Beginning in the spring semester of 2026, the UT chemistry department will begin to strongly encourage pre-med students to enroll in the required organic chemistry lab during their second year because of increasingly high rates of enrollment.
While the lab is intended to be taken during a student’s sophomore year, many students often wait to take the lab until their senior year because of its high level of difficulty along with the workload of other second-year courses. However, according to the chemistry department, students no longer can wait to take the lab until their final year because increasing enrollment levels will leave few spots available.
“The Chemistry department informed us that they are planning to take steps to reverse a bottleneck in enrollment in (OChem Lab),” an email received by students in the College of Natural Sciences said. “They report that too many students have been delaying (OChem lab) until their senior year, which subsequently prevents sophomores/juniors from registering successfully and creates a snowball effect.”
The email said that sophomore and junior students are being forced to delay taking the lab till their senior year, regardless of their preference.
“(The chemistry department) anticipate that if trends continue, they will not have enough space to meet demand for the lab by Spring 2026,” the chemistry department advising staff said in the email. “If (students) wait to take it until Spring 2026, it will be more difficult to get registered for the course, and we have been told that there are no guarantees that seniors will get the class even if it is needed to satisfy pre-health prerequisites.”
Taking the organic chemistry lab at the same time as the lecture is not new. In fall 2017 and spring 2018, 1,668 students in total took the organic chemistry II lecture. In the spring 2018 semester, approximately 82% of the students enrolled in the organic chemistry lab had taken the lecture in the fall or spring of that academic year, said Robin Gray, the senior administrative associate of the chemistry department.
Gray said that in the 2024-25 academic year, 1,895 students enrolled in the organic chemistry lab, but only about 44% of the students who enrolled in the organic chemistry II lecture took the lecture that same academic year. Chemistry professor David Laude attributes this decrease in enrollment to the halt of in-person lab sessions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an overall shift in attitude of students wanting to wait until their senior year to take the lab.
Khaleeq Rahman, president of National Pre-Health Society Texas Alpha Epsilon Delta, said sophomore year is one of the most stressful years for a pre-health student. He said that is when most students begin planning for the Medical College Admission Test while enrolled in the more intensive pre-medical courses. He said these required courses are challenging by themselves, and adding enrollment in the organic chemistry lab does not help the workload.
“That lab is widely considered (to be) the hardest lab that you have to take on a STEM track,” Rahman said. “It jam-packs it into their timeline when they’re already having to worry about other stuff. I think eventually it’ll be able to integrate into people’s timelines and be fine, but for the foreseeable future, it could throw timelines off for a lot of people.”
Biomedical engineering sophomore Bianca Salazar said she’s against not being able to take the lab in her sophomore year because of seniors taking up the limited spots. The MCAT has a section dedicated to organic chemistry, and Salazar feels that if she could have taken the lab this year she would feel better prepared. Because of the seniors who delayed taking it until their senior year and her later registration time as an underclassman, Salazar said she will take the lab her senior year.
“If I were to take the lab, I would get exposed to thinking of chemistry in a different way that’s not just the theory,” Salazar said. “The lab would actually allow me to see the process and really understand what’s going on.”
