Lowest Organic Chem Exam Average Fall 2014

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Judson

Judson

Southbound
7+ Year Member
Joined
May 24, 2014
Messages
267
Reaction score
206
I thought it would be fun to see how other organic chemistry classes are going this semester.

Rules:
1.) Post whether you are in organic chemistry 1 or 2 this semester
2.) Post the lowest average exam score for your class
3.) If your next exam's class average is lower, post again!

I'll start:
I'm in organic 2 and our second exam had an average score of 48%.
Members don't see this ad.
 
Neuroticism contest?

Bump ochem. I'm in biochem this semester. Gt on mai lvl m8.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 users
Members don't see this ad :)
Why? There are so many factors. I got a 100 on the ACS exam because it was easy. Then my professor's exam was hard as **** and I got a 75 which was an A-.
 
Hey @efle, didn't you just post that one of your orgo I exams had an average of 12/100? #WashU
 
It was 12/100 was passing (C-). The average (borderline between B and B-) was in the low 30s. The best thing about it was that at the start of the next day's lecture he told us how he was disappointed in our performance, like there's no way his exam was poorly written for novice Ochemists (and bright ones who study hard at that!)
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
efle said:
It was 12/100 was passing (C-). The average (borderline between B and B-) was in the low 30s. The best thing about it was that at the start of the next day's lecture he told us how he was disappointed in our performance, like there's no way his exam was poorly written for novice Ochemists (and bright ones who study hard at that!)
Click to expand...
Woah and I thought our exams were hard, that's crazy!
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
efle said:
It was 12/100 was passing (C-). The average (borderline between B and B-) was in the low 30s. The best thing about it was that at the start of the next day's lecture he told us how he was disappointed in our performance, like there's no way his exam was poorly written for novice Ochemists (and bright ones who study hard at that!)
Click to expand...
Sounds just like what my prof said the other day when he handed back our exams!
The average "was the lowest it's ever been" and "I have never actually curved over 2% and this is the first time I did"
Average was a "D" at 60%
 
Kochanie said:
Woah and I thought our exams were hard, that's crazy!
Click to expand...

cant exactly judge the difficulty of an exam based on average scores. it also depends on the quality of the students. i took orgo years back (like 7 yrs now? wow crap im old). my class averages were in the 30s to low 40s, for our exams.
 
anbuitachi said:
cant exactly judge the difficulty of an exam based on average scores. it also depends on the quality of the students. i took orgo years back (like 7 yrs now? wow crap im old). my class averages were in the 30s to low 40s, for our exams.
Click to expand...
Wash U... of course that is quality. :)
 
Members don't see this ad :)
None of my orgo classes' exam averages were bad. However, Gen Chem was another story.

Gen Chem II miderm #2 had a class average of 30.3% before the weight. The exam was weighted 35%. This was due to a ton of students who shouldn't have been in the class + a pretty bad professor. Of course, a few students like myself scored in the 120%s with the weight...
 
I've already taken both but... 50-60% without curves.

And the weird thing was, ochem averages were higher than gen chem averages.

I think it had to do with the fact that those who survived gen chem had a greater aptitude for this sort of thing, and contributed to a higher class average in the subsequent ochem courses.

Still, no curves.
:' D
 
Holmwood said:
I've already taken both but... 50-60% without curves.

And the weird thing was, ochem averages were higher than gen chem averages.

I think it had to do with the fact that those who survived gen chem had a greater aptitude for this sort of thing, and contributed to a higher class average in the subsequent ochem courses.

Still, no curves.
:' D
Click to expand...

Yeah, tenured prof with 20 years of exp. We all expected 50-60% and that's what it was. I would have wrecked ochem in community college.
 
I guess i go to dumb school, Im pretty sure our first 2 exams would be cake for most other schools, yet our average was 32% and 67%, people caught on to how easy they were during 2nd exam a little i guess. ochem 1
 
At my uni, one professor scales 60% as a C- and another professor just gives out whatever he wants. Not lying.
It took me almost mid semester to really grasp the material and look at it conceptually. P chem on the other hand was just....:boom: I still have post traumatic stress from that course.
 
