Final Review

Overview

The final exam is focused on topics that came after the midterm topics cutoff, but all topics throughout the quarter are fair game.

Logistics

  • The exam is Monday, March 16 from 8:30am - 11:30am.
  • Location information will be provided soon.
  • Please make sure to bring your Stanford student ID to the final exam. If possible, please leave backpacks and all other belongings at home, to avoid crowding them in the front of the room.
  • Students with special circumstances (CGOE, OAE, etc) that differ from the midterm should reach out to Yasmine immediately.
  • This exam is on paper, using pen/pencil. 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 Stanford library functions.
    • You may also bring one 8.5x11 sheet of your own notes.

Coverage, practice materials

  • Coverage. The exam is cumulative, and will cover everything we’ve discussed throughout the quarter through Week 9. Content during Week 10 will not be tested on the final exam.
  • 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. We’ve published some practice exams below. They are both in PDF form, and have solutions included. We strongly recommend that you print these out, and take the exam in a realistic setting (i.e. timed, with only your reference sheet available). Then, go back and check your answers with the solutions and make notes of where to target your study!

These practice finals are actual finals from previous classes. However, please note that some of them are from a sort of “honors” version of CS106B (called CS106X) that we used to offer. It covered the same topics, but with higher expectations for mastery. Therefore, many of these problems are more aggressively calibrated than you should expect for our exam. In other words, I hope you find these excellent practice, but please do not be discouraged by them. (My basketball coach used to say, it’s good to have a practice that’s harder than the game!)

  • Practice Final Exam 1.

  • Practice Final Exam 2.

  • Practice Final Exam 3.

  • Practice Final Exam 4.

  • Additional practice exercises

    • 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).
    • Revisit IG problems. Here is a page with all the problems you worked on this quarter, including starter code and solutions when relevant.
    • The exercises in the textbook are another great source for practice.
    • Question bank from a different offering of 106B.

  • Review session A group of our fabulous section leaders will lead a review session in the days prior to the exam on [TBD Check back soon for more information]! It will be recorded.

Advice

We absolutely want you to come out on top! 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. The absolute best outcome everyone has a great grasp on the material to nail the exam.

Read on for our advice on how to make that happen for you!

Miscellaneous Resources

Final Thoughts

✨We want you to do well on this exam.✨

See this as an opportunity to show what you’ve learned and display your great efforts in the class this quarter. You’ve worked very hard and learned so much throughout the past 10 weeks! Always remember why you are here! Your efforts to build practice skills and real understanding will take you a lot further than a pristine transcript. If you work hard toward mastery and feel good about your understanding of computer science that is an achievement to be proud of—regardless of how many points you get relative to the other students in the course.