What Pre-Med Students Get Wrong About General Chemistry

Pre-med students are often among the hardest-working students in a General Chemistry course. They’re highly motivated, they take detailed notes, they go to office hours. And a significant number of them fail the first exam anyway.

The problem isn’t work ethic. It’s a mismatch between how pre-med students are used to succeeding and what Gen Chem actually rewards.

The study habits that worked in high school don’t transfer

Most pre-med students arrive at college with a track record of academic success built on one skill: retaining and reproducing information. Read the material, learn the facts, write them on the exam. It works in history, in English, and in most biology courses.

General Chemistry doesn’t work that way. You can’t memorize your way through a Gen Chem exam. The problems are applications — they require you to take a concept and use it to analyze a situation the textbook never showed you. The students who do well aren’t the ones who remember the most. They’re the ones who can do the most with what they know.

The three specific mistakes I see

1. Treating chemistry like a memorization course

Chemistry has vocabulary that must be memorized — there’s no way around that. But the exam problems aren’t vocabulary tests. They’re problems. If you spent most of your study time memorizing definitions and formulas and very little time working problems, you’ve prepared for the wrong exam.

The formula sheet is only as useful as your ability to know when and how to apply each formula. That’s a skill built through practice, not memorization.

2. Assuming that understanding the lecture is enough

Following a lecture and being able to solve problems independently are two completely different cognitive tasks. In a lecture, you’re watching someone else think. On the exam, you have to think yourself.

Students who can follow the professor perfectly but have never worked through a problem from scratch are always surprised by how much harder the exam feels than the lecture. This gap is closed by doing problems — not by reviewing the lecture again.

3. Underestimating the foundation requirements

College Gen Chem assumes you arrived with certain skills intact: unit conversions, significant figures, scientific notation, basic algebra, mole calculations. These aren’t reviewed in class. If there are gaps, they compound immediately.

I’ve tutored pre-med students who understood stoichiometry conceptually but were making errors in dimensional analysis that came from the first week of high school chemistry. Those errors showed up on every exam. One session to close the gap fixed what had been a recurring problem all semester.

The formula sheet only helps if you know when to use each formula. That’s built through practice, not memorization.

What actually works for pre-med students in Gen Chem

Start working problems in week one. Don’t wait until you’ve reviewed all the material. Work problems while you’re learning the material. The problems will show you what you actually understand versus what you think you understand.

Use mistakes as primary study material. Every wrong answer on a practice problem is a window into your reasoning. Find where the logic broke down — not just what the right answer was. This is the most efficient studying you can do.

Know that Gen Chem is a prerequisite, not a hurdle. The concepts in Gen Chem reappear in Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, and eventually on the MCAT. Students who genuinely understand Gen Chem have a significant advantage in every downstream course. Students who barely passed by cramming have to relearn it all later.

One thing I tell every pre-med student

The students I’ve seen struggle most in Gen Chem are often the most naturally capable students in the room. The course doesn’t reward being smart — it rewards being practiced. Those are different things, and the distinction feels unfair until you understand that it’s actually great news: being practiced is something you can choose to become, no matter where you’re starting.

Adrianne Penullar, M.S., M.Ed.

AP Chemistry teacher with 10+ years in the classroom, college adjunct professor, and EdD candidate (graduating 2027). I’ve tutored AP Chemistry students through every kind of struggle — and I know exactly where the exam catches students off guard.