The Department Exit Exam is part of the Academic Learning Compacts (ALCs) for the Chemistry/Biochemistry major. The ALCs for Chemistry and Biochemistry are available in the online undergraduate catalog.
All students in the Chemistry major (Chemistry and Biochemistry tracks) must complete the exit exam as part of their degree requirements. The exam that we use is the American Chemical Society’s Diagnostic of Undergraduate Chemistry Knowledge exam, commonly known as the DUCK exam (you all know how much chemists love acronyms!). It is a multiple choice exam given in the context of short situational passages, and is administered to seniors in the semester that they are graduating.
The Exit Exam is meant to evaluate your overall comprehension of the chemistry/biochemistry course work, and it helps our department determine if we are meeting our learning outcome goals. The exam scores are used to prepare our annual report to our accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), and to help improve instruction in the department. While the exam is not something that you “study for” in the normal sense, we do ask that everyone gives their best effort so that we can get meaningful data from the exam. The scores do not appear on your transcript or on your degree audit – once you take the exam in your graduating semester, we clear that requirement in your audit.
How do you sign up to take the Exit Exam? You are automatically signed up to take the exit exam when you apply for graduation. If you have a special situation where you know you will not be in residence during your last semester (maybe because of an internship or study abroad), you should let us know so you can take the exit exam before you leave Gainesville.
When is the Exit Exam given? The exam is given each semester after we receive the list of students who have applied for graduation. The specific dates will vary, but in general, the exam is given every March, June, July, and October. Students who have applied for graduation will receive an email with more information about the exam dates approximately two weeks after the degree application deadline.
Do students need to earn a particular score on the Exit Exam to graduate? We want you to do your best on the exam since that will give us meaningful data about our major. Students who earn less than 50% on the exam on their first attempt may be asked to retake the exam.