I was a TA for organic chemistry. Have graded hundreds of exams. Lowest score I've seen was 22/250. Yup.
 
efle said:
It was 12/100 was passing (C-). The average (borderline between B and B-) was in the low 30s. The best thing about it was that at the start of the next day's lecture he told us how he was disappointed in our performance, like there's no way his exam was poorly written for novice Ochemists (and bright ones who study hard at that!)
Click to expand...

popopopop said:
Yeah, tenured prof with 20 years of exp. We all expected 50-60% and that's what it was. I would have wrecked ochem in community college.
Click to expand...

Holy eff, looking at all these posts I had no clue Ochem was so ridiculous for some of you. My experience with it was TOTALLY different, average I think was like ~75% for most exams (Ochem I and II) No curve, all you needed to do is study your butt off and you'd get a good grade. My school is notoriously difficult too, but WOW not as bad as some schools evidently.
 
^It's all in the professor. A professor here who graduated from Berkeley w/ a BS in chem and is now teaching here (phd) took a genchem 1 exam from a another professor who had to teach the course over summer. The professor made a B lol. Just a funny story to share how crazy exams can vary. There was another prof who averaged 30% all during genchem2, all free response questions, no formula sheets.
 
Doctor Dream said:
No curve, all you needed to do is study your butt off and you'd get a good grade. My school is notoriously difficult too
Click to expand...
What notoriously difficult school has uncurved Ochem...?

popopopop said:
^It's all in the professor.
Click to expand...
Yup. The guy who gave us the 12/100 = passing test only taught for two years before the guy he was supposed to be replacing came out of retirement to take back over, and now my underclassman buddies tell me Orgo is the same difficulty as bio and genchem were. There are some profs who just have no memory of what it was like to be a neophyte.

Hospitalized said:
Average 65. No curve applied. Organic 1.
Click to expand...

The guy gave half the class a 1.0 GPA and kept his job?
 
The guy gave half the class a 1.0 GPA and kept his job?
Click to expand...

Yep, but they give a lot of free points. The class midterm grade average was a C+.
 
Damn, free points in a prereq are the stuff of dreams around here. But even a 2.7 average GPA could weed out a ton of people.
 
SDN pays attention to averages?:)
 
Organic Chemistry 1. 65%. It was a review of gen chem.
 
Last semester I took orgo 2 and our first exam class average was 32 and I had the highest great of 56 lol. There were about 10 students in our class because most students went for a different professor. Some students in my class were low 20s so it was terrible. Anyways I ended up with an A and did not have to take the final. I ended up getting a 95 and 93 and he curved the first exam so my grade went from a 56 to an 80. Some students in my class told me not to do well so the teacher can curve the grade lol. I was very proud of myself because this teacher is the hardest teacher for orgo at my school. Everyone hates him excluding me. :(
 
Doctor Dream said:
Just how the prof structures the class. Doesn't mean it isn't difficult.
Click to expand...
I'm skeptical. Any test that can be aced will be aced by the type of people taking it at top schools. Exams have to be made unmanageable (like the high score among 300 takers being in the 70s) to find everyone's limit and get a nice distribution going. For a class to really be insanely hard, your job has to be beating the hundreds of gifted people around you, not beating the test itself.
 
efle said:
I'm skeptical. Any test that can be aced will be aced by the type of people taking it at top schools. Exams have to be made unmanageable (like the high score among 300 takers being in the 70s) to find everyone's limit and get a nice distribution going. For a class to really be insanely hard, your job has to be beating the hundreds of gifted people around you, not beating the test itself.
Click to expand...
This would describe most Wash U weedout science courses, but there is always that one person who gets like 95 on every single exam no matter what.
 
