AP Computer Science A | Study Session

Get prepared for the AP Computer Science A exam! I'll let you know what to expect and go through some example questions from the official 2021 College Board AP Comp Sci exam guide. Should be a good supplement to the rest of your studying!

I'll explain what you need to focus on, give you tips for test day, and work through some sample questions with you. This study guide should also be beneficial for any beginner Java programmer, even if you're not taking the AP Comp Sci test.

0:09 What to expect on the AP Comp Sci Test
2:24 Example multiple choice questions
13:55 Example free response question
18:45 Study by working on a video game

The AP Computer Science test is coming up for all you high school students in the US. But don't worry, I’m gonna help you prepare by giving you the secret, never-before-seen source of all answers on the test that no student has ever seen before. That's right, I have the official AP Computer Science A course and exam description pdf from the Advanced Placement website.

And as someone who has taken this test, I should be well equipped to let you know what to expect, give you some tips, and I'll even embarrass myself by going through some example questions with you.

So the first thing you should know is: what's on the test. And here it is [pg. 188], all the topics and what percentage of multiple choice questions come from each topic. And the first thing that should jump out at you is *bam* 17.5% on "if statements", and then *bam* 22.5% on iteration. And you know what else I see: 15% on Arrays, 7.5% on ArrayList, and 10% on 2D Arrays. And you can bet you're going to be looping over all of these arrays using iteration, so:

Loops and arrays, guys. Loops and arrays.

And let's look at the breakdown of the free response questions, too. As you can see it's 4 questions, all equally weighted, but 2 of them are about arrays!

Loops and Arrays.

Let me really nail this point home. I've distilled all these topics into 3 giant categories, so you can see what you really need to study.

Basics: variables, if/else, methods (total 22%)
Primitive Types 5%
Boolean Expressions and if Statements 17.5%
Free Response: Methods and Control Structures 12.5%
Loops and Arrays (total 55%)
Iteration 22.5%
Array 15%
ArrayList 7.5%
2D Array 10%
Recursion 7.5%
Free Response: Array/ArrayList 12.5%
Free Response: 2D Array 12.5%
Object Oriented Programming (total 23%)
Using Objects 7.5%
Writing Classes 7.5%
Inheritance 10%
Free Response: Class 12.5%

The basics. You need to know your common data types: "int" for whole numbers, "double" for decimal numbers, "boolean" for true or false, and Strings. "if” statements: You really shouldn't pass this test if you aren't comfortable with if statements, so hopefully you're there already.

Remember single equal sign for assignment, double equal sign for comparisons. All the AND, OR, LESS THAN stuff. Make sure you know about MODULO, they'll throw that at you at least once.

They'll also hit you with some stupid gotcha's, especially around if statements, so just be sure to read the questions carefully. For some reason they're kinda big on understanding the order of operations, so spend some time reviewing that. Like what is executed first, addition or multiplication? AND or OR? Even though in the real world we use parentheses in any situation that’s even slightly ambiguous, so I don’t know why they do this to you.

And for methods, you need to know how to use parameters, and definitely return statements. Don't forget in your method header you need to put the data type of the returned value.

Loops and lists. That's what this test is all about. They don't want to give you any college credit if you don't understand loops and arrays. So your classic for-loop, your while loop, your nested loops. You need to be able to read and write these, and you need to be able to step through them. Either in your mind, or on some scrap paper. Arrays start at 0.

They'll throw some string manipulation at you, too, using loops. So know how substring() works, and concatenation. You'll probably see random() used in one of these loop questions.

Recursion is kinda the odd ball here, but it should have been the last subject you covered in class so hopefully it's fresh in your mind. I put it in this group because recursion is just a fancy way of doing loop, by having a method call itself.

And then we have the object oriented topics.

#programming #java

[s_e_t_z]

I have come to this channel a million times over for so many different reasons yet it’s always useful. This dude taught me python and Java now.

[alexm]

You sir, are one of the most underrated youtubers ever!

[lucas]

Hey man, keep creating python videos (mainly with games), you inspire me to keep studying, please don't stop!

[suiryusan]

Your gaming vids are pretty advanced and well taught, Thank you & keep making more

[etzilli]

Thank you for making this video. It's very helpful.

[somepublic]

Criminnally underrated content😑
Great video as always👍

[rubyrails]

I really like your content, very usefull, keep it up ! +1 sub ;)

[kasoy]

Can you make Warzone Idle bot? (auto-join match, press some keys)

[cosmilitebar]

Good video. I got aware of your channel from that opencv object detection tutorial, which helped me a lot. Are you planning on doing something like that but with neural networks? Casscade classifiers are great but they do have their limits when you want to detect more complicated stuff (used it for a minecraft bot to detect chickens - worked great...but i wanted to use it for detecting more things like aircraft in gtaV or the street for an auto drive bot, which does not work so well, because the model cant figure out how something looks from different angles.)

Also i found a quite simple solution to quickly take screenshots. Its called "screengear" and worked at near game fps for getting dectection images.

[gv]

I don't think making the exam focus so much on Java was a great idea. Great video though!

[jxkc.]

This exam looks so easy! Really wish this was the exams I was sitting haha

[Victor-tldk]

I think the AP comp science exam is such a pointless exam. It goes in the minutia like you said. Colleges also tend not to accept it unless the person taking it gets a 5.