<p>Hi! I understand that in order for your ochem series to be credited at UC Berkeley, you need a 75th percentile or higher on the ACS exam.</p>
<p>Does that mean if we get less than 75 (percentile), we have to retake the whole ochem series at Berkeley? Or can we opt to retake the ACS exam?</p>
<p>For any of you who have taken the ACS exam for organic chemistry, is it hard to score in the 75th percentile? What kind of raw score is usually needed to get that?</p>
<p>I heard that a good handful of questions are recycled from the ACS study guide. True?</p>
<p>Ahhh I'm so nervous that all my efforts in my ochem class at my CC will have gone to waste by bombing the ACS :(</p>
<p>I’m actually curious about all of this too. Are you taking it at Cal on 8/22 or are you taking it another time? My Ochem teacher said that in relation to my exam grades in class and his teaching preparation, that I should be perfectly capable scoring in the 75th percentile (which I think has been approximately a 50/70) but I’m going to study over the Summer. I did read somewhere that the ACS guide is helpful. I would imagine that it’s somewhat like an SAT prep-book where you won’t see the exact same questions, but there will be some that are comparable. I’m sure you know with ochem that practice is key too.</p>
<p>I found the ACS study guide to be quite helpful. It’s sectioned off into different types of reactions (and a couple of other things like spectroscopy and nomenclature/ structure) with “discussions” of each (pretty much an overview), and each section has study questions and practice questions. For the study questions the answer is explained in detail, whereas the practice questions just have the answers listed at the end.</p>
<p>I found it to be indicative of what was on the ACS, but not exactly the same. The ACS really forces you to know your ochem; I found it more challenging than my teacher’s tests, but it was certainly doable with enough studying and focus.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t eschew your textbook/ notes for the ACS study guide or anything, but I think it’s good as a supplementary study aid for the ACS.</p>
<p>@killmyentourage.
Nope. I’m taking it this Thursday 5/19 in my ochem class.</p>
<p>I have the ACS guide and have been studying it but I don’t think I will be able to get through the whole book by this Thursday (ahh I procrastinated. lol) The questions from the ACS guide are a lot different from what I expected though. Some are really easy, but others caught me completely off guard.</p>
<p>Ex: What is the stereochemical relationship between the salts formed by (+)-tartaric acid with racemic 1-phenylethanamine?
A) enantiomers
B) diastereomers
C) meso compounds
D) racemates</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t remember what the heck tartaric acid looks like. lol.</p>
<p>@thecomfycat
Did you take it this year? Would you say the exam equally covered all areas of organic chem? Or was it skewed to focus on some areas more than others? I don’t think I’d mind if the exam was like, “what are the products?” or “what are the reagents?”. but questions like “which would be best?” or “which would be fastest?” really get to me. Were there also really specific mechanism questions?</p>
<p>The question doesn’t really have to do with tartaric acid. I think it’s basically just asking what a racemic mixture is. If you forgot this definition on the test, you can think about what the the 1-phenyl… products will look like and determine that structure. When you draw it, you can see it has one stereocenter C (one amino group, a H, a methyl, and a benzene ring) and then you’d know it could be R or S. So I think the answer is enantiomers? Is that wrong?</p>
<p>hi guys. I guys took my ACS final a couple of hours ago, and it feels great to be done! Scoring in the 75th percentile is not hard at all. I even think our class(like 20 ppl) average was higher than that. </p>
<p>I got 90% on the exam which was in the 98th percentile so yeah… expect at least a 50/70 in order to be in the 75th percentile. It really comes down to your class and how good of a teacher you have. personally, i thought the exams in our class was 10x harder than the ACS</p>
<p>dont worry too much. if you’re doing good in your class, you should do very well on the ACS. Some problems are pretty much straight from the study guide, so you might wanna go over that and understand it fully.</p>
<p>I finished in about an hour, so I had more than enough time to go over the exam again and check my answers.</p>
<p>Where does the ACS find enough idiots to take this exam so that it seems that just about anybody who actually takes a class in Organic Chemistry ends up above the 75th percentile on the test?</p>
<p>A lot of chemistry teachers give the ACS exam for finals since they offer tests for almost all chemistry classes so I don’t know what you mean by trying to get dumb students to take it. It needs to be proctored by a teacher or official also. Plus they only update it about every 3-4 years and for as long as the test has existed… receiving about a 50/70 give or take a few points has been the 75th percentile. Since the very nature of a “percentile” is taking your score in relation to other students, it’s a general consensus as to how prepared you will be for further classes in comparison to where other students place. It’s ridiculous to assume that just because some people do well that there must be dumb people purposely bringing down the percentile.</p>
<p>This is almost exactly like the SATs where if you were to get one math question wrong one year, you might get 780 whereas your friend might get one question wrong the next year and get a 790. The scores reflect how difficult the test is and it tests information that you are SUPPOSED to know. So unless you have some information that is relevant to the topic, how about you express your negativity and hatred for the “budget crisis” and everything else you complain about in EVERY post elsewhere.</p>
<p>If the ACS exam isn’t offered at your school, you have the opportunity to take it at Cal on August 22nd right before the College of Chemistry orientation. I’m not sure how this will pertain to scheduling classes that have ochem as a pre-req but you can contact Sharon Mueller at the CoC to let her know if you need to take the ACS there. I’m sure her info is on the the CoC homepage.</p>
<p>Okay. I took the ACS exam like 12 hours ago and thought it was hella hard I didn’t have enough time to go over the latest Ochem II material my professor recently lectured on and definitely did not have time to go over the ACS guide past page… 60 or something. lol.</p>
<p>It was probably b/c I didn’t get to finish studying all the material properly so I didn’t perform as well as I could. But my advice to future ACS-examinees is to GO OVER THE ACS STUDY GUIDE. There were like 2 that might’ve been exactly from the guide and others that were really similar in form.</p>
<p>When I was taking the exam I also got this sheet that included a portion of the periodic table (carbon, oxygen area), some nomenclature keys (like what iso/sec/propyl/butyl/whatever looks like), and molecular structures of reagents. Didn’t even use it. lol.</p>
<p>Also some questions were like “what is the product formed” but then they would also provide some IR/NMR spectrum that corresponds with it as well. I didn’t get to the end of the ACS guide but I don’t remember seeing that in there. lol. I thought that made some questions a lot easier. haha</p>
<p>Are we responsible to send to results? or do the teachers submit them? I’m wondering if I can retake it and improve my score so that they never see this one. Does not getting 75 on it effect the chances of admission?</p>
I didn’t have enough time to go over the latest Ochem II material my professor recently lectured on and definitely did not have time to go over the ACS guide past page… 60 or something. lol.</p>