For anybody who has taken or is currently taking organic chem 1 (first semester, obviously), I just wanted some feedback on the exam shown below; I was wondering what your take on it would be, difficulty-wise: average, semi-difficult, hard etc. I'm just trying to get a feel as to where everybody is in the course and how other professors test as compared to mine. When assessing the test (which was my first exam in orgo, given last week), keep in mind that we were given only 50 minutes to complete this exam. So what do you think? Comparable to exams you've had? More difficult? Less difficult?
The subjects we covered prior to this exam were nomenclature/structure (i.e., hybridization states, molecular shapes/planarity, bonding orbital shapes/directions etc.), acidity/basicity, halogenation, stereochemistry (enantiomers, diastereomers etc.) and stereochemical reactions (racemic mixtures, net inversion etc.), including optical activity, conformational isomers (Newman projection diagrams etc.), SN1 and SN2 reactions, and solvent effects (we only lightly touched upon solvolysis prior to the exam; we mostly covered which types of solvents would favor SN1/2 and what the products would be etc.). We did not specifically cover the rxn's of alcohols (except how you'd convert them into alkyl halides etc., as per question 9, and also how they become protonated to form oxonium ions which are good leaving groups for SN1/2 etc.). Hyperconjugation (question 14b) was mentioned for a grand total of 35 seconds in class, with no supplemental readings assigned in the book, as it's a topic to be covered in depth much later in the course; an industrious student would have read it anyway since it was mentioned, but who ever thinks a professor is going to throw an entire question in on something that was discussed for literally 35 seconds, considering the amount of other material covered).
No templates were provided on the answer sheet for any question besides the first, which appeared exactly as it does on the question sheet; question 3 was the only "quick" question, and the only multiple choice question, on the exam-- the rest were long-answer and needed to be written out in their entirety on the answer sheet).
I'm just very curious as to what others think...
So what do you guys think? Fair? Comparable to exams you've taken (in orgo 1, first exam)? I'm just honestly curious, because we were VERY pissed off that there were so many long-answer questions. I managed a very good grade ("A" level) on this exam, but could have done much better if given an extra 10-20 minutes. His exams are notoriously difficult, but even students of his from previous semesters said that this exam was much harder than even his usual fare-- mostly because his other exams, of the sort he has posted online from previous years (and he has dozens of his old exams online), all contained at least 3-5 "easy" or "quick" questions, such as question 3 in this exam or quickly-answered questions such as "is the equilibrium greater than 1, less than 1 or approximately equal to 1 for the following rxn's?" (these would be acid/base equilibria reactions, which are quickly determined based upon relative acidities). In light of this, the time was really a factor here. In addition, he usually throws in a simple energy diagram question (either of the transition state for, say, bromination/chlorination, or of the anti, eclipsed, and gauche conformations of a certain conformer via Newman projection), which can likewise be done very rapidly.
Any feedback (or commiseration
) would be appreciated.
EDIT: Oh, and props to my anonymous forum friend for helping me with hosting these pics, without which this glorious (yes, glorious I said) topic would not be possible.
The subjects we covered prior to this exam were nomenclature/structure (i.e., hybridization states, molecular shapes/planarity, bonding orbital shapes/directions etc.), acidity/basicity, halogenation, stereochemistry (enantiomers, diastereomers etc.) and stereochemical reactions (racemic mixtures, net inversion etc.), including optical activity, conformational isomers (Newman projection diagrams etc.), SN1 and SN2 reactions, and solvent effects (we only lightly touched upon solvolysis prior to the exam; we mostly covered which types of solvents would favor SN1/2 and what the products would be etc.). We did not specifically cover the rxn's of alcohols (except how you'd convert them into alkyl halides etc., as per question 9, and also how they become protonated to form oxonium ions which are good leaving groups for SN1/2 etc.). Hyperconjugation (question 14b) was mentioned for a grand total of 35 seconds in class, with no supplemental readings assigned in the book, as it's a topic to be covered in depth much later in the course; an industrious student would have read it anyway since it was mentioned, but who ever thinks a professor is going to throw an entire question in on something that was discussed for literally 35 seconds, considering the amount of other material covered).
No templates were provided on the answer sheet for any question besides the first, which appeared exactly as it does on the question sheet; question 3 was the only "quick" question, and the only multiple choice question, on the exam-- the rest were long-answer and needed to be written out in their entirety on the answer sheet).
I'm just very curious as to what others think...
So what do you guys think? Fair? Comparable to exams you've taken (in orgo 1, first exam)? I'm just honestly curious, because we were VERY pissed off that there were so many long-answer questions. I managed a very good grade ("A" level) on this exam, but could have done much better if given an extra 10-20 minutes. His exams are notoriously difficult, but even students of his from previous semesters said that this exam was much harder than even his usual fare-- mostly because his other exams, of the sort he has posted online from previous years (and he has dozens of his old exams online), all contained at least 3-5 "easy" or "quick" questions, such as question 3 in this exam or quickly-answered questions such as "is the equilibrium greater than 1, less than 1 or approximately equal to 1 for the following rxn's?" (these would be acid/base equilibria reactions, which are quickly determined based upon relative acidities). In light of this, the time was really a factor here. In addition, he usually throws in a simple energy diagram question (either of the transition state for, say, bromination/chlorination, or of the anti, eclipsed, and gauche conformations of a certain conformer via Newman projection), which can likewise be done very rapidly.
Any feedback (or commiseration
) would be appreciated. EDIT: Oh, and props to my anonymous forum friend for helping me with hosting these pics, without which this glorious (yes, glorious I said
) topic would not be possible. 
