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Introduction to the SAT II Chemistry Test
The best way to do well on the SAT II Chemistry test is to be really good at chemistry. For that, there is no substitute. But the chemistry geek who spends the night before taking the SAT II cramming all of the nuances of crystal-field theory and coordination compounds probably won’t fare any better on the test than the average student who reviews basics carefully. Why? Because the SAT II Chemistry test doesn’t cover crystal-field theory and coordination compounds. This introduction will tell you precisely what the SAT II Chemistry test will test you on, how the test breaks down, and what format the questions will take. Take this information to heart and base your study plan around it. There’s no use spending hours on end studying topics you won’t be tested on.
1. Content of the SAT II Chemistry Test
The SAT II Chemistry test is written to test your understanding of the topics of chemistry that are typically taught in a one-year college-preparatory-level high school chemistry course.
Well, math and chemistry go hand in hand, right? You might be surprised, then, to learn that you aren’t allowed to use a calculator on the SAT II Chemistry test. The math you’ll need to do on the test never goes beyond simple arithmetic and manipulation of equations, which is good news for you—you won’t be a victim of careless errors made on your calculator.
That said, you should be able to solve problems using ratios, direct and inverse proportions, scientific notation, and some simpler exponential functions. Since the test is an hour long, this means you have an average of 42 seconds to answer each of the 85 questions—the people at ETS realize that isn’t enough time to delve into problems involving simultaneous equations or complex algebra. They’re more interested in testing your grasp of the basic concepts of chemistry. If you’ve grasped these concepts, your weakness in math problem solving isn’t going to hurt you. You will, however, be provided with a simple periodic table. This periodic table will probably look more bare-boned than the one you’re used to using: it will have only the symbols of the elements along with their atomic numbers and masses.
Now let’s get into the nuts and bolts of what you’ll see on the exam. ETS provides the following breakdown of the test, covering eight basic categories, and as you can see, we’ve arranged the content review in this book according to ETS’s outline:
2. Format of the SAT II Chemistry Test
The 85 multiple-choice-type questions that make up the SAT II Chemistry exam fall into three types, and according to the College Board Web site, these types test three types of skill.
As you can see, the SAT II test tests your knowledge of chemistry in three different ways. This test also contains three different types of questions: classification questions, relationship-analysis questions, and five-choice completion questions. Next we’ll talk about exactly what these three types of questions look like.
Classification Questions
Classification questions are basically reverse-multiple-choice questions. They consist of five answer choices followed by a string of three to five questions. To make things more confusing, the answer choices may be used once, more than once, or not at all—so although a classification question often looks like simple matching, it isn’t!
The level of difficulty in any one set of classification questions is generally pretty random: you can’t expect the first question in a set to be easier than the last. However, in the test as a whole, each set of classification questions is generally a bit harder than the one that came before.
Familiarize yourself with the following set of directions—if you read and understand them now, you won’t waste precious time on test day.
Directions: Each set of lettered choices below refers to the numbered questions or statements immediately following it. Select the one lettered choice that best answers each question or best fits each statement and then fill in the corresponding oval on the answer sheet. A choice may be used once, more than once, or not at all in each set.
Questions 1–3
1.
A highly electronegative element
2.
Forms colored solutions when dissolved in water
3.
Normally exists as a diatomic molecule but can react to form a 2- ion
You can usually answer classification questions a bit more quickly than the standard five-choice completion questions since you need to review only one set of answer choices to answer a series of questions. The answer to number 1 is E. Electronegativity is a measure of the ability of an atom in a chemical bond to attract electrons to itself; in chapter 4 you’ll learn how to use your periodic table to answer questions like this one. The answer to number 2 is D, copper. Copper often forms green/blue solutions. The answer to number 3 is A, zinc. Also in chapter 4, you’ll learn to predict what ions certain elements will form and in what state they are normally found in nature. Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers to these questions right now. This example is meant mainly to show you how a classification question is formatted.
Relationship-Analysis Questions
Relationship-analysis questions consist of a specific statement, statement I, followed by another statement, statement II. To answer these questions, you must determine first whether statement I is true or false and then whether statement II is true or false. Next you must decide whether the second statement is the reason for the first statement being true. These questions may appear intimidating to you since they’re probably unfamiliar, but after taking the practice exams in this book, you should feel as comfortable with them as you do with the other question types.
One more thing about this question type: strangely enough, on the SAT II Chemistry test, the section containing relationship-analysis questions is always numbered starting with 101. There will be one section of these on each of the tests, and they also get their own special section on your answer sheet—also beginning with number 101. There are usually about 16 or 17 questions of this type on the SAT II Chemistry exam. Again, take the time to familiarize yourself with these directions so you won’t have to even look at them on test day.
