AP Computer Science Principles

Welcome to CSP! Join Rachel Yuan as she gives you an intro as to what exactly AP CSP is and covers the first few topics in unit 1!

Introduction to CSP and Unit 1 Overview

AP Computer Science Principles Open House

General

🎉NMSI AP Reader Chat: Computer Science (CSP and CSA)

If I had one piece of advice for ANY AP test 📝, it is to know the exam like the back of your hand. This is 

 true in APCSP since the exam has multiple parts including the 

 ✍️ (Multiple Choice Questions) and the 

 💾 (Performance Task)! When you walk in on test day, the last thing you want to be thinking is “oh jeez, what will the questions look like?” or “How much time do we have for the multi-select section?”

If you know the exam, these fears will go away. If you consistently practice and know what to expect walking into the exam, it can relieve exam stress and help you with time management along with answering the questions.

Let's dive into the APCSP exam and take a look at how the exam is formatted and scored 💯

1️⃣ Section 1: The Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)


For the MCQ section 🧐, you will be given:

This section is weighted at 70% of your exam score so make sure to study 

2️⃣ Section 2: The Create Performance Task (PT)


The other 30% of your exam score will come from Section Two, so make sure to check out all of our information about the 

This section will not 🚫 be tested during your AP Exam, but you will instead be given 12 hours of class-time to work on your coding masterpiece 🎉

In the MCQ section, about 30% of the questions will have 

 in the questions or answers! Pseudocode is a programming language that can't actually be used in an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) but is easily read 👓

 is basically a combination of a block-based language (Scratch, Alice, etc.) and a basic typing language (Python, JS, etc.) You will get a reference sheet (linked below 🔗) on exam day, but we highly recommend trying to learn and practice with pseudocode before exam day so you don't have to waste time reading and translating then!

Reference sheets for AP Computer Science Principles!

On the Reference Sheet for Pseudocode, there are eight code categories! These are super useful to know so you don't waste valuable time on exam day trying to find the exact line of code in these six pages. Here are the categories to know:

🏋️‍♂️ APCSP MCQ Unit Weighting


 in AP Computer Science Principles that are tested on the AP Exam. You can reference this table to see which units you should study 📖 the most and least:

in the APCSP exam 🎊 If you don't recognize these names, don't worry too much, these are mostly for teachers to spiral these themes through the Big Ideas! Check these out with the practice questions ✍️ later:


Computational Thinking Practice MCQ Weighting

All questions in this section are courtesy of the 

College Board's APCSP CED updated for 2021!

1. Which of the following best explains how data is typically assembled in packets for transmission over the Internet? 

(A) Each packet contains data to be transmitted, along with metadata containing information used for routing the data. 


(B) Each packet contains an encrypted version of the data to be transmitted, along with metadata containing the key needed to decrypt the data.


(C) Each packet contains only the metadata used to establish a direct connection so that the data can be transmitted.


(D) Each packet contains multiple data files bundled together, along with metadata describing how to categorize each data file.

(A) Each packet contains data to be transmitted, along with metadata containing information used for routing the data. 

2. Each student that enrolls at a school is assigned a unique ID number, which is stored as a binary number. The ID numbers increase sequentially by 1 with each newly enrolled student. If the ID number assigned to the last student who enrolled was the binary number 1001 0011, what binary number will be assigned to the next student who enrolls?

The following procedure is intended to return the number of times the value val appears in the list myList. The procedure does not work as intended.

Line 1: PROCEDURE countNumOccurences(myList, val)
Line 2: {
Line 3:    FOR EACH item IN myList
Line 4:     {
Line 5:         count ← 0
Line 6:         IF(item = val)
Line 7:         {
Line 8:               count ← count + 1
Line 9:          }
Line 10:     }
Line 11: RETURN(count)
Line 12:}

Which of the following changes can be made so that the procedure will work as intended?

