#cs placement

I’d hesitate to say that AP CS is the easiest AP class out there. All CS classes will be easy if you’re good enough at CS. I think it’s worth taking the class if you really do like CS just because its a prerequisite for all of the post-AP electives, which are way more interesting and practical. Also, as much as you think that you’ll be able to self-study CS, chances are that you are going to be really busy with all your classes and not have much time to really do much CS outside of school. And the AP CS isn’t boring, either, even if you are good at CS, because let’s face it, there’s no way you’re a computer science professional after just taking foundations.

Missing 2 classes and losing 2 points is nothing. You will be fine. BUT, if you need to drop the class then drop the class as soon as possible. It’s up to you. Maybe think about your goals from this class. Do you want to get ahead to move on to advanced classes or are you just taking this class and moving on? If you want to get ahead, you might want to consider staying. If you don’t care about being in advanced classes and compsci isn’t your thing, you might as well switch. Of course, talk to your counselor, it’s their job to help you with things like this.

If you are already fluent with Java programming, then unfortunately you may not learn a whole lot from foundations CS, although some of the material like graphics, recursion, and sorts may still be new. First quarter (karol) will probably crawl by though :( In the case that you can’t take accelerated, I would personally recommend Mrs. Kim’s class. Between her and Mr. Billington, the labs should all be the same, but Mrs. Kim’s class will probably be more relaxed and fun, and you will most likely have a lot more freedom. She will let you go way ahead in the labs and even let you become her assistant, going around and helping other people with their code. For the sake of education, however, if there was any way that you could take accelerated, I would suggest you do so that you could learn more stuff.

Keep in mind, TJ APCS teaches so much more than the AP CS test material. We learn about graph theory, sets, maps, trees, heaps, hashcoding, all varieties of sort algorithms, and interesting problems/algorithms in addition to the AP curriculum, which is honestly covered completely in the first quarter. If you’re very familiar with all that, feel free to skip, but understand that TJ teaches these topics well and that you’ll have an excellent foundation for advanced computer science.

None of us have actually skipped AP CS ourselves but we do know a handful of people who have done so. First of all, it’s important to know that while skipping foundations is more common, it’s pretty rare to skip AP. And that’s because AP CS is sort of a gateway into the world of CS at TJ. It gives people a common experience base and skill set to work with when you get into all the post-AP electives. It’s also a very well-structured course and really makes sure that you have all the fundamentals down. From what we have observed, the people who generally do well after skipping AP CS are those who had at least a year or two of coding experience prior to high school and really, really liked CS. Skipping AP CS for them wasn’t so much just a means to get ahead but more just a way to get immediately into all the advanced CS electives offered at TJ. Unless you are so confident in your CS abilities that you are sure you could do all the labs in your sleep, AP CS won’t be a waste of time. And if you have some coding ability but feel like you need to do a lot of extra studying or take an entire summer course in order to pass the skip procedure (whatever that is), go ahead and skip foundations, but you will most likely benefit from taking AP CS at TJ. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a position where you are up to your neck in some difficult CS elective and realize that you don’t understand and/or don’t actually like CS at all. And to answer the question about whether or not skipping courses “looks bad,” I’ll just say that it wouldn’t look bad for the aforementioned CS geniuses who skipped AP CS, since they all went on to take AI, Parallel, etc etc and their genuine love and talent for CS is just such an obvious part of who they are anyways.

Barring dramatic change in how it works, not too difficult. It’s essentially the same as the sample problem they send out.

Foundations is suggested for students who have either no or little experience/knowledge of programming, while accelerated is encouraged for students who have had at least a year of programming experience. Keep in mind that the course is taught in Python (with some prep in Java towards the end of the course), so if you’ve been coding for a while and feel comfortable, go for accelerated! It’s suggested that you go to www.codingbat.com, create an account, and complete some of the harder exercises- if you understand the language they use and can get through most of the exercises, you should most definitely sign up for the class. In the case that the exercises offered here happen to be a breeze for you, consider taking AP Computer Science- it’s not done often, but it definitely is recommended for rising 9th graders who have been doing well in their math courses and are beyond proficient in coding.