<p>For those of you who have taken this exam, were the exam questions easier/harder/same as the ACS study guide book problems? I feel like the ACS study guide problems are rather hard...</p>
<p>I just took the exam last week. I do not have the ACS study guide. so I do not know how hard the test compared to the practice problems. However, the test was definitely not difficult. Just review materials and you will do fine. There were some questions about radical reactions and Diels-Alder reaction (the cyclic 1,3-dienes). I was clueless as my school does not cover those reactions in the first-semester OChem class. If your school does not either, try to do some readings.</p>
<p>I took the exam this week and felt that it was similar to if not easier than the study guide. The questions were more clear and it had a better overall presentation (e.g., less cluttered Lewis structures and more use of bond-line notation which I was more used to).</p>
<p>In hindsight, the best preparation for this exam would be a thorough review of all chapters from your textbook. (The one my class used by David Klein covered the exam’s material adequately). I would strongly recommend paying particular attention to understanding the mechanism of each reaction covered in your class and not memorizing them. I only did a slight amount of memorization to remember which reagent(s) went with which mechanism.</p>
<p>If your textbook doesn’t cover it, you may also benefit from being proficient at interpreting spectroscopy data. At least five out of seventy questions on my exams were on IR, NMR, and mass spectroscopy. ([This</a> is a great site for practice problems.](<a href=“http://www.chem.ucla.edu/~webspectra/]This”>WebSpectra - Problems in NMR and IR Spectroscopy)).</p>
<p>I will be taking the First Term exam next week. Any tips guys or any topics I should pay careful attention to?
Thank you!!</p>
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