Not in Jay Ponder's class there wasn't. His own child was in there and the high scores never got above ~80 iirc.
 
efle said:
I'm skeptical. Any test that can be aced will be aced by the type of people taking it at top schools. Exams have to be made unmanageable (like the high score among 300 takers being in the 70s) to find everyone's limit and get a nice distribution going. For a class to really be insanely hard, your job has to be beating the hundreds of gifted people around you, not beating the test itself.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree with you. I said I took Ochem it at a "notoriously difficult" university, not a top 10 ridiculously difficult college. Hence my amazement at some posts on here about people who I'm assuming have taken it at those top 10 places.
 
efle said:
It was 12/100 was passing (C-). The average (borderline between B and B-) was in the low 30s. The best thing about it was that at the start of the next day's lecture he told us how he was disappointed in our performance, like there's no way his exam was poorly written for novice Ochemists (and bright ones who study hard at that!)
Click to expand...

LOL I remember grading the orgo exams 2 years ago when the new prof came, and some of the questions were just painful to grade.... the TAs would cry tears of joy when we saw 10/10 for some of them xD
 
I got a 32/100 on one exam. I believe it ended up being like a standard deviation and a half above the average, so... B+.

I always hated that. I understand it theoretically makes the curve work better, but the feeling of absolute defeat after walking out of an exam you'd done nothing but study for for two weeks was the worst.
 
Nica56744 said:
I got a 32/100 on one exam. I believe it ended up being like a standard deviation and a half above the average, so... B+.

I always hated that. I understand it theoretically makes the curve work better, but the feeling of absolute defeat after walking out of an exam you'd done nothing but study for for two weeks was the worst.
Click to expand...

Could not agree more.
 
I'm in Orgo 2 right now and our first midterm's average was 100/250. 40%.

grade inflation my ass...

jk there totally will be grade inflation a 100 will probably be good for a low B+
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I still don't understand how can a class of 20-100 have 20-30/100 avg? I go to mid-tier university, and our professor is difficult, but the class average is 60-70. I'm curious to see the exam that managed to set the avg in low 20-30s.

The only way I can imagin exam with 30 avg is if all of the questions are synthesis short answers, with a horrible professor that'll mark the whole question 0 for forgetting small detail.
 
idk what to tell you, our exam was just really ridiculously hard. the TAs were pretty generous with partial credit but the problems were just ridiculously tough. this is for a class of about 40 kids most of whom are straight up geniuses (genii?)
 
My professor just gave us another exam but I don't think this one will be as bad. Not as many distraught faces as the last one.
 
anbuitachi said:
wasn't really referring to that school directly lol. but even then quality is subjective. it's just hard to compare different schools lol. (ie if that test was taken in MIT, i wonder what the average would be but we'll never know)
Click to expand...
In Gen Chen 2 at my Univ. the labs are taught by Grad student, most barely speak English ( that's a huge problem when you live in nowhere, Tennessee). The Grad student we had was particularly bad that semester and lab manuals were full of typos and awkwardly worded passages. They told us "study the lab manual. It has everything you need to know". that what we did and over the two lab sections, one had a 50% avg, the other had a 53%. The highest grade in both classes was an 84%. The professor over the class refused to do a curve, just assumed we were terrible students.. all 40 of us.. Luckily I finished with an A average.
 
efle said:
High score 84
No curve
You finished with an A

Checks out legit
Click to expand...
I had a 95 average in lecture and a 75 in lab. enedd up with a 90 average since 75% of the final grade is lecture 25% is lab. with the curved grading scale an 89 and up is an A 88-85 A- 84-82 B+ and so on..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

F
Online Organic Chem II?
Replies
12
Views
2K
ahnonemoose
A
M
Fall semester grades
Replies
2
Views
489
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
T
Organic Chem 1 & 2 for Summer or Ochem 1/physics/calc3
Replies
2
Views
358
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
2023 fall AMCAS matriculants are more diverse
Replies
1
Views
493
BenzeneToluene
B
RespectTheChemistry
Organic Chemistry II
Replies
5
Views
662
Yasha182
Y
Top