I know a decent amount of programming and quite a bit about information technology in general (not meaning to brag), and I wanted to take AP Computer Science. However, it has come to me that I should self-study to make room for other courses in a tight schedule. In addition to this, I don’t want to take the intro-level computer science course in my school because it’s an absolute joke (literally just playing around with block programming and scratch; waste of so much time.)
Has anybody else tried it, and what are some good books that I should follow? I want to get nothing other than a 5 on the exam because IT is sort of my secondary focus in high school (with business being top priority).
Can’t say about self-study, although I suspect it wouldn’t be hard for someone with the interest and some background.
Just wanted to say that our school allows students to take AP CS as a first CS course, and many students do, although there is also a lower level CS course which is recommended. So if you would like to take the AP course, ask your GC if you can place directly into it.
@mathyone My guidance counselor is very stubborn, but I guess I could convince her to take the AP exam.
I just wanted to see if anybody here has any good suggestions on books to study from.
I’m assuming you want to take the Computer Science A exam, not Computer Science Principles. I took this as a class in school last year and got a 5 on the AP test.
The best way to study AP Computer Science is obviously to code, not just to study from books.
Some of the resources my teacher had us use were the java programing programs greenfoot (good for building basic games), bluej (good for the ap exam because you have to write every single bit of code out), and intelij (nicer software with more features but don’t use right away because it fills stuff in for you and can cause you to get lazy.)
Although not directly meant for the AP exam, both Greenfoot and BlueJ have books that you can get for free online as pdfs that have content you need to know for the AP exam. Go the the college board website to see what topics the AP test covers and use the books to study those topics. The blueJ book will probably be more helpful for this. (The two books are Introduction to programming with greenfoot and Blue Pelican Java) .
In addition we used the website codingbat a lot. This website has challenge questions for you to solve in java that are really helpful for the FRQ portion of the AP test. (Do a lot of these, not just the ones labeled AP).
One thing that’s annoying about the AP test is that its paper and pencil. So, although codings pretty much on the computer, you have to practice writing code out by hand which is weird. The way we practiced in my class was by writing the answers to the exercises in the Blue Pelican Java book out by hand.
Another thing to do is to go find the practice tests from college board and take those. Then correct them and figure out how to get all the points on the frqs and figure out where you made your mistakes so that you don’t make them the next time.
A final bit of advice is to take the Barron’s study guide with a grain of salt. My CS teacher said that it overcomplicates things and has really weird, specific questions that are way too hard.
Overall, I don’t think that a 5 is too hard to get for someone whos programming inclined. I would definitely make sure to look at what the collegeboard’s curriculum guide to see what topics are covered and to look at the test format and stuff. Other than that, good luck and sorry this post isn’t very well organized.
@snowfairy137 Thanks for the information, I’ll keep those in mind.