Conclusion

Don’t forget, the MCAT won’t ask you to get into your lab coat and extract the product of a reaction!
As long as you understand the principles governing these techniques and when you should apply
them, you’ll be in great shape. Remember that separation and purification techniques exploit
physical properties of compounds, such as polarity, solubility, size and shape, and charge, to obtain
a purified product. These properties can be traced back to intermolecular forces or properties of the
molecules themselves. Having a variety of tools and methods to separate and collect a purified
product is essential in practical organic chemistry, and choosing the proper techniques often
requires knowledge and consideration of the desired product. When you look at the bigger picture,
these methods may be easier to conceptualize than to actually apply in the lab!

Despite the subject’s compelling relevance to everyday life, college organic chemistry often terrifies
and alienates its students. The MCAT, on the other hand, doesn’t ask you to memorize tables of
reactants or regurgitate hundreds of named reactions from scratch. Instead, the MCAT asks you to
look at the bigger picture, to know trends, and to participate in the logic of chemistry. We hope that
studying for the MCAT has given you a chance to rediscover organic chemistry—to focus on the how
and the why, instead of the what. Organic chemistry, like the MCAT as a whole, should be seen not as
an obstacle but as an opportunity. So work hard, have some fun along the way, and keep thinking
about where you’re heading—you can almost feel that white coat.