Customer Reviews

Barron's AP Computer Science A with CD-ROM (Barron's AP Computer Science (W/CD))

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an AP Computer Science teacher, I've looked through many of these review books. I use them to get question ideas for assessments, and I also recommend them to my students.

The Barron's book is the most up-to-date one that I've come across. It covers all of the changes to the AP Comp Sci A exam since the AB class was dropped, including the List interface, two-dimensional arrays, and static variables. In addition, it has an excellent section on the current case study, GridWorld.

It's not a perfect book by any stretch. Some of the questions are unrealistic as AP questions, and my students have told me in the past the actual AP exam has been easier than the questions in this book (though that's not necessarily a bad thing, of course). In addition, I'm not impressed with its selection of free response questions. There aren't very many, and the ones that it has are not of the highest quality.

With those caveats, I still highly recommend this book for anyone preparing for the AP Computer Science exam. It's the best review book I've come across, and the only I've seen that is up-to-date.

I purchased this book to self-study for the Exam, and I feel that it helped very much. The information was presented well and the 30-question quizzes at the end of each chapter worked well as progress-tracking tools. The multiple choice questions in the practice exams at the end of the book felt harder than the ones on the AP Test, but I really can't complain about that. However, the free responses were much easier than the ones on the AP Test; if you are looking to practice those, I would suggest simply attempting some of the old AP free responses on College Board.

If you have a good amount of programming experience with an object-oriented language (C++ for instance), this is a great book to use for self-study and it can be done comfortably in the span of about two weeks. Even if you already know Java, this book can help you get a sense of what the AP Test questions would be like and allows you to focus on the topics covered on the Exam. If you don't know how to program already or have very rudimentary knowledge of OOP, get this book far prior to taking the AP Test; as good a book it is, the subject matter would take a while for someone with no backing to learn.

Overall, a great purchase, and I would recommend it and any of Barron's other AP guides for AP study material. Shipping was very fast as well; it came in one day, though this was with Prime trial on.

explains topics well, but regarding the searching and sorting algorithms, i wish they had provided some more coding examples though. However, I thought that it prepared my pretty well for the exam. I like how they give sample free-response answers for each practice tests, as well as tests after every chapter.

I used this book to prepare for the AP CS test, and it was very helpful. It contained useful, easy to understand information on all the topics on the AP test. The practice exams it contained were good preparation for the real test.

The fifth updated edition of Barron's AP Computer Science A offers the latest review and practice tests, has been updated to reflect the College Board's current Level A syllabus, and offers three full-length AP practice exams with all questions answered and explained. A CD-ROM explains the exams and provides two addition practices including a scoring chart.

I read every chapter of this book in the two weeks leading up to the AP exam. I didn't do many of the practice questions, but just reading the chapters was review enough. This book really helped me get a 5.

This book was helpful in prepping for the AP Comuter Science exam. The accompanying CD with practice tests were extremely helpful in preparing for the format of the questions and content for responses.

My daughter used it to study for the AP Computer Science test and she passed it and got AP credit for the course. I guess that is a good enough reason to endorse it.

I found that after taking the exam without taking the AP CS course at my school, I knew more than the people that actually took the course. In addition, I only reviewed for about two weeks before the exam. I did already have 4 years worth of C# experience however, so classes, methods, etc. were not new to me.