(B) Changing line 6 to IF(myList[item] = val)


(C) Moving the statement in line 5 so that it appears between lines 2 and 3


(D) Moving the statement in line 11 so that it appears between lines 9 and 10

(C) Moving the statement in line 5 so that it appears between lines 2 and 3

The APCSP MCQ section is definitely not as hard as other AP exams'. Make sure to practice and use the tips in this article and you should be all set for that Five 👍

AP Computer Science Principles Multiple Choice Help (MCQ)

If you had to have one piece of advice for ANY AP test 📝, it is to know the exam like the back of your hand. This is 

 true in APCSP® since the exam has multiple parts including the 

! When you walk in on test day, the last thing you want to be thinking is “oh jeez, what will the questions look like?” or “How much time do we have for the multi-select section?”
If you know the exam, these fears will go away. If you consistently practice and know what to expect walking into the exam, it can relieve exam stress and help you with time management along with answering the questions.

Section 1: The Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) ✍️

This section is weighted at 70% of your exam score so make sure to study well 

APCSP - Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) Help <<TK>>

Section 2: The Create Performance Task (PT) 💾


The other 30% of your exam score will come from section 2, so make sure to check out all of our information about the 

This section will not be tested during your AP Exam, but you will instead be given 12 hours of class-time to work on your coding masterpiece 🎉

There are three parts to this section of your exam:

  The College Board will be releasing guidance for collaborative programming for students in a non-traditional classroom later during the 2020-2021 School Year!

Let's take a deep dive into how each of those three pieces of the Create PT should be created ✍️

PT Piece 🧩 1: Program Code 👨‍💻


You are finally about to put some of the knowledge that you learned in Big Idea 3 of APCSP to good work when you create your program. This is the most fun part of the portfolio (and of the class, in our humble opinion 🤓)!

The only special part of this piece is that there are specific requirements for your code to contain! The College Board has given us a nice list of everything that you need:

Program Code Submission Requirements. Image Courtesy of the 

Besides the submission requirements, the only extra part of your program is that you can create it collaboratively! All of the other pieces of the Create PT are completed individually, but in the program code section, you can receive help from friends to create your program 🎉

In this piece of your Performance Task, you will be recording a 1 minute ⏲️ video of you demonstrating how your program functions! This section is created independently but does not frown because this is one of the smallest pieces of the PT.

Your video must show all of the following:

💎 At least one aspect of the functionality of your program

⛔ Any distinguishing information about yourself

Your video 📸 should end up being in a .mp4, .wmv, .avi, or .mov format and be less than 30 MB. Why don't you try converting that 30 MB into another file size with your skills from Big Idea Two Data? 😉

In this piece of the Create Performance Task, you will be responding to 4 multi-part questions about your program code! In 

, all of the questions that you need to answer are detailed and explained.

For help with the Performance Task Questions and Written Responses, check out the full-length:

Do not do it! If you plagiarize any of your performance task, you will get a score of zero! Don't do it 😱

Overall PT Tips 💡 and Closing Thoughts

Here are some final words of wisdom from us here at Fiveable:

The Create PT is undoubtedly one of the hardest parts of the APCSP Exam! If you start working early and keep consistently adding to your code and responses, you will be able to do awesome and succeed on your APCSP Exam 🎉

AP Computer Science Create Performance Task Help (PT)

So, you've made it through the Big Ideas, and now the test is upon you!

Fortunately, the AP CSP test is one of the nicer AP tests out there. There aren't any essays to write or passages to analyze. The test is only two hours long, an hour and fifteen minutes shorter than the majority of AP tests.

The AP CSP test is also unique in that there's a 

 involved. This is a project that you'll do prior to the day of the test that makes up a part of your final AP score. There are several other AP tests that involve some sort of graded portfolio work, such as the AP Capstone classes and several of the AP Art classes, but chances are that this is the first time you'll be working with a Digital Portfolio.

