How do you prepare for PhD Chemistry Cumulative Exams?

[Pnictides]

http://www.chem.purdue.edu/Exams/default.htm

The exams shown on this link are very difficult. So how would one go about in preparing for them? It looks like it is almost impossible to prepare for them. Some of my Chemistry professors say that even they have trouble completing the questions.

[Eigen]

If they're anything like ours (and it seems like they are), they're just a pretty soul-crushing experience. My first Organic cume gave two Nobel prize winning syntheses... and asked me to improve upon their elegance and suggest ways to shorten the overall process. I had another one that asked me to diagram, in detail, the biological pathways as well as the prevalent solid phase syntheses of oligonucleotides, including all reagents and protecting groups. One inorganic exam was a blank piece of paper, on which we were asked to draw the full periodic table. 1 point for each element correct, -1 point for each one with anything incorrect. They're extremely variable, and there really is no way to effectively *study* for them.

Ours are given by discipline, but all in the same room- the first Wednesday of each month. We meet at 7 pm, and have until 10 or 11- they put three exams up at the front of the room, and you work what you can/want to, and turn them in. Each professor in the department writes one exam per semester, and they rotate randomly. Topics can be anything the professor wants to give- we've had exams asking for stockroom prices of common reagents, details from other work of a recent seminar speaker, to basic questions from the discipline.

We have to pass 2 exams in our first two years, and then 6 by the end of our 3rd- 3 have to be in our subdiscipline. For Organic, at least, about 1-2 grad students pass each one. Grading is totally up to the faculty member- some require 90+%, some require only around 50% to pass. Some grade based on performance- they pass one or two of the best scores on the exam.

The advice I usually give to first years in my program is to just go and do your best. You might find it worth asking around- we all have kept copies of cume exams we've both passed and failed, and it can give you some things to practice on. That said, none of the exams I looked over before I started helped me at all- it just came down to being familiar with most of the stuff in my field with a nice side of luck and good timing.

On preview, the information at http://www.chem.purd...Exams/GSABA.htm is very, very useful, and very similar to what I gave- just do your best, don't panic, and experiment with various levels of alcohol intake prior to and following exams. Most of us only passed one or two our first semester, then more in the second semester, and pretty easily wrapped up in the third. Passing exams out of your area of discipline gets much harder the farther you are out of classes, so it's worth going to every exam you can early on.

Edited December 12, 2011 by Eigen