AP Computer Science A Review

Study Resources

There is a large wealth of resources available to assist in preparation for the AP Computer Science A exam.

In no particular order, some of them are listed here:

• Course and Exam Description: This is the core document for the AP CSA course, and this review guide is largely based off of this since it provides a listing of all the essential knowledge assessed on the AP Exