Final Exam

Motivation

For the final exam, we use a traditional-format comprehensive exam to evaluate your achievement of the learning goals for the CS106A course.

Logistics

  • The exam is Saturday August 16th 7-10pm.
  • The exam will be in Hewlett 200.
    • Students with special circumstances (CGOE, OAE, athletic conflicts) will receive an email from Head TA Iddah with your arrangements.
  • You will write your answers directly on the paper exam.
  • The exam is closed-book and closed-device.
    • We will provide a reference sheet to jog your memory about the basic dictionary, file, class, string functions, etc.
    • You also may bring your own prepared notesheet.
      • The notesheet is one sheet of letter-size paper (8-1/2" x 11") where you have written/printed/drawn on both sides with whatever information you would like to have handy during the exam.

Coverage, practice materials

  • Coverage. The exam scope is all material covered this quarter. This means all content up through and including Lecture 17, Section 6, and Assignment 5. The exam will be weighted towards the latter half of the class (content after the midterm).
  • Format. Most questions will ask you to write a function or short passage of code that accomplishes a particular task. Other questions may ask you to read a provided passage of code and analyze or reason about its behavior. There may also be short answer questions to answer in prose.
  • Practice. Here is a practice final and solution. This was the actual exam given in a recent quarter and should be mostly representative in scope, content, difficulty, and format to what you can expect on our exam.
  • Additional practice exercises
    • We've published a page of even more practice problems for you to use as you prepare.
    • Revisit our section materials. We pack each weekly section handout with many more exercises that fit in the section meeting, so there are plenty of good options there. Section exercises are similar size and scope to those we use for exams (in fact, many section exercises originally appeared on exams in previous quarters).
    • The exercises in the Python Reader, and Online IDE are other great sources for practice.
  • Review session A group of our fabulous section leaders will lead a review session on Monday August 11th during our normal lecture time 4:30-5:50PM in NVIDIA Auditorium.

Advice

We absolutely want you to do well on this exam! The lectures, sections, and assignments work together to guide you toward mastery of the course learning goals and the exams serve as an assessment of your progress. View this exam as a celebration of all you've accomplished this quarter. The absolute best outcome is that everyone has a great grasp on the material to nail the exam.

Read on for our advice from the midterm exam on how to make that happen for you!

✨ You can do this! ✨