Testimonies

Testimonials of the 1st PSC - Chemistry Olympiad in April, 2018

The 1st PRISMS Spring Camp for Chemistry Olympiad was done with great success. Aspiring students from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and California challenged themselves in the five-day camp with intensive preparation for the USNCO National Exam - Part I/II/III. Here lists testimonials from some of the participants.

The camp truly was an incredible experience to meet other aspiring students and gain exposure with more advanced topics in chemistry. While preparing me for the Olympiad, the Camp also more subtly revealed the intricate complexities of the central science!

I think it was very helpful. The descriptive chemistry part was the most useful. It summarized all the reactions commonly found on USNCO very well.

Through participating in this camp, I was not only exposed to aspects of chemistry that I was unfamiliar with, but aspects of chemistry that I doubt I would have ever understood to such an elaborate extent in such a short amount of time otherwise if I hadn’t participated in the camp. I learned so much about electrochemistry, descriptive chemistry, reaction theory, inorganic chemistry, kinetics, thermodynamics, equilibrium, organic chemistry, lab design, and much more (and even managed to make a few new friends along the way). So thank you so much, Dr. Chen, for giving me this wonderful learning experience and I hope to make you proud in USNCO with all that you’ve taught me!

Really fun, interesting, and very very educational and helpful

I think it was great! All my questions were answered well, and the class was taught very systemically. I liked how we were given opportunities to use our newly learned/enhanced skills in tests and labs.

PSC - Chemistry Olympiad is the perfect camp for preparing for USNCO. Finding descriptive chemistry resources online is an especially hard task to do, but Dr. Chen is a master in descriptive chemistry and helped me to understand and be more familiar with reactions. PSC really challenged me and pushed me to work on questions harder than the USNCO. I feel much more confident about the USNCO after attending this camp.

Testimonials of the 2nd PSC - Chemistry Olympiad Online in April, 2019

The 2nd PRISMS Spring Camp for Chemistry Olympiad was done with great success. More than 20 aspiring students from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, California, etc challenged themselves in the 8-session (2 hour each) online camp with intensive preparation for the USNCO National Exam - Part I/II/III. Here lists testimonials from all of the participants.

I learned a lot in this class. It was very helpful to me and you showed me new strategies and reasoning, which I very much appreciate.

This camp is a great way to not only help you prepare for the USNCO exam but also just to help advance your chemistry knowledge overall. Dr. Chen is a great teacher and you are able to learn a lot from him. Highly recommend!

I don't know what to say. It's just very good.

The time and material Dr. Chen provided made this camp worthwhile. He gives good condensed handouts and is always answering questions. Dr. Chen even offered an entire extra class to cover more topics and address questions.

The annotations after the class were helpful because it allowed me to find out what I didn't know and also to finish notes that weren't done in class.

The handouts are extremely well-thought out, and Dr. Chen explained every concept clearly, appealing to experts and those with working knowledge alike. Thanks!

The camp was extremely helpful in helping to fill some holes in my knowledge. Having so many practice problems to accompany each topic helped me to really learn the material being taught. The handouts and video instruction were great!

This class was very helpful in explaining chemistry efficiently, and I learned a lot of information not taught in AP Chemistry.

The camp was a very great experience in overall chemistry knowledge but more importantly, the descriptive chemistry knowledge I learned from this camp is invaluable! Dr. Chen systematically organized a lot of the reactions/facts into patterns/groups and gave REASONS as to why they occur/exist, making it very easy for us students to LEARN instead of blindly memorize. Fantastic camp and teacher!

It was a pretty good camp; however, I feel like it would have been better if the pace was slower. The handouts though were awesome (even though as of right now I don't completely understand all of it); I am confident these will be helpful for next year's preparation as well. thank you!

Dr. Chen's class helped me develop a stronger chemical intuition and more experience, both of which are valuable to my chemistry olympiad experience.

Dr. Chen explains contents in great depth.

Although this camp was fast-paced, it was super fun and very efficient!

Engaging live sessions with ample auxiliary support through Gmail and Google Classroom. Sessions were informative and went in-depth into more complicated topics. All in all, the class was a good supplement for my preparation.

It was really helpful and I learned a lot

I did not know too many advanced topics in chemistry initially, so I did not have the capacity to improve much. However, I am happy that I have these handouts as reading materials, and I will certainly improve as I do more reading and investigate the materials and content of the handouts in further detail.

Very informational and detailed intuitive explanations; features a lot of additional and carefully curated material for USNCO

It was a nice class, I learned a lot about organic/descriptive chem.