Midterm Exam Info

Download Your Midterm

Exam Type	Download Links
Regular Seating Mon. 7-9PM	Regular Exam
OAE 50% extra time	OAE Exam
OAE 100% extra time	OAE Exam

Location

If you don't have a laptop you'd feel comfortable using, let us know AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, and we will get you set up with one.

Review Session

There will be a midterm review session this Friday from 1:30-2:30PM in Gates B1. The slides from the session can be found here, and the recording is available online.

Exam Strategies

How to prepare for the exam

• "Open notes" doesn't mean "don't study." We allow you to bring 10 double-sided pages of notes to the exam since we don't expect you to memorize every single function and small detail that we have covered in the class. However, creating original material for your 10 pages of notes (rather than just printing out existing programs/notes you already took) helps you study for the exam. Avoid assuming that having notes means you don't need to prepare! There isn’t enough time during the exam to learn the material on the spot or to search through your notes for the material you need to solve a problem. To do well, you must be able to work through problems efficiently without relying too heavily on your printed resources.
• Practice, practice, practice. A good way to study for the programming problems is to take a problem (lecture example, section example, or sample exam problem) and write out your solution under test-like conditions. This is much more valuable than passivily reading the problem and its solution. When only looking over solutions, it is too easy to conclude, “Ah yes, I would have done that," and then to find yourself adrift during the real exam when there is no provided solution to guide you!
• Get your questions answered. If there is a concept that you’re a bit fuzzy on, if you’d like to check your answer to a particular exercise, or if you're wondering why a solution is written a particular way, you should get those questions answered before the exam. Swing by the LaIR, come to office hours, or send an email, and we’re happy to help.

How to take the exam

• Scan the entire exam first. Quickly peruse all questions before starting on any one. This way, you can sketch out how to allocate your time across questions based on concepts covered and point values.
• Spend your time wisely. There are only a handful of questions, and each is worth a significant amount. Don’t get stuck on one particular problem. There is plenty of opportunity for partial credit, so it’s better to make good efforts on all of the problems rather than perfect one answer and leave others untouched.
• Style and decomposition are secondary to correctness. Unlike the assignments in which we hold you to high standards in all areas, on the exam we will not be grading you on style.
• Download the exam ahead of time. The exam will be posted Sunday night. Download the encrypted exam before you come to the midterm so that you are ready to go when the test starts.
• Prepare your laptop. We will have outlets available, but you may prefer a seat with more space. Come with a laptop that has enough battery for 2 hours (unless the exam is longer).

Resources

We will be posting practice midterms and more extensive materials on this page as they become available to help you prepare for the midterm.

The official pracice midterm exam is now posted and can be found here. This exam has been written in parallel with the actual midterm and is meant to give you a conception of the length of the real exam, as well the potential breadth of topics being covered. Of course, this is not the real exam and the topics that are covered and the depth to which they are covered may vary between the practice exam and the real exam. We recommend setting aside a 2-hour block of time to sit down and complete the practice exam under realistic exam conditions. We will post solutions to the practice exam over the weekend.

We are also providing a partial sample Bluebook exam from last quarter's offering of CS106AP here. The password is endgame. Note that this is not a full-length exam; we are providing this so that you can check that you are able to download and open up exam files successfully using BlueBook, as well as practice writing code in the application.

We will provide a printed-out copy of the Exam Reference Sheet at the exam – you do not need to print it out on your own, and it does not count toward your 10 pages of notes.

Finally, we are providing some extra practice problems taken from midterms given in previous versions of this class. Note that the curriculum and order in which topis have been covered is different this quarter as compared to previous quarters, so the extra practice problems may not accurately reflect the content we will be testing you on in the midterm. That being said, they are still valuable if you want to get extra practice.