I would recommend taking Organic Chemistry with Professor Tepe if you are able. The class grade is made up of homework, quizzes, a midterm, and the final.

The homework is mostly once a week, and the same homework that all the orgo professors use (I believe). It wouldn't penalize your grade to get things wrong; it was graded on completion, but you had to get a certain number right to complete it. It was not hard to get full points on the homework, but sometimes Professor Tepe was a little bit slow to finish a lecture or not cover the entire lesson, and the homework that week would be frustrating to complete, because it was not adjusted to cover the same material that we covered.

The quizzes were relatively easy, and Professor Tepe was very straightforward about what was expected to know. A lot of student errors on these quizzes and on the exams were silly small errors as opposed to not understanding. There were 3 quizzes in my semester, with the lowest one dropped, but I don't know if that will be the case every semester. The exams were relatively the same as the quizzes, but longer. I found the final harder than the midterm and the quizzes, and a slightly different format, where you had to explain some of the choices you made while solving the problems, but the grading ended up being very nice in my opinion. The final was 40% of the final grade, which is more than the other professors, I believe.

There were discussions every Thursday nights (a very unfortunate time for discussions), but they were often finished early and honestly not super helpful sometimes. When I took it, attendance wasn't taken, and they were somewhat optional. They are run by the TAs, so I think it is very dependent on the TA you have, but my TAs were lovely and very helpful. Do not assume you can skip them all, though, because this is the time that he will give the quizzes, so some of them you have to go to.

Overall, I would recommend Tepe for everyone. The only thing I want to stress is that when comparing his lectures to the textbook, there is a good handful of things he skips. He mentioned a few times that he chooses to skip some things because they do not help understand future content, the MCAT, or Orgo 2, but I cannot attest to any of that as I have not taken the MCAT or Orgo 2, so I would be hesitant if that is really important to you.

I definitely recommend taking ochem with tepe. Tepe is a very chill, funny guy, which made ochem bearable. Most of his quizzes/exams were straightforward questions, no tricky questions but on the final, he did include some short responses. Also, he doesn't allow corrections or a curve. He also adds some extra question on the exams,

I ended up passing with an A- and here’s what I would recommend. GO TO LECTURES: in every lecture, he says that what will put on the quizzes/exams and he gives practice problems. Tbh his discussion sections didn't really help me because it was nothing like the quizzes/exams but it was nice to hear what the TAs were looking for. Try to do practice problems every day, especially the textbook problems (you literally don't have to study for hours - the only time I study for hours is when I'm just learning the content and studying for quizzes/exams). Since he likes a lot of mechanisms, I recommend watching organic chemistry with victor and Leah4sci for content-wise. Go to his office hours, he only has one but that really help me a lot in getting to know the content better and sometimes he let us know what he will test is on. Lastly, go to p2l for extra practices problems.

Structure of the class:
Homework: 50 points max
Quizzes: 100 points max (lowest quiz score dropped)
Midterm: 150 points max
Final exam: 200 points max
Total: 500 points max

In my experience, professor Tepe is a very fair lecturer, and only wants people to succeed on exams. All of the questions are designed where, if you did the practice, you would be able to do them. That being said, none of them were multiple choice, and there was no curve. The class was also very test centered, with the midterm being 30% of your grade and the final being 40%. Averages sort of tapered off throughout the year, but I found as long as you did the practice, you could do well.

As for Tepe's actual lectures, make sure to actually go as the slides, while somewhat descriptive, don't give the full picture for what he's talking about. I found a lot of people took physical notes; I found success in digital notes, though I would suggest at least taking your own notes and being prepared to write reaction mechanisms.

Overall, I highly recommend Tepe for Organic Chemistry I. It's a really hard subject, but I think he makes it a lot more bearable.