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 notes to the exam. They must be nicely organized (I suggest within your lab binder). Shuffling through lots of papers is bad, avoid it! Your notes can contain anything you think may be useful, within reason and academic integrity policies. Of note, you may NOT bring materials, including exams, from previous semesters of this course.
  2. The TAs and the instructor will only talk to you about individual questions on the practice exam, and only if you come to them having already attempted the question. An answer key will not be provided.
  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. Leave your electronic devices in your bag during the entirety of the exam.
  5. 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 reviewing and organizing your notes
    1. Review your notes, the assignments (and your solutions to them), along with the lab manual.
    2. Think about what you’ll want to be able to access quickly. This might include definitions, annotated examples, formal specifications, mini-manuals for NPW/MMW, etc…
    3. Think about examples you might wish to tailor from.
  2. Complete the practice exam
    1. Work on your own to complete the practice exam. Simulate a real exam situation (1 hour, use your notes, 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 note of areas you are unsure.
  3. Study your notes, focusing on the problem areas you identified in completing the practice exam. Perhaps spend time rewriting or reorganizing your 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. Your goal should be to limit or eliminate dependence on your notes for things we do a lot like declaring variables, and for most of the syntax. Students who do the best often have done the practice exam 3-4 times and have completed all of their assignments.

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.