<p>We can look at the fail rates all day and try to decide if an exam is difficult, but have any of the people claiming AP Comp Sci is difficult actually taken the exam? Because I truly believe that it was one of my easiest exams, and the people who struggle on it simply struggle with programming in general. I think if you can pass the initial hurdle of learning basic programming skills, you should be able to grasp the material covered on the AP exam fairly easily.</p>
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<p>Anecdotal information is not going to help. If I post “Hey the test was easy peasy” It’s going to give you a false impression. </p>
<p>Roughly 80% of people pass the AP Calc with 3 or higher. Even better is that over 70% of all colleges give full credit if you get a 3 on the AP Calc test.</p>
<p>Ergo: The APCS A exam is NOT an easy test. I’d definitely recommend taking the practice tests in the Barron’s book, and scoring it. If you wipe out on the questions, make sure you hire a tutor or take a class. There are several online classes. Just do a search on google [ap</a> computer science online - Google Search](<a href=“ap computer science online - Google Search”>ap computer science online - Google Search)</p>
<p>Roughly 45% of the people taking the AP Comp Sci exam pass with a 4 or higher. Even worse is that less than 30% of colleges accept lower than a 4 on the APCS A exam.</p>
<p>How do you measure difficulty? I don’t know who Soothsayerr is, how much time she spent programming before she took the course, if she had parents that were software engineers etc. So Soothsayerr saying “It’s my easiest exam” is irrelevant. I can find dozens of people who say AP Biology was the easiest, or AP World History was.</p>
<p>BTW, here’s a post of someone who took a bunch of AP Exams and got a “1” score on the APCS A exam <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/807661-1-ap-computer-science-exam-can-i-still-get.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/807661-1-ap-computer-science-exam-can-i-still-get.html</a></p>
<p>I want to self study computer science, what good textbooks are there?</p>
<p>@xxsteelxx I recommend Barron’s. I pretty much taught myself everything last year since my teacher didn’t teach and I got a 5.</p>
<p>^Thanks, I will look into barron’s (I’ve read great reviews on Amazon too) , however, did you use a textbook as well?</p>
<p>In class we used the Java Concepts book. I wouldn’t say that I really read it, I would mostly just look at the examples to understand the concepts that I needed to know to complete the labs I had been assigned. If you have some basic knowledge about Java, then you would most likely be fine without the textbook, but if you have no experience, then it might be helpful.</p>
<p>Litvin’s Be Prepared for the AP Computer Science Exam in Java is good. Barron’s is very good but also somewhat discouraging – I got 5-10 wrong on Barron’s on each individual section in the short review chapters but then I took the released 2009 exam as practice and scored a 39/40 with 1 careless error >.<</p>
<p>Anyway, Litvin’s book is much easier and is fairly clear, and it should give a more accurate read on the test than the Barron’s book. But you learn more from taking the Barron’s tests I think :P</p>
<p>I have no programming experience. Complete newbie. I will look into Java Concepts, thanks totalcollaspe. </p>
<p>Now about the prep guides. . . Is it possible to learn the concepts from these books as well? I know these books are going to be AP orientanted so I dont know if I should look into these books. I say this because I just want to learn some programming, I’ll be going off to university next year, so I won’t be taking any more APs. I hope this clarifies my situation.</p>
<p>You may actually be fine mostly using Barron’s. I looked over my book and it pretty much starts with the very basics of programming. I took the AP CS class without any experience in programming in java, which is how the majority of the people probably are.</p>
<p>any ap exam is easy to self-study if you have the right resources. The only ones that might be difficult are the language exams.</p>
<p>I’ve read all the posts on this thread and I’ve come to the conclusion that half the people think it’s easy and half the people think it’s hard. So I figure, maybe if I cover ALL the specifics in my situation, I’ll get a good and consistent answer.</p>
<p>So, hello. I’m deciding whether to take AP Computer Science A online over the summer. It’s not offered at my school, so I have no idea how hard it is or what it is going to be like.</p>
<p>I’m taking the course primarily because I want a 6.0 added to my gpa, but also because I think programming is really cool, although I know nothing about it.
I’m pretty handy with computers, anything from writing an essay on Word to cleaning viruses.
I’m a freshmen going into my sophmore year.
I don’t really care if I get a 2 on the exam (I doubt I’ll get a 1).</p>
<p>WITH THIS IN MIND, do you guys think I’ll be able to handle the course online in around 3 months?</p>
<p>For people who have taken the AP Comp Sci A exam, I have taken a regular programming class (we dont have AP). In this course we did GW Basic, QBasic, HTML, Javascript, VB, C++ and C# but NOT Java. Is the syntax the only thing thats different from all these languages to Java or does the difficulty also change? Along with that, do you think I will be able to self study for the AP Comp Sci A exam and get a 5? Also, I found all the languages mentioned to be easy and I felt it came to me naturally (both parents do computer related jobs).</p>
<p>So just to clear things up, it seems as if Barrons is the best prep book for self-studying if you’re not using a textbook as well, right?</p>
<p>Haha, in my school there are kids concurrently taking Algebra 1 and computer Science A…</p>
<p>And I don’t think it would be easy to self study this.</p>
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<p>Yea, that’s what I used (without a textbook) and I got a 5.</p>
<p>@thejhill - if you are shooting for at least a 2, I’d say you’ll be fine with the summer course. If you are shooting for a 5, and have no programming experience, then it would probably be a little difficult.</p>
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<p>C++ and java are pretty similar in syntax. I wouldn’t say that Java as a language is more difficult than C++ or C#, at least to the extent you need to know it for the AP exam. Also, I think you could self study AP Comp Sci and get a 5.</p>
<p>I took Comp Sci A after an online course through FLVS. One of the easiest 5’s of my life.</p>
<p>@thejhill programming will come easily to you if you’re good at logic but it’s going to be a lot more difficult handling the entire course in three months without any background programming experience.</p>
<p>Hey, I’m wondering if anyone would be able to tell me how much my past experience would help in APCS A next year. This semester I took Java 1 and was able to understand it quite clearly, and this summer I’m actually going to a Java summer camp (I know, I’m cool -.-) anyway, would this prior knowledge help me much next year?</p>
<p>I too want to self-study ap comp. sci. - don’t know much about it yet, but I did start looking at MIT ocw 6.00 and started doing programming in python. If I learn one language like python, will it be easy for me to just go into java for the ap? </p>
<p>Also, any advice about the exam itself?</p>
<p>Thanks!!!</p>
<p>The AP computer science course, as it is now, is basically a course on Java. If you know how to write Java code, at least 70% of the material you know already, and the other 30% will be very easy for you to pick up.</p>
<p>And your first programming language is always the hardest to learn; if you learn python, it won’t be that hard to change over to Java. Just do make sure that you work through a lot of actual coding if you’re starting with another language; it’s very easy to accidentally slip into the syntax of the language you know better.</p>