[gibson.nathan]

today i took the apcs exam. it wasnt as bad as i expected, but i had pretty low hopes to begin with. my process for basically all the multiple choice was to try to eliminate what i could, and then take a pick from the remaining answer choices. for the open response i attempted pretty much everything, but there were parts where i knew that i wasnt on point, ex: gridworld. i figured attempts were better than nothing. anyways, to people who have already taken it...

how hard is it to get a three? if i get less im going to feel like a failure. when do you get your results? is it going to blow your chances at the college you sent your result to if you make a bad grade? i cant wait to get my results. although i didnt study hardly at all for it, i felt like i did the best possible with no preperation. hoping that will get me a passing grade.

[calvinthedestroyer]

What is an apcs exam?
Advanced Placement Computer Science?

or

American Political Crisis Support?

What types of questions did you think were hard on that exam?
Where do you feel you had the most trouble answering questions?

[gibson.nathan]

lol. i cant tell if you are joking about the acronym confusion, but i was def talking about the ap computer science exam. i dont think im exactly at liberty to discuss any problems in specifics, they made you sign like 5 times saying that you wouldnt discuss the test afterwards. as far as the most difficult part....im not really sure, i mean the questions are so tricky that you can never really know if you 100% got it. thats why i just went with the guessing route. usually when i try to pinpoint an answer exactly i get it wrong, but if i just try to go with gut instinct i am better off. hope i dont do bad and the college i sent the results to think that i am retarded.

[erik.price]

It is pretty hard to get anything lower than a 3, assuming you have the slightest idea what the test is on.

Quote

5: 60-80
4: 44-59
3: 33-43
2: 25-32
1: 0-24

A 3 can be less than half the multiple choice + less than half the open ended.

I took it today as well, and have to say that it wasn't too bad. About as hard as I thought it would be. But, we have to wait 48 from taking the test to discuss the free response, and apparently can never in our lives discuss the multiple choice

[calvinthedestroyer]

That's ok. I've seen a few places that make you sign away your sole before they let you see the test You will have to let us know how you did when you get the results back.

[erik.price]

We don't get the results back until the middle of July

[macosxnerd101]

@gibson.nathan: You might want to take a look at the grade distributions on Wikipedia. Basically, you need to be in the upper 60th percentile to pass, and the upper ~20th percentile to get a 5.

I thought the exam was fairly easy today, with the GridWorld FRQ being the most involved.

This post has been edited by macosxnerd101: 04 May 2010 - 06:06 PM

[gibson.nathan]

thanks for the reassuring stats erik.price. it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be either. i wasnt ever sure if the multiple choice were trick questions, sometimes its hard to tell. what really suprised me is that the open response was actually some-what doable for me. hopefully they dont grade it too hard. there were only two people at my school that took it, and i know my friend was unprepared, so i kinda didnt care how i did...but know im so anxious to get my score back. cant wait for july.

lol. my counselor said that ap exams were like fort knox.

[W3bDev]

I took the AP CPU SCI exam back in 99-01, it was pretty difficult, but I still got a 3, so don't worry too much. Also, AP scores mean very little when you get to College, truly, they aren't as important as some counselors will say. My counselor said the same, but I didn't get much credit for it. Great for the experience though.

[gibson.nathan]

W3bDev, on 12 May 2010 - 08:55 AM, said:

I took the AP CPU SCI exam back in 99-01, it was pretty difficult, but I still got a 3, so don't worry too much. Also, AP scores mean very little when you get to College, truly, they aren't as important as some counselors will say. My counselor said the same, but I didn't get much credit for it. Great for the experience though.

yea i think thats where the most benefit really is. i mean, i dont really care about the college credit, as it wont be hard to pass college level classes in college if you did alright with them in high school. im just a little worries that if they send bad scores to the university im considering that it might look bad. im really glad that apcs is over though. im just going to start programming in my spare time. i have been watching alot of mit open courseware videos. maybe a year of hobby programming will prepare me for college cs.

[W3bDev]

Take your time, took me a while to decide what I really wanted to do. I've done a lot of different things in my IT career, some I thought I would enjoy, but really didn't. I got my CCNA/A+ several years back to find out later, I was ultimately very bored by the subject, and felt unchallenged. Go with what your gut tells you, not what others think. I wish I had done that earlier in my career. Hobby programming can help prepare you, especially if you take an advanced subject, tackle it, regardless of the difficulty (work through the problems when you reach them).

Good Luck man

P.S.: As far as the scores are concerned, unless you have already chosen a college, you usually have to manually submit those to the college you will be attending. So I wouldn't worry about them submitting bad scores.

This post has been edited by W3bDev: 13 May 2010 - 06:41 AM