<p>I'm taking Comp Sci AB now and my teacher never teaches us, seriously. Both A and AB have the class at the same time, and she just barely teaches A and tells AB to read a chapter from the book every once in a while. It seems like I'll have 1.5 hrs, every other school-day to self study for the year. However, I have taken a Java class 2 years ago, and have experience with programming. I also don't want to switch into the A class b/c the stuff is ridiculously easy. She was teaching everyone what a megabyte is the first class. Do you think I'll have trouble with the ap test? I want at least a 4.</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>These considerations apply to all AP tests:</p>
<p>1) the tests are designed to be material learned in one year (with the exception of languages, to an extent)</p>
<p>For computer science that means the test tends to be pretty easy for people with programming expierience, since a lot of test takers have none before they take the class and the test is (more or less) curved to fit to the test-takers.</p>
<p>2) as with any other AP the key to passing the test (and getting a good grade) is to "Work the test", so get a test prep book and use Amazon.com to find the best one (I liked Be Prepared for Computer Science, it covers A and AB)</p>
<p>In sum: don't worry, just study; focus on algorithms if you know how to program because algorithms are essential to "real" programming that solves "real" problems, so to speak. Don't teach yourself to the test, but make sure you prepare for the test specifically a couple weeks before you take it in May.</p>
<p>two words: Princeton Review</p>
<p>My teacher was exactly the same! He didn't even know the AB stuff, so the people who wanted to do AB had to self-study. I was horrible at comp science, in fact, I hate that course all together. I was afraid that I was get a 1 or 2, but I ended up with a 4</p>
<p>Read and understand the AP Compsci Course Description:
<a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compsciab.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compsciab.html</a></p>
<p>Buy a review book (I recommend Barron's).</p>
<p>Go to apcentral and download the free response questions (they switched to Java in 2003 I think, so tests before then won't make much sense, but the algorithms are still worth studying).</p>
<p>Study.</p>
<p>Don't worry. I was in a similar situation, and got a very high score.</p>