Directions: Each question below consists of two statements, statement I in the left-hand column and statement II in the right-hand column. For each question, determine whether statement I is true or false and whether statement II is true or false and fill in the corresponding T or F ovals on your answer sheet. Fill in oval CE only if statement II is a correct explanation of statement I.
Look at question 101. Statement I is true: HCl is an acid, which is a substance that’s capable of donating H+ ions in solution. Acids have a pH that’s lower than 7, while bases have a pH above 7. Statement II is also true: HCl is made up of a hydrogen atom and a chlorine atom. Now do the final step—is the pH of HCl directly related to the concentration of the chlorine ions in solution? No, it is directly related to the number of H+ ions given off by HCl in solution—you would not fill in the bubble marked CE (correct explanation).
Now the answer to question 102. Statement I is true. Statement II is true. As you’ll learn in “The Structure of Matter,” atomic radius decreases from left to right across the periodic table because the more protons in the nucleus of the atom, the more tightly and more closely held are the atom’s electrons. This is an example of another way you can use the periodic table while taking the test. If you understand periodic trends, you won’t have to memorize the atomic radii of all of the elements. The CE, for “correct explanation,” should be bubbled in.
Five-Choice Completion Questions
These are the multiple-choice questions we all know and love, and which are the lifeblood of any multiple-choice exam. You know the drill: they ask a question and give you five possible answer choices, and you pick the best one. This will be the third and final part of the exam.
Here are the directions you’ll see on the exam:
Directions: Each of the questions or incomplete statements below is followed by five suggested answers or completions. For each question, select the one choice that is the best answer to the question and then fill in the corresponding oval on the answer sheet.
The answer is E—the shape of this compound is irregular tetrahedron (also known as trigonal pyramid). You’ll learn rules for predicting molecular structures in chapter 4. Now, the above question is a straightforward multiple choice, but there’s another type of five-choice completion question on the test, and it looks like the question below:
Let’s analyze it. To find the concentration of the unknown acid, you’ll need to know the molarity of the base used in the titration or, put in simpler language, the moles of base per liter of solution. So, statement I is necessary. We’ll also need the information in statements II and III, as you’ll learn in “Laboratory.” The correct answer is E.
While knowing your chemistry inside and out is the best way to ensure that you’ll do well on this test, it will also help you on test day if you’ve developed a strategy that enables you to answer all the questions that test you on chemistry you feel confident about and to guess intelligently on the questions on areas in which you feel less confident. We will talk about some strategies for how to deal with these harder questions in the next chapter.
3. Scoring the SAT II Chemistry
Scoring on the SAT II Chemistry is the same as scoring for all other SAT II tests. For every right answer, you earn one point. For every wrong answer, you lose 1 /4 of a point. For each question you leave blank, you earn zero points. These points combined equal your raw score. ETS converts your raw score to a scaled score using a curve tailored to the particular test you take. We’ve included a raw-to-scaled conversion chart below so you can translate your raw score on a practice test into scaled scores.
This chart shows you that your score doesn’t plummet with every question you can’t answer confidently. You can do very well on this test without knowing or answering everything. The key to doing well on the SAT II Chemistry is to follow a strategy that ensures you will see and answer all the questions you can answer, while intelligently guessing on those slightly fuzzier questions.
For example, on an 80 question test, you could score:
800 if you answered 79 right and left 1 blank
750 if you answered 73 right, 4 wrong, and left 3 blank
700 if you answered 67 right, 8 wrong, and left 5 blank
650 if you answered 60 right, 12 wrong, and left 8 blank
600 if you answered 54 right, 16 wrong, and left 10 blank
4. Strategies for Taking the SAT II Chemistry Test
All the strategies discussed above can be applied equally to the SAT II Chemistry test and the SAT II Modern Hebrew test. That’s why they’re called “general hints.” However, as you may have noticed in the past, there are a number of dissimilarities between the study of chemistry and the study of modern Hebrew. And because chemistry is unlike modern Hebrew, and even unlike English and biology, a number of strategies apply uniquely to the SAT II Chemistry exam. Some of these strategies will help you out in chemistry generally, while some are suited to the unique idiosyncrasies of the SAT II format.
Chemistry Hint 1: Know Those Formulas!
As you know, you aren’t allowed to bring a calculator into the SAT II test, nor are you allowed to bring in a sheet of paper with useful information on it. That means that if you haven’t memorized formulas like Boyle’s law and the ideal gas equation, you’re going to lose points.
This doesn’t mean you have to do a lot of rote memorization. In fact, it’s more important to truly understand the principles of chemistry than it is for you to memorize equations. You’ll find that as the principles of chemistry become second nature to you, the equations that express these principles will become increasingly intuitive. Knowing your chemistry will help guide you to the right conclusions.
