Can anyone recommend an AP Computer Science A prep book? I’ve generally used Barrons for AP’s, but there is also Litvin’s Be Prepared and Five Steps – which both also look good What are most people using or have used?
I used Barron’s which I do feel prepared me adequately (was self-studying with an online class through Purdue). However, it has the common pitfall that I have seen with most Barron’s books–an overemphasis of vocabulary. On the test, there were very few questions about knowing coding vocabulary (and much fewer than were in my Barron’s test). Again though I felt the review material was good.
Any prep book will be fine.
This is from 20+ years of IT experience. The way to learn how to code, is to code. My son breezed through the test with a 5 by doing one sample test from either Barrons or Princeton Review because he has been coding in Java (minecraft mods) since middle school.
There are no shortcuts. Cramming does not work. Pick something that interests you and write an application to do it even if is not in Java. Like learning a musical instrument, code for 20-30 minutes per day, everyday. That is still how I do it after all these years when picking up a new skill.
If you like math, here are some good problems to try and code.
I used 7th edition Barron’s book, and that helped me out so much. It explains well, and the review questions are harder than the AP test itself probably.