Second trial of ACS senior exam set A second experimental trial of an ACSrun examination for four-year chemis try students will be conducted this spring. Starting next month, it will in volve more than 30 chemistry depart ments and a total of about 500 stu dents. A very small and rather hurried pilot trial was carried out last spring. It in volved 11 departments and just over 100 students. However, the results are considered interesting and encouraging enough by the society's Committee on Professional Training (CPT) to justify the second, larger trial this spring. For several years CPT has been probing the pros and cons of a societyrun optional examination for chemis try seniors. And the ACS Board of Di rectors at its spring meeting last year voted funds for the committee to con duct a preliminary study of the feasi bility of developing such an examina tion system. In December of last year the board voted further funds to fi nance the larger trial this spring. The actual examination used last year was supplied by Educational Test ing Service (ETS), Princeton, N.J. It consisted of 100 multiple choice ques tions distributed through the four major fields of chemistry—analytical, inorganic, organic, and physical. An other ETS examination will be used this spring. Both the reliability and the standard errors are available on such ETS examinations. A possibility is that any ACS-run ex amination system eventually will use an examination developed by ACS it self. The society already has examina tions available through the examina tions committee of the Division of Chemical Education. However, these examinations are in specialized areas and the division does not have a suit able comprehensive examination avail able at this time covering all four tra ditional areas of chemistry. The small-scale study last spring was not intended to give definitive results but to check out procedures and to identify areas for more detailed analy sis. However, the results seem to con firm some readily predictable relation ships between a student's background and performance on the test. And the results also indicate several less ob vious relationships. The 50th percentile of all students taking the ETS test used last year was 531. For the 113 students taking it under ACS auspices it was 594. One of the not unexpected results last year was that students who have had more courses in chemistry scored better. The range was from a mean of 612 for students with 12 or more courses to a mean of 535 for those with six to eight courses. Another not unexpected result was that students who expected to go on to
graduate school scored higher than those who did not. Those firmly com mitted to graduate school averaged 607. Those who thought that they probably would go scored 565, whereas those who probably would not go scored 542 and those who were unde cided, 540. Another analysis of the trial results indicated that there was only a small, and probably not statistically signifi cant, difference between students from Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. granting institu tions. For schools offering the B.S. as the highest degree the average was 583. For schools offering the M.S. as the terminal degree it was 597. And for Ph.D.-granting schools it was 593. Last spring's results also brought out a similar small, and probably insignifi cant, difference between students who meet ACS requirements for certifica tion and those who don't. Those who completed a certified program aver aged 580; those who didn't had an av erage of 595. The data from this initial trial also were subjected to an analysis by a pat tern recognition computer program. The data for each student included Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores (both mathematics and verbal) on ad mission to college, total score on the ETS test, partial scores on each of the four areas of the ETS test, and grades on each undergraduate course. A promising fit was obtained with all of these variables combined. And step wise reduction of these variables to eliminate the least useful predictors produced an equation dependent only on the grade in organic chemistry and the score in the SAT mathematics ex amination. Other findings from this analysis in cluded the facts that: • There appears to be very little relation between success on the organic subsection of the examination and score on the SAT verbal test. • Course grades correlate only rela tively poorly with scores on the corre sponding subsections of the examina tion. • The predicted score on the ETS examination is substantially low for the top 10% of the students tested when using the SAT mathematics score and the organic chemistry grade for the prediction. This may be be cause the grade of "A" does not fully measure the ability of these top stu dents. D
Renewal notice March 1 is cutoff date for unre newed ACS journals. Members and subscribers are to be reminded that their dues and subscription pay ments should be paid by March 1 to be retained on the ACS journal mailing lists and to avoid interruption and delay in receipt of later issues.
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EVANS
for organic Di-valent Sulfur Compounds If you have not previously had the need to acquaint yourself with the n o m e n c l a t u r e of sulfur com pounds, the following may be of help in communicating your re quirements to us. Organic Di-valent Sulfur Com pounds refers to compounds in which the sulfur is linked to only two other groups or atoms, one of which is organic:
R-SH A mercaptan or thiol.
R-S-R A thioether, sulfide or thio compound, i.e. a l k y l t h i o a l k a n e ( s o m e t i m e s alkylmercapto).
R-S-S-R A disulfide, dithio or dithio bis com pound.
R-S--R (n>2) A polysulfide or trithio bis, tetrathio bis, pentathio bis, etc. compounds.
If the name of a compound con tains any of the following, we would appreciate your contacting us regarding your requirements: mercapto, mercaptan, thio, thiol, thia, sulfide, disulfide or polysul fide (when linked with an organic group). In addition to the above, com pounds containing the sulfinyl Ο Ο Il
II
group - S - or the sulfonyl group - S II
Ο are also of interest. In some cases, particularly ring compounds, these two groups may be called oxides or dioxides of the parent compound which contains sulfur in the di valent state, -S-. Whenever possible, the best pro cedure would be to give us the formula.
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90 Tokeneke Road Darien, Connecticut 06820 Phone: 203-655-8741 Cable: EVANSCHEM TWX: 710-457-3356 CIRCLE 5 ON READER SERVICE CARD Feb.
16, 1976 C&EN
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