Good luck to everyone taking the AP-CSA exam on Tuesday. Here’s a thread to discuss the exam.
Standard warnings from ETS apply here (which you were told about at the exam administration):
- Specific questions from the multiple choice section of the exam should never be discussed publicly.
- The free response questions cannot be discussed publicly until after they are released on AP Central, typically 72 hours after the exam administration. (So, start checking AP Central on Friday afternoon.)
- If you're taking the alternate (late) exam, those free response questions can never be discussed publicly.
So, all that aside … what did you think of the exam?
Obligatory disclaimers for me: I’ve been a reader for the AP-CSA exam for the last 12 years. I’m happy to offer my insights into how the exam might be scored. However, please understand that I have no inside information about this exam (I don’t even know what questions will be given). All of my opinions are my own alone, and do not represent the views of ETS, the College Board, the APCSA Development Committee, or Inigo Montoya.
Hey there everybody. Gonna be taking it tomorrow, let you know how it goes tomorrow.
Is it just me or was that really easy
My DD’s teacher was pretty clueless. The class was almost entirely self-taught, so my expectations on this test were low. I texted my daughter to ask how the test went. Her response: “I thought it was pretty easy”.
What do you think will be the cutoff point for getting a 5? I thought the multiple choice was super easy but I basically didn’t answer one part of one of the short answers.
@RichardL27 it’s really hard to predict anything about the cutoffs, but they don’t tend to drift too much from year to year. New lines are set every year to account for exams that might be easier or more difficult than in previous years, so that a “5” means the same thing from year to year.
Do you know if it’s okay if I accidentally used pen for the FRQ? I used pencil to cross it out and rewrite it but I’m a bit nervous because it said to use pencil.
@crystal7789 don’t worry I’m sure you’ll be fine. I bet it’s a common mistake anyway.
@jkhuggins2 Thanks for the reply. Do you know by about how many points the cutoff for a 5 varies? I felt like this was a noticeably easier exam but I’m still on the border between a 4 and a 5.
@bucketDad I feel your pain my DS20’s Comp Sci AP teacher is a first year teacher who has a degree in English or History and just went to the local CC to take a Java class so she could get certified to teach Comp Sci. It was so bad that he begged his older brother, a Jr. at the same school to come in and teach his class one of the lessons that the teacher could not understand. Worked out very we’ll for DS18 since that class all the students want him to tutor them he’s in such demand that he raised his rates and is now getting $30 an hour:-)
Thankfully DS18 tutors DS20 for free! DS20 said that the exam was easy and thought he had a perfect score.
The multiple choice was pretty straight-forward, and the FRQs weren’t bad at all.
I think the curve this year will probably be a little harsher since everyone thought
it wasn’t bad.
@crystal7789 If you re-wrote everything in pencil, you should be fine. (Frankly, I think most readers would’ve graded the pen version, but the “rules” say you should use pencil, and I’m fine with that.)
@RichardL27 Check out this calculator: http://appass.com/calculators/computerscience
It uses the publicly released cutoffs from the last few released exams.
I’m glad everyone else thought it was easy too. The FRQ’s for sure were much easier than the ones from previous years that I practiced on. 
I did the free response questions in pen too because our proctor didn’t say to do it in pencil!!! I’m super scared becuase I don’t want my score to get ruined becuase I used a pen. What do I do?
The test of 2015 and ones before seemed to have a curve of around 65 percent to get a 5 and didn’t fluctuate a lot until last year ,2016. The curve jumped to 78 percent to get a 5 and many people found some difficulty in the free-response.This year, many found the test to be very easy. Do you think the cutoff could rise even more to 85%?
Folks, don’t worry about the pen issue. In all my years as a reader, I’ve never seen any reader refuse to grade an APCS exam because it was written in pen rather than in pencil.
What do you do? Nothing. This question comes up every year, and I have never heard of an issue with scoring because a student used a pen when a pencil was required, and vice versa.
I think it might be a little higher than last years, as it seemed much easier than last year’s test to me.
How harsh do you think the curve will be this year? What do you all think the cut-offs will be for 4s and 5s?