Most of the question images are taken from the College Board practice problems, starting from 

1. Multiple Choice Questions (70% of final grade)

2. Create Performance Task (30% of final grade)

AP tests generally take place over two weeks in May, and they're scheduled to start at one of two times each day: 8 in the morning and 12 in the afternoon, local time. (Unless you're taking AP Physics C: E & M). The date and time that a test is scheduled for vary depending on the year.

If you have an afternoon time, expect some delays from other tests that might have run over. Just like other College Board tests you might have taken, you'll also have a stretch of time at the beginning where you're breaking booklet seals and reading instructions. ✌

You have two hours to answer 70 questions. That translates to 35 questions an hour or about a question every 1.5 minutes. That's plenty of time, which is both a blessing and a curse; you probably won't run out of time to answer problems, but two hours is also a long time to keep your focus up.

The best way to figure out what pacing structure works for you is to 

 before the test. Practice tests written before 2020-21 will have 74 problems instead of 70, and they won't have a reading passage. That said, they're still a good resource, and using them is encouraged. 👍

There are three types of MCQs on the test: 

single select, reading passage, and multi select.

Single-select problems are just regular multiple-choice questions. Each problem has four answers to go with it; you choose and bubble one of those answers.

❗  You can pick and choose which tricks you use, based on what works for you.

At Fiveable, we have narrowed down the single-select MCQs on the AP CSP test into two general types: 

 address concepts from the Big Ideas. They'll ask you to define how something works or to talk about the causes and effects of something. They will often also ask you to apply your knowledge of AP CSP concepts to real-world situations, like in this example:

: When a user enters an incorrect password more than two times in a row,
the user is locked out of the account for 24 hours.

The challenge this problem poses is that you need to know what 

 is. It's not uncommon for the AP CSP test to ask you questions that hinge on your knowledge of one term or one concept. If you don't know what multifactor authentication is, this question could be very difficult indeed.

That said, there are still some tricks we can use to narrow down the answer list.

This question asks us to find the one that doesn't belong, so let's see if there are any major differences between the questions.

All four answer choices describe a security measure. However, take notice of the fact that answer choice D describes what happens when a login fails, while the other three choices describe a login process.

Questions A, B, and C also describe multiple devices or processes used in a login process (passwords, USB, email code verification, fingerprints), while Question D only mentions one: a password entry.

Even if you didn't know what multifactor verification was, you can still see that there's one answer that clearly doesn't belong. If you then know that multifactor authentication is 

the safety measure of requiring multiple forms of authentication for access to an account,

 ask you to analyze lines of code. They might then ask you to evaluate what the code will do or to correct an error in the code.

Pseudocode, as we saw in Big Idea 3, can take the form of blocks or text. Here's a question in block form...

I personally solved this question through brute force: checking each set of values and seeing if the code would return the maximum value. Answers A, B, and C all do. It's a little tricky at first to understand why answer D doesn't, so let's go through it.

The set of values for D are x = 3, y = 2 and z = 1. This would make x the maximum value, and the program should return x.

The first box of code states that if x > y and x > z, max is set to x. 3 is greater than 2 and 1, so max is set to x. All good, everyone's happy, we can go home—

Nope! See, there's another box of code that will run 

 It states that if y > x and y > z, the max is set to y. 2 isn't greater than 3, so the max isn't set to y and we move to the else statement, 

The program would therefore return that the max value is z, not x.

(To see the solution to this question, go to 

Big Idea 1: Identifying and Correcting Errors.

Special Coding Problems: Robots and Binary


You might see problems asking you to code a robot's path around a track. Robot problems can be rather involved, but they're nothing to fear! If they start eating up your time, you can always skip them and come back later.

Let's look at this example below: can you find the correct code that will get the robot to its destination?

 This sort of puzzle is found in many learn-to-code games. It might be helpful to practice with some of them!

The way I like to think about these problems is to 

 What do I need to do in order to get to the end of the maze?

(Notice the small arrows on the ground: these tell you how far every step is.)

