<p>I think I would still have taken Ternansky. He's a great lecturer, and it was very good prep for the next two quarters.</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about old tests. The only old questions I saw were the ones he gave us, and I felt they were very unrepresentative of the actual exam. So, I can't really say.</p>
<p>does anyone know where old tests of Ternansky's can be found?</p>
<p>tried searching the web...no luck</p>
<p>lifetranscends, can you explain in what way the tests were difficult, like were there out-of-the-box, you-need-to-understand-the-concept questions?</p>
<p>mwahaha .... just checked my records and i've got three MT1's and two MT2's.</p>
<p>back in the day, before the department switched over to WebCT, you could visit the website of any class and download exams/answer keys/everything. i remember showing up at one professor's office hours with five quarters of old exams; apparently he was into recycling old questions, because he pretty much freaked out. :D</p>
<p>I think the hardest thing about his tests were his grading policies. A small mistake can make you get the entire (or most of a) problem wrong, so you need to be really paying attention so that you don't leave out a lone pair or something. And you literally need to know everything he teaches. On our final, we had synthesis problems, but you could only use certain reagents and you had to do it in a certain number of steps (or less) so you were royally screwed if you didn't recognize one. One of our midterms was also obscenely long, and he later admitted that he wasn't thinking when it came to the length of the test... But the grading and thoroughness of his exams are primarily what make his tests difficult. But both can be overcome by paying attention during the exam, and by practicing. He recommended doing each of his assigned problems 4-5 times each. I thought he was crazy at first, but I did it for the second midterm and he was right. My score went from 40% to 80% just from repeating the problems. </p>
<p>His tests weren't that out of the box. Out of the box is saved for B and C =).</p>