A lot of people feel burdened coming into an exam with lots of formulas and equations in their head. It’s like your mind is “full,” and there’s no room for the problem solving at hand. If you have trouble remembering formulas, you might want to look them over carefully in the minutes before the test and then, before you even look at the first question, write down the formulas you have a hard time remembering on the back of the question booklet. That way you can refer back to them without any painful effort of recollection.
Chemistry Hint 2: Estimate
This hint goes hand in hand with one of the general hints above: Know What You’re Being Asked. Don’t dive blindly into five possible answer choices until you’ve already taken your best stab at coming up with the answer yourself. Obviously, estimation is only useful in questions involving calculation: you can’t “estimate” which law of thermodynamics states that the world tends toward increasing disorder. In questions involving a calculation, though, it may save you from foolish errors if you, for example, have a sense of the order of magnitude you’re looking at. If you’re being asked to calculate the pH of a slightly acidic solution, you can be pretty confident that the answer won’t be pH = 0.50, which would be too small, or pH = 14.00, which would be too big. You know that the correct answer must lie somewhere between 2 and 6. Estimation is a good way to eliminate some wrong answers when you’re making an educated guess.
Chemistry Hint 3: Put It on Paper
Don’t be afraid to write and draw compulsively. The first thing you should do once you’ve made sure you understand the question is to make your own notes about what you’re dealing with. Sketch molecules when dealing with a bonding question, or electron configurations for periodic trend questions, or whatever else may be appropriate. Not only will a visual representation relieve some of the pressure on your beleaguered mind, it may also help the solution jump right off the page at you.
Don’t forget to write down important information! Writing down all of the information may lead you to a correct answer even if you don’t really understand the question. Suppose the question asks for the volume of a gas produced in a certain reaction. Write a balanced equation, plug in values, fiddle around a little, and see if you can come up with an answer that looks right. Chances are, it will be.
Chemistry Hint 4: Answers Are Not Convoluted
Remember, on the SAT II Chemistry test you’re not allowed to use a calculator, and you’re only given, on average, 42 seconds to answer each question. If you’re working on a problem and you find yourself writing out lines and lines of conversions as you try to figure out the answer, you’re probably not on the right track. These questions are designed in such a way that if you understand what you’re being asked, you will need at most a couple of simple calculations to get the right answer.
Chemistry Hint 5: Eliminate Wrong Answers
In the general hints above, Know How to Guess, we explained the virtues of eliminating answers you know to be wrong and taking a guess. For most questions, there will be at least one or two answer choices you can eliminate. There are also certain styles of question that lend themselves to particular process-of-elimination methods.
Classification Questions
The weakness of classification questions is that the same five answer choices apply to several questions. Invariably, some of these answer choices will be tempting for some questions but not for others.
Questions 1–3 relate to the following molecules:
1.
An organic solid with a low melting point
2.
Acts as a weak base when bubbled into pure water
3.
Would be the best choice of the above to neutralize excess NaOH
For instance, if you’re pretty sure that ammonia, hydrochloric acid, and acetic acid are not organic solids, just from your general knowledge of chemistry, then you can eliminate B, C, and E. This helps you narrow the answer choices down to two, and if you have to guess, you have a 50-50 chance of choosing the correct answer.
Another point that may help you guess in a pinch is that you’ll rarely find the same answer choice being correct for two different questions. True, the directions for classification questions explicitly state that an answer choice “may be used once, more than once, or not at all,” but on the whole, the ETS people shy away from the “more than once” possibility. This is by no means a sure bet, but if you’re trying to eliminate answers, you might want to eliminate those choices that you’ve already used on other questions in the same set.
If you’re wondering, the answers to the above questions are 1 A, 2 B, and 3 C.
“EXCEPT”-Type Questions
“EXCEPT” questions are five-choice multiple-choice questions that contain a bunch of right answers and one wrong answer. The questions always contain an all-caps EXCEPT, LEAST, or some other similar word. Even if you aren’t sure of the answer, you should be able to identify one or two of the answer choices as being true statements and eliminate them.
Perhaps you’re not sure which of the five answer choices is wrong. But you should be able to identify that choice C or D might be correct because of the word ion in the statement. See, you’ve already eliminated two possible answers and can make a pretty good guess from there.
If you’re interested, the answer is B: ionic compounds usually exist as crystalline solids, not gases, at room temperature.
“I, II, and III” Questions
As we discussed earlier, I, II, and III questions are multiple-choice questions that provide you with three possible answers, and the five answer choices list different combinations of those three.
There’s an upside and a downside to questions of this type. Suppose, for example, that you know that in experiments involving heat of neutralization for acids and bases, you need to know the specific heat—and you suspect that you need the specific heat for the acid. This means that you can eliminate A, B, and C and significantly increase your chance of guessing the right answer. As long as you’re not afraid to guess—and remember that you should never be afraid to guess if you’ve eliminated an answer—these questions shouldn’t be too daunting. By the way, the answer is E.
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