Well, I'll need to go forward, turn left, go forward, turn right, go forward two, turn right, go forward two, turn left, go forward three, turn right, go forward three and turn right again, and I'm at my destination.

Looking at this list of instructions, you can see a bit of a pattern emerging: forward, right, forward, left. You can also see that the number of forward steps the robot must take increases by one every "cycle", so to speak. Finally, you can see that the robot starts by going forward and ends by turning right, which might help eliminate some answer choices.

With this knowledge, let's look at the code blocks provided. Remember, you can always write out the code to the side if the block-based formatting is giving you grief.

We can eliminate A and B because the code doesn't give us a way to increase the number of forward steps we take. The robot will never go further than forward by one.

That leaves us with C and D, which (using the 

 have a way to increase the number of forward steps the robot can take. The only difference between the two questions is the placement of the 

 statement. The robot will only need to go forward once at the beginning of the path and notice that n starts at one. If we chose C, which puts the 

 statement at the beginning, we'd have too many forward steps to start out with.

 If your robot is hitting a dead end, another way to approach this problem would be to 

 in each of the answer choices, pretending you're the robot. If you hit a dead end or go off-course, you'll know that the code doesn't work and you can move to the next question.

Another "coding" problem you might run across is the 

. These test your knowledge of how binary numbers work. They may ask you to count in binary or to convert binary to decimal and vice versa. (You might even see a problem asking you to convert to hexadecimal!)

Here's a little trick to help you convert binary to hexadecimal.

 The test won't give you numbers bigger than the first example covered in the video.

In order to answer these problems, you need to do a little bit of memorization (just a little.) You won't get a calculator on the test, so you'll need to know your powers of 2 for a byte of data, which starts at 2^0 (which is 1) and goes to 2^7. (It turns out that the values for the powers of 2 have a doubling pattern: 4 times 2 is 8, 8 times 2 is 16, 16 times 2 is 32, and so on.)

When you get your binary number, you'll fill in the boxes, add up all the base 10 values they correspond to, and bada-bing-bada-boom, there's your answer! (A more detailed example can be found in 

Intro to Big Idea 2: Data and Binary Numbers.

What if you want to go the other way around, from decimal to binary? That's a little more complicated, but not by much! You'll basically do the inverse of what you did to go from binary to decimal.

AP Comp Sci P Exam Guide

APCSP is a relatively small class 👨‍🏫 with a few resources online, but there are some amazing ones like Fiveable 5️⃣ that are here to help! If you can practice for the exam 📝 and use these tips, then you should be all set to do awesome 🤩 on your Create PT and ace your MCQ exam.

The APCSP 💻 exam is formatted as follows:

1️⃣ Section 1: The Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

This section (1️⃣) is weighted at 70% of your exam score so make sure to study 

Thursday, May 13, 2021 @ 8am, the current AP Exam Start Time!

Another important thing to know about the MCQ 🧐 section of your exam is that there are different big ideas and computational practices weighted on your exam! We've broken them down for you:

🏋️‍♂️ APCSP MCQ Unit Weighting

 in AP Computer Science Principles that are tested on the AP Exam 🎉 You can reference this table to see which units you should study 📖 the most and least: 

in the APCSP exam 🎊 If you don't recognize these names, don't worry too much ☺️, these are mostly for teachers to spiral these themes through the Big Ideas! Check these out with the practice questions ✍️ later: 

2️⃣ Section 2: The Create Performance Task (PT)

The other 30% of your exam score will come from Section two 2️⃣, so make sure to check out all of our information about the 

#2: Don't Procrastinate the Performance Task 2️⃣

You have a whole year to create and write about ✍️ a program of your choosing! Don't put it off until April or May 📅 because all of your work (including studying for other AP exams 🤓) will stack up 📚

To create the Performance Task, we have an awesome article 📜 to help you get started! Make sure to check out:

On the Multiple Choice section, about 30% of the problems will have 

in the questions or answers! It 👨‍💻 is a programming language 📢 that can't actually be used in any coding tool but is easily read 👓 and understood.

is basically a combination of a block-based 🧱 language (Scratch, Alice, etc.) and a basic typing ⌨️ language (Python, JS, etc.) ➕ While you will get a reference sheet on exam day, we highly recommend 🗣️ trying to learn and practice with pseudocode before exam day so you don't have to waste time reading and tracing while you translate 💹 then! Check out 

 📝 from the College Board to get a glimpse into the language!

