<p>Yes, in my class we will be finishing the case study by next week</p>
<p>We started doing case studies for GridWorld but my class still doesn’t know how to use it. We have no idea what it is.</p>
<p>Does anyone recommend a good prep book?</p>
<p>^I’ve heard that Barron’s is good.</p>
<p>For people who have taken the APCSA exam, is it hard to get a 4 or 5? I took it just for fun but I would still like to get some credit for it. I went in knowing pretty much nothing about programming, so would it be hard for me to do well on the exam? I guess I would even be fine with a 3.</p>
<p>It depends on how your teacher teaches. My class was taught to teach is java, not to prepare us for the ap exam. We did no sort of code analysis or handwriting code to practice until 2 weeks before the exam. Overall the test wasn’t that hard though. I got 3 5’s and 2 4’s on practice exams I took, so I would have been on the barrier on an average day but when I actually took it I was terribly I’ll and had a hard time focusing and thinking. </p>
<p>Tl;dr if you understand how to code and what specific lines of code do and practice on your own, you should be perfectly fine</p>
<p>That helps me a lot. Thanks. I’ll probably pick up a book and take a couple of practice exams like you did.
Were your practice exams released exams or from a book? If they were from a book would you say they were comparable to the actual exam?</p>
<p>I suggest everyone who is self-studying APCS to make sure they understand the following advanced topics:</p>
<ul>
<li>the key words super/this and when to use them.</li>
<li>static vs. non-static fields, methods, and classes.</li>
<li>the difference between the comparable interface & comporator interface.</li>
<li>the relationship between the iterator interace and iterable interface.</li>
<li>the relationship between compareTo() and equals().</li>
<li>the relationship between equals() and hashCode().</li>
<li>The relationship between iterators and foreach() loops. </li>
<li>Memory (i.e. Objects are always stored in the heap!)</li>
</ul>
<p>These are some of the things that my teacher never explained well… I’m a CS student who’s willing to help if someone self-studying ever has any conceptual CS questions… PM me.</p>
<p>The exams I took were released exams that my teacher gave out in class, he put out 7 tests and said take them if you want if not I don’t care. </p>
<p>Also the multiple choice was more analyzing code and spotting mistakes than actually knowing all the terminology and such, being able to code efficiently is the most important thing to success.</p>
<p>It looks like I have a lot of studying to do. I only know a couple of topics Orbit196 mentioned and I haven’t even heard of the others.
It’s comforting to know that terminology isn’t a majority of the test. We have an intro class at my school that I skipped so I missed a lot of that.</p>
<p>I took the APCS A exam last year and scored a 5. I did take the class and did well but after my class ended in January I only did a night before review. I feel one thing that helped me was to do really well on the FRQ’s. Make sure you know all your basic code. With simple code you can solve very complex problems. On last year’s exam I think the only complex function needed was knowing how to access a 3 dimensional array. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW GRIDWORLD. It is only one FRQ but it is usually an easy problem. I personally feel the MC’s are usually harder but just try to get a ~70% and a good FRQ section will get you a 5.</p>
<p>Hey guys, for those of you self studying I found this</p>
<p>[Introduction</a> to Computer Science using Java](<a href=“http://chortle.ccsu.edu/java5/index.html]Introduction”>Introduction to Computer Science using Java)</p>
<p>Not sure how accurate it is, just flipped through a lesson and thought it was decent to throw up here. Seems like it should do the job. Has everything but GridWorld it looks like.</p>
<p>As for GridWorld, we haven’t touched that yet, we are doing SuperClass programs. Feel like we are REALLY behind, may have to start studying early. </p>
<p>We haven’t talked about the AP exam at all…whats on it and what the form of it is etc, he said “I assume nobody is taking it” …</p>
<p>What are you guys doing in your classes right now?
I live in Washington, pretty close to the Microsoft HQ, so we have Microsoft employees teaching the class.
It’s pretty awesome. We have raffles every now and then, where they give away free stuff from Microsoft. If you get an A on your test, you get a raffle ticket.
Last week, someone got a free Windows phone.</p>
<p>Though I have a feeling that we’re learning way more material than we actually need for the exam.</p>
<p>nice find @gnastygnorc
It looks really helpful</p>
<p>Damn Propinquity I cannot express my jealousy, I wish I was taught by them. </p>
<p>We are doing superclasses, just got done with arrays.</p>
<p>Oh yeah also, question for you guys, does AP Comp Sci Barrons 5th edition…differ at all from the 6th too much? I bought the 5th edition for $3…figured it was only one edition off and cheap as dirt.</p>
<p>ok, I am taking an OOP" Honors" class this yr, but my teacher is not the best of teachers,(doesn’t really teach us anything in class, assigns us programs to do, but she doesn’t even collect some of them. I find myself googling necessary methods and self studying important concepts). Would APCS be manageable with this kind of teaching, or is it better to self study. idk about half the concepts mentioned on this thread, even though we are supposed to have learned them by now.</p>
<p>Self study def</p>
<p>Anyone know a good place to find a bunch of AP Comp Sci MC questions? I bought a used Barrons book and the guy before me wrote on all the questions :c.</p>
<p>yoyo, anyone self study this before and get a 5?</p>
<p>i will start studying now, wondering if it’s too late ;)</p>
<p>I have to start studying for this at the beginning of March, my teacher is not preparing us at all. Just need to leave February open to study for the SAT that I take the beginning of March.</p>
<p>I already have a fairly decent understanding of programming, but my school doesn’t offer AP CS, meaning I have to take the test without the class (fine by me, no required homework). I want to take the AP test this year, but need a good site to go to for intermediate training in Java. Something like the HTML lessons on davesite.com, but for Java.</p>