Introduction:

In this practice exam, I got a score of 63/66 questions correct. This blog will contain the mistakes I made while taking this test, the correct answers to the questions I got wrong, what I learned from reviewing the correct answers, and a reflection which highlights what I learned from this test. The following image shows the amount of time it took for me to complete this test.

In the actual AP exam, we are given 120 minutes to answer 70 MC questions. This means we are given about 1 minute and 43 seconds per problem. Since I took about 2 minutes and 35 seconds per problem (52 more seconds than maximum time per question), I need to work on improving my speed.

Topics I Wasn’t Sure About/Needed to Review:

Throughout this test, there were a few topics I didn’t. To clarify my uncertainties, I watched a few AP Daily videos and searched a few terms up to help me understand these topics. The following list contains some of the topics I learned about through these AP Daily videos and Google:

AP Daily:

  • Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Encryption
  • Copyright
  • Citizen Science

Google:

  • Machine Learning Program
  • Cloud Computing (still got this question wrong)

Question 9:

For this question, I think the reason I got this wrong is because I didn’t understand what the question was asking. After looking at College Board’s answer (“It helps programmers identify errors as components are added to a working program.”), I realized that the question was asking for why incrementally adding new lines is beneficial. With this, it makes sense that the answer is D (the answer I previously quoted) because after adding every new line, errors about the previous lines of code can be found and solved. The answer I selected was answer C (“It enables programmers to create programs that use the lowest-level abstractions available.”) because I didn’t understand what the question was asking. I saw the word “iterative” and I thought the program would be made simpler with the use of iteration (looking back, this reasoning doesn’t make much sense).

Question 14:

The reason I got this question wrong was because I thought about this problem intuitively incorrectly. I realize now that since both displaying the variable i and increasing its value happens in the same iteration, the number of values displayed will be the same. This is why the answer I selected is incorrect. However, since the order of operations is different, the values displayed will be off by 1 between the 2 two programs (the values in Program B being 1 higher than the values in Program A). This is why the answer is C (“Program A and program B display the same number of values, but the values differ.”) because the the number of values displayed is the same for both programs, but the values displayed are slightly different (shifted by 1).

Question 64:

This question was about cloud computing which I am still not very familiar with. The questions asked for which of the statements provided shows how cloud computing has affected Internet communication. The correct answer given by College Board are answers B and C while the answers I selected are A and B. College Board states that the B is correct because cloud computing allows for many people to collaborate and share ideas to different files for something like a project. With many different people making edits to a project, collaboration is enhanced. College Board states that answer C is correct because considering security concerns and protecting users’ private data is important. I’m still not sure how this shows how cloud computing affects Internet communication and how we were supposed to know this, but I do know that protecting user’s privacy is important.

Reflection:

What I Did Well:

Something I did well was that my answers to the questions were mostly correct as I got an A on this test. I understood most of the concepts I was tested on and didn’t find any problems particularly challenging. Even though I had to think through a few of them to understand what they were asking of me and what the correct answer was, I found this test to be pretty doable.

What I Need to Work On:

Since my score on this test was pretty good, the thing I need to work on is getting faster. Like I mentioned before, on average I took about 52 seconds more per question than expected of me by College Board. Even though I was accurate, I spent way too much time on each question.

Overall

Overall, there were things that I did well and things that I need to improve on. Since this is just a practice exam, I have time to improve on the topics I might have found difficult and my other areas of struggle.