*** Official AP Computer Science A Thread 2013-2014 ***

<p>Yo, you really shouldn’t be posting the solutions to the free response makeup tests. You’re really never supposed to discuss them. CollegeBoard sometimes reuses these questions for future AP tests.</p>

<p>@bedussy‌ </p>

<p>Yeah, you’re right. I have realized that now but I can’t edit my posts anymore. If a moderator wants to delete my posts with free response answers, that’s all good with me.</p>

<p>I got 4 OMG I SUCK HARD hahahah… </p>

<p>I still get credit but wow 4.</p>

<p>Haha I got a 1. I passed everything else. I suck</p>

<p>Woo a 5! Quite happy considering I had no prior experience and this was the first year my school offered the class.</p>

<p>5 on the late exam!</p>

<p>I got a 3… I must have bombed the multiple choice because I did the free response questions with plenty of time to spare. Will a 3 screw me when applying to good colleges?</p>

<p>OMG GOT A 5</p>

<p>@frodgers1207 It all depends on what you mean by “screw me”. I can’t think of a scenario where getting a bad APCS exam score would harm your chances for admission. Some colleges won’t accept a 3 for credit/placement; others will — but that’s after you’ve been admitted. You’ll have to check with the colleges you’re interested in to see what scores they accept.</p>

<p>I got a 4.</p>

<p>I felt like a lot of the multiple choice questions were pretty hard and I blanked out on the gridworld question. Did anyone else feel this way?</p>

<p>I got a 4 as well even though I believe I deserved a five. I know I aced the extended response, so I’m thinking about getting my MC re-scored. I worked too hard to get a four.</p>

<p>Anybody get a 5 that self studied (or if ur teacher didn’t teach u anything :P) with little prior programming knowledge that could give advice on how you studied for the exam? And anybody in general have resources they could share? Other than the Barron’s of course. Have anyone tried the amplify mooc apcs course? Ty!</p>

<p>@tagi1998 I would recommend Barrons for a general overview of the course material. I have 4+ years experience with Java, but the AP test covers a limited subset of the language… I used it just to figure out what I should be focusing on. </p>

<p>In terms of practice tests, I found the Barrons book to be incredibly useful for practicing for the FRQs. The FRQs in the book and the FRQs on the test were very close in terms of rigor.</p>

<p>As for the MC, I found the Barrons book to be very far off of the actual exam. As many in this thread will note, completing the MC in a Barrons practice test took about half of the alloted time, whereas it was extremely painful and tedious on the real test. As somebody with many years of programming experience (with not just Java), there is nowhere near as much code analysis in the day-to-day life of a programmer. I’d recommend either studying code analysis in detail, or buying a second review book (perhaps look at old practice tests) before tackling the MC. Barrons was good for everything except the MC.</p>

<p>@tagi1998 I (practically) did a self-study. It was an online course where it was just reading the textbook and complete assingments once a month. For the AP Exam prep I used Barrons and Be Prepared for the APCS Exam in Java.</p>

<p>@bloodythunder‌ do you think the two books are enough to learning the materials for the exam w/o prior experience or should I get a textbook of some sort?</p>

<p>@tagi1998 The textbook I used was 10x harder to understand and filled with material that isn’t clearly marked that you don’t need for the exam. I didn’t like it particularly much and learned mostly from doing the programming assignments, not really reading the textbook. Stay with the review books. Didn’t have any real programming experience besides “hello world” before starting the class.</p>

<p>@bloodythunder‌ oh ok thank you. I hope the prep books are enough. Oh and do you know if the 5th edition of “Be Prepared for APCS Exam in Java” is sufficient for the 2014-2015 ap exam because the newest edition(6th) is out of stock in amazon. or would it be better to wait for it to be in stock?</p>

<p>@tagi1998 It should be fine if you don’t want to wait, but the 6th edition won’t have the gridworld questions in it giving it a more relevant practice questions. I’d wait though just in case there are other changes that I’m not aware of.</p>

<p>@bloodythunder‌ oh ok thanks. hopefully amazon will restock fast</p>