Hey there everyone. Merry Christmas. I just thought I'd ask for some information on AP Computer Science seeing as my school does not offer it but one is allowed to take the exam without taking the class and I may self-teach ( I wouldn't take the exam until Spring of 2011 as I'd have to learn everything in a very small amount of time). Basically, what does the exam cover? What does a class used to prepare for the exam focus on? How is the exam split up? What are all the concepts that I'd need to know for the exam? Lastly, do you think it is practical to try and self-teach in preparation for such an exam? PS: My school barely has any computer science at all. We lost computer science 2 due to lack of interest and barely have enough people a year for computer science 1 which could be taken Sophomore and up.

Have you checked the official description? Here it is for Computer science A: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compscia.html

The exam isn't too hard. I didn't take it, but I had planned on it. It turns out my school didn't do the necessary paperwork on time to order the exams and didn't tell me until it was too late.

It covers what pretty much what I would expect someone would learn after one semester of an introductory Java course. If you have enough experience with Java, I don't think you'd need to spend a lot of time studying.

If you have programming background and can take it, I'd really recommend doing it. The worst that can happen is that you pay for the test but don't score high enough to get college credit. The best is that you get an edge in college and start a class or two ahead, and that's a bigger deal (in my opinion) than it seems: it means more time for upper-level coursework, which is both more interesting and more important.

Oh, it's in Java? I didn't know that. It seems then that it's not in my interest to take it as I'm not familiar in Java. I'm not sure if understanding c++ at all will help but I really don't understand Java too well and have most experience with c++.

Quote: Original post by Fuji
Oh, it's in Java? I didn't know that. It seems then that it's not in my interest to take it as I'm not familiar in Java. I'm not sure if understanding c++ at all will help but I really don't understand Java too well and have most experience with c++.

If you are fairly competent with C++, you can be up to speed in Java in a couple of weeks - less if dedicated. I won a small web development contract some years back, realised at the last minute that the requirements document specified Java, and taught myself as I went along [smile]

Almost every university computer science program teaches the first couple of introductory courses in Java these days, so whether or not you score well on the exam, you will be ahead of the curve if you learn Java.

Quote: Original post by Fuji
Oh, it's in Java? ... I'm not sure if understanding c++ at all will help but I really don't understand Java too well and have most experience with c++.

If you can learn one language you can learn another. Truth be told, you're going to have to learn several computer languages anyway. Get used to it.

In that case, I DO have a $45 gift card for Barnes and Nobel. Any books you can recommend that cover Java? I do have JCreator set up on my computer and I have dealt with C# and Java a little in the past. Either way, anything that strengthens my programming ability is something I am willing to consider.

I'd say go for it. You'll need to know the material sooner or later.

I don't know if this will interest you, but I personally learned Java by participating each year of high school in a competition at a nearby university using Robocode. I had a lot of fun developing AI for the robots, and I just picked up Java naturally as I went on using online materials. Robocode's just a very nice learning environment; you can get a lot of interesting results without too much effort, but to get the best results could take a month or more of work.

I think the AP board made a new policy this year that students aren't allowed to take an AP exam if one hasn't taken the course. This is because in previous years, students who didn't take the course usually performed worse as a whole and thus raised the curve on the tests.

The guy above is wrong, according to the College Board website... support

I took Comp Sci A in high school, with no knowledge of Java besides what I learned while prepping. Java is really quite similar syntactically to C++, and syntax is what's most important on A, or at least that's my opinion of the test (which is low, I finished in like 20 minutes and had to sit for 3 hours).

I will also mention, however, that even though I got a 5, it didn't get me out of any college courses. My college, and from what I understand a lot of colleges, want the AB test, which focuses more on data structures. I didn't take that one, but a friend of mine without a Java background did and he did quite well. Course, he's brilliant, so it has to do with how good you think you are.

I did most of my prep from this website: http://javabat.com/ . I found it really quite helpful, and it was pretty representative of the sorts of things I saw on the test (just not ALL of it, for instance there's no OOP).

Related, I'm taking APCS this year.

Is it true that the AB exam was dropped? The A exam is completely useless. Am I screwed?