<p>I am wondering what is the best book to use to study for the exam. I searched around and couldn't find it (or atleast found too many conflicting opinions), so any help would be helpful.</p>
<p>Are you meaning by a prep book? I would think Kaplan is the best but see I never took this subject.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input, it would be very helpful if someone who has taken the class could give me some guidance.</p>
<p>I haven’t taken the class. But I’ve been learning programming ever since 7th grade and now I’m pretty good at it. And I didn’t learn from reading books. I just used an IDE and started programming in it. As time went on I knew basically everything. But thats just me. I’m going to take the class this year though.</p>
<p>@Jorghi: Here’s the obligatory smiley face from someone who approves :D</p>
<p>Now for the obligatory make-sure-that-they-don’t-stray-off-course-and-think-AP-compsci-teaches-people-to-program portion of our program, here’s a small brain teaser (this might not fit well contextually as most algorithmic problems are in essence brain teasers) to whet your appetite in preparation for the immense snooze-fest that is the AP curriculum:</p>
<p>Write a method sigma(n,b) that returns the sum of all multiples of b less than or equal to n so that sigma(10,2) = 2+4+6+8+10 = 30</p>
<p>Condition: Must be able to correctly compute sigma(100000000,11) within one second.</p>
<p>wait i have not taken the course yet so i dont know what that is or why u asked me that, but does anyone know a solid review book? that is really all i am asking.</p>
<p>Barron’s AP Computer Science A prep book is excellent. I had a sub-par teacher and only used that book to study for the exam and I managed a 5. :)</p>
<p>Barron’s is gold. If you use all the multiple choice, it will more than prepare you for that portion of the test. Use past FR’s for that part of the test; they’re the best you can find.</p>
<p>i went with 5 steps to a five; i read reviews saying barrons tests were just way too hard and that it was practically a CS textbook. five steps to a five looks a lot more easy to follow and direct in its lessons. The tests are also supposed to be solid. I guess this holds true for barrons for any AP book: they tend to write a bit too much and almost treat you like you haven’t had the course.</p>
<p>Barron’s tests are considerably trickier (and so harder) than the AP exam. But it is usually considered the best. I had it, but only used it for a few practice problems, so I can’t really say much. But the material seemed sufficient and thorough - especially the Gridworld portion.</p>
<p>Get Barrons. Im using that for next year, and ive started early, and its great!</p>
<p>U shuld buy the AB edition. It contains the identical stuff in the A book, it has lots of extras so u learn alot more, and its cheaper too. I wish i bought the AB edition actually.</p>
<p>Since my high school didn’t offer APCS A, I took it from [HSCompSci</a> Online Computer Science for High School Students](<a href=“http://www.hscompsci.com%5DHSCompSci”>http://www.hscompsci.com). Our instructor said that the Barron’s book is the best, but make sure to get the 2010 edition as earlier editions do not cover all of the A topics.</p>
<p>The AB was killed off last year, but most people forget that new concepts were put into the “A” exam. So basically the “A” exam is 20% more difficult than it was when the “AB” existed.</p>