Hi There!

I'm Dan Schlegel, an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at SUNY Oswego

CS1 Exam Ground Rules and Preparation Tips

Ground Rules

  1. You are allowed to bring your lab binder to the exam. You may hole-punch and add any notes you wish to this notebook. You may not have any loose papers or additional notebooks / binders. Everything must be in this binder. If you missed a handout from class, be sure to grab it from Blackboard and add it to your binder.
  2. The TAs and the instructor will never talk about practice exams.
  3. In order to be allowed to take the exam you must have your student ID card with you and placed on your desk on the day of the exam.
  4. We will aim to begin the exam 5 minutes before class starts, and I will allow you to continue until 5 minutes after class ends, to give maximal time.

Preparation Tips

  1. Spend some time organizing your notebook.
  2. Complete the practice exam
    1. Work on your own to complete the practice exam. Simulate a real exam situation (1 hour, no electronic aides, no other people to help, …). The practice exam is slightly too long, so going just over an hour is OK.
    2. Type your code solutions into IntelliJ to confirm that they work as you expected. Fix them if they don’t!
    3. Make notes of areas you are unsure.
  3. Study your notes, focusing on the problem areas you identified in completing the practice exam. Perhaps spend more time organizing your notebook or rewriting notes in ways that will be more usable to you.
  4. Bring questions to a study session – either a CSA one or one you organize with friends in the class! TA hours and tutoring are also options.
  5. If you haven’t completed all of the assignments, keep working on them! They will help you on the exam and are a great way to study. If you have completed them, reviewing them is valuable.
  6. Hide away your first attempt at the practice exam and try it again.
  7. Keep studying and practicing until the practice exam is a complete breeze. Students who do the best often have done the practice exam 3-4 times.

Time spent preparing for the exam is directly correlated to the grade received. It is probably useful to decide you will spend some amount of time studying every day until the exam.