Quote: Original post by MAEnthoven
Absolutely. I took AP Comp Sci and got a 5 with EASE.

Here's the deal: it's the cheapest college credit you'll ever get. $86 might cost a lot now, but most colleges will let you use it as a credit, which saves you well over a thousand dollars.

Quote: If you have a solid programming background, sitting through the introductory programming courses is a waste of both your time and the professor's time/patience.

these two cover it pretty much perfectly. You will save yourself a lot of time by testing out of intro courses that won't teach you anything and you will save a lot of money. You can use the semester you'll end up saving to pick up a minor, work on building your portfolio, or just getting done with college sooner. Maybe take a semester off to intern.

Yeah definitely take all the Math and Physics AP exams you can before college otherwise plan on having no life trying to cram all the required courses/electives, etc in 4 busy years.
The AP Comp Sci exams are a bit trickier, since there seems to be a larger variation in each schools intro programming courses.
For example Berkeley uses Scheme, MIT Python now, so I don't know how much that will help you there?
And the thing with challenging a course is the instructor will usually choose the hardest problems on an exam to test you with so you better know your stuff inside/out!
I would check out some previous finals for some introductory programming courses at a school like MIT or Stanford and if they seem easy to you then you probably have nothing to worry about.