had only one office hour a week which was when I had a class. 0/10 recommend my first impression of her was really good but sadly she did not meet my expectations whatsoever.

This course is incredibly difficult and requires a great amount of time to prepare. With that being said, if you are determined to do well in this class, no matter how much effort it may take, it is possible. I am not a huge fan of Columbus, so I often watched Welch's recorded lectures after my own so I could hear the material being taught in a different way. However, you do not need to do this to understand it. Here are some of my tips for succeeding (I received an A in this class, despite being distraught over the difficulty in the beginning of the year):
1. Take good TopHat notes, and actively try to understand each question. Take good lecture notes too. Do not skip it, ever. It's worth it to go and retain practice, especially of the more confusing questions.

2. GO to the review sessions the TAs hold before exams. They prepared me so much, and they often almost give away the important topics/question types on the exam.

3. When studying for the exams, but most importantly the final, go through each chapter and re-do every TopHat assignment. Every reading question, BIT, LBLA, and expo. This seems like a lot, but it led me to receive a 93 on the final, and these questions for 11 chapters total really only took a few hours over two days because a lot of them you can do in your head or use logic.

4. Make sure you actively understand what we do in expo. Expo often allowed me to get a better understanding of the topics. When you understand the depth and conceptual part of a topic, it makes the questions so much easier.

5. Last, use the tutor list. I was able to find a really strong tutor that I only went to twice and paid maybe $20 for one hour. They often explain things in better terms since they once struggled through the class too. It's not cheating or anything to be ashamed of to get a tutor- if you're struggling, it's okay to get help so that you succeed. He would write up a list of practice problems for me and I would complete them before the session. Any that I struggled with or got wrong we would walk through step-by-step. I cannot stress this enough- if you are seriously struggling, especially with the early units, PLEASE use your resources and get help. If a tutor isn't right for you ask your friends/classmates, or a TA!!!

Also, for the post labs, if you are struggling with a question 100% go to office hours. The TAs are so helpful in walking you through the process of solving/answering the more complex ones. As long as you put a decent amount of effort into this class (~6-8 hours a week), you can succeed!

If possible do not enroll in Chem 1410 with Columbus. Her lectures are very difficult to follow due to her random Q and A lecture format that she gives very inconsistent and contradictory answers to. Several lectures she would explain a concept only to come back to it ten minutes later and admit that she was confused herself about the principle in question. Lecture will only confuse you more so honestly just stick to Tophat (the textbook w questions) and YouTube video explanations. If you do these things and look at Welch's notes then you will do fine.

If you have Linda Columbus, good luck. Kevin Welch is objectively better in every possible way. If you can't get Welch, don't bother going to lecture, just ask a friend in Welch's class to send you the recorded Welch Lecture. Columbus in lecture will spend all of class on one problem and then realize she did it wrong. Welch will make study guides for the exams and extra review that Columbus simply doesn't provide. Try to get these materials from a friend as they are usually helpful.
The class isn't impossible but its annoying especially if you are only in it because its an e-school req and it doesn't actually have anything to do with your major. The "textbook" readings are bad and it's not a real textbook (it's written by the professors). It's hard to find other materials online that match (the organic chemistry tutor on youtube is ok sometimes).

To preface: I received an A- in this course and I am a fairly lazy student, thus for all my lazy students out there, this is for you. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this course-- warning, the first unit and the Final Exam are the hardest parts of this course. The first unit discusses quantum theory, if I recall, which is misleading because you believe that you will be discussing Chemistry, not Physics-- but I digress. Your exam grades are broken up into 3 portions: individual, individual group, and group. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD GROUP. If you do not have a good group, request to change your group IMMEDIATELY. For the first exam, your group portion is 70 percent of your overall grade. In my experience, I had a terrible group that would not listen to me and insisted upon choosing the wrong answer, I got an 80 overall because my first and second parts were nearly perfect. The second exam, I accidentally didn't wake up, and I was able to get a 95 overall because I had to make up the test with a different group. Afterwards, I emailed my TA and asked to change my group and listed my grievances. Guys, it is every person for themselves, don't carry a group that puts minimal amounts of effort. TopHat was not that bad, I learned everything I needed to through reading TopHat and watching MIT videos. I did not watch lecture recordings for doing my video quizzes because they sucked; you can get all your answers from the reading. Overall, class was pretty easy, final exam was extremely hard though. Study for the final exam by going through every unit. Do not think that it is "like the first part of the exam" like they always say-- frankly, it isn't. Many people failed. Do what I say and literally go to review sessions and read through one unit each day, its not that complicated. Good luck!