Dear Colleagues,
The American Chemical Society (ACS) inorganic qualifying exams we use at Clark are based on the typical advanced inorganic chemistry undergraduate course as taught in most American Universities. Textbooks such as the following adequately cover the material tested by the exams. Cotton, Wilkinson and Gaus, 'Basic Inorganic Chemistry'.
I was curious to know how many of you use the ACS Standardized test for your final exam. The wonderful thing about inorganic chemistry is that is a broad discipline, but the challenge with designing a course depends on your focus. As an undergrad, the course I took focused only on main group chemistry. I didn't learn about organometallics until grad school. Why can't ACS design various inorganic standardized tests? For instance one test specifically for organometallics? Perhaps another that is half organometallics and the other half coordination chemistry? Thoughts?
Sibrina
Acs Exam Study Guide Online
Sibrina,
- Don’t Forget to Take an ACS Practice Exam. I hope these 7 ACS Exam Tips really help you this semester. Many Chemistry Students go into taking the exam without any preparation on taking it. Even if you don’t study for the ACS Exam (which you should extensively), these ACS Exam tips for Chemistry Students will still help significantly.
- Don’t Forget to Take an ACS Practice Exam. I hope these 7 ACS Exam Tips really help you this semester. Many Chemistry Students go into taking the exam without any preparation on taking it. Even if you don’t study for the ACS Exam (which you should extensively), these ACS Exam tips for Chemistry Students will still help significantly.
I have used the ACS Inorganic Chemistry exam as a final exam in my Advanced Inorganic course periodically. My students have had two semesters of inorganic from me at that point, and I think it is a good way for them to judge how they do on a standardized exam. Good practice for those taking the GRE or going on to graduate school, especially as I don't ask very many multiple choice type questions on my normal exams in inorganic. My understanding is that some graduate programs give the ACS exams as entrance exams to assess if a student needs to take any coursework in a particular field of chemistry.
I usually go through and carefully code the exam and record both their 'raw score' and their score on those questions that they should know based on what I teach. So, if we didn't talk about iron-sulfur proteins, then a random question on iron-sulfur proteins does not overly penalize them. Their 'Maggie-normalized' score is what factors into their final grade.
I have recently found it helpful when writing letters for grad schools as I can refer very specifically to how the student did on the ACS exam and compare to national norms as well as talk about how they did on other course work and on my exams.
Inorganic Acs Exam Study Guide Practice Exam
No, it's not a perfect exam, but it sure is easy to grade! :-)