Score Higher on AP Comp Sci P 2024: MCQ Tips from Students

Multiple Choice Questions

This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students are to demonstrate understanding of programming development and design and to understand the impact of different aspects of computing innovations
• 70% of Exam Score
• 70 questions
• 120 min, or 1 min 40 sec per question
• Question Types
  • MCQs – Single-Select
  • MCQs – Single-Select with Reading Passage
  • MCQs – Multi-Select with Two Answers

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💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high level things to know

• Read ANY code presented in the exam LINE BY LINE, CHARACTER BY CHARACTER. So many people have gotten coding questions wrong because they didn’t look through the code carefully.
• If you’re stuck on a question for some time, skip over it for now. You have at most 2 minutes to answer each question on a test. It may seem a reasonable amount, but you may stumble upon one question that racks your brain and steals your time.
• Don’t overthink! The CSP test is relatively less confusing than other AP exams.
• Don’t be afraid to draw on outside knowledge! If you’re a computer nerd who knows a lot about IP or DNS, use that info! Even cross-subject connections in topics like internet inequality or ethics could help you, even if you didn't learn 100% of it in your CS class.

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🤔 Before you Bubble

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start answering?

• Look for key terms that jump out to you (i.e digital divide, lossless, lossy, API, DNS). It can help you a lot to find these key terms so that you’ll know what the questions are asking you and what you need to respond to. Most questions on the exam are basically knowing your vocabulary.
• Cross out any answers that aren’t possible; most of the time this isn't immediately apparent, but remain patient if multiple answers still seem possible towards the end of a programming problem.

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✏️ Choosing an answer

• You can generally use the process of elimination to narrow down your answer choices to two options
• Example: What is the Internet Protocol (IP)?
  • A set of rules describing what behavior is acceptable on the
  • Internet
  • A law that says that the Internet is for everyone
  • A protocol that defines the structure of an Internet address and assigns a unique address to every device on the Internet
  • An agreement that sets a limit on the number of computers than can be on the Internet at any given time
• From the question above, you can eliminate A, B and D quickly.
• Refresh your vocab before, and when answering an internet problem, think about the practicality of it: like how is the digital divide consequential for some or the downsides of copyright law?
• For programming questions, take your time following each step. Keep track of variable values on scratch paper. Trace loops carefully, and make sure you understand what EACH function or line does IN ADVANCE.
• Keep all your work neat and organized; a jumble of 20 random numbers and changing values won't help you!

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🤓 Understanding the Reference Sheet

• It’s good to look over the reference sheet once or twice before taking the exam. Most of the code in the reference sheet looks intuitive, but it’s worth looking over it.
• Remember, CSP is NOT a language based course, the test will not be in python or java etc.. You might learn these in class, but all of the programming questions will be in pseudocode, so remember to see how familiar control structures work in the College Board language. Pay attention to the little nuances.
• Refresh yourself on the “Robot” language - similar to Karel; it’s pretty straightforward, but careful not to get caught up in any fallacies.
• Remember, in the college board pseudocode, list indexes start at 1, not 0!