On the Reference Sheet for Pseudocode, there are eight 8️⃣ code categories! These are super useful 🧠 to know so you don't waste valuable time ⏲️ on exam day trying to find the exact line of code in these six pages 😎 Here are the categories to know:

Arithmetic Operators and Numeric Procedures 

#4: Make Flashcards to Review Key Vocab and Concepts 4️⃣

APCSP 🖥️ is not too content-heavy, but the class focuses more on learning the big picture and narrowing 🔍 in on personal solutions and perspectives! A really important part of the MCQ section, however, is learning and applying fundamental vocab 🗃️ in the context of problems 🎉

A big tip of mine would be to make personal flashcards 📰 or maybe just use some awesome Quizlets 🎊 Don't know where to start looking? Check out:

APCSP - Best Quizlet Decks by Unit <<TK>>

Here are a few important key vocab words 🔊 to get you started:

Make sure to use all of our tips 💡 to be able to get that Five 5️⃣ on your APCSP Exam 🙌 When you study with us, your exam is easily Five-able 😂

How to Get a 5 in AP Computer Science Principles

Think about the activities that make up day-to-day life: going to school, shopping, working, eating, and so on. Increasingly, computing innovations have come to play a role in more and more of these activities. As new innovations come out, people will change how they go about their day to day business to take advantage of the new technology, which will lead to new societal trends and even more new technology to take advantage of them...

Computing innovations have fostered progress and creativity in many ways. Machines have vastly improved the medical field, saving countless lives. Engineers take advantage of computing innovations to collect data and design products. Communications have especially flourished; today, we can communicate instantaneously with people anywhere around the world. Even the artistic world has benefited from new ways to create, share, and sell creative works.

A new computing innovation with the potential to aid both the medical and engineering fields is 3D printing. In the image above, a 3D printer is used to make a hand brace. Image source: 

However, computing innovations have both their good sides and their not-so-good sides. (Anyone who's been scrolling Instagram at three in the morning on a school night can attest to that!) Not every side or effect of a computing innovation is known in advance, either. Innovations take on a life of their own after they're created.

Computing innovations can be used to both help and to hurt people. Identity theft, cyber-bullying... the list goes on.

Responsible programmers try to look at the big picture when it comes to the computing innovations they create. They try to catch potential channels for abuse or harm before they can be exploited.

However, although they do their best, at the end of the day it's just not possible for programmers to predict all the ways that a computing innovation could be used. There are too many possibilities and external variables involved, especially when the innovation covers a large scale. (Hence why Black Mirror exists.)

It's important to note that the effects of a computing innovation are up for debate. People can have widely differing opinions on these effects—some people might think they're good, some people might think they're bad. It's also important to mention that there have been unintended 

 effects of computing innovations as well. They've led to surprising advances in many fields.

AP CSP Exam Prep 2020-21

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Big Idea 1: Creative Development

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Big Idea 3: Algorithms and Programming

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Big Idea 5: Impact of Computing

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Harrison Burnside

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Rachel Yuan

AP CSP Exam Prep 2020-21

browse by unit

Free Reviews﻿

Big Idea 1: Creative Development﻿

Big Idea 2: Data﻿

Big Idea 3: Algorithms and Programming﻿

Big Idea 4: Computer Systems and Networks﻿

Big Idea 5: Impact of Computing ﻿

Exam Prep﻿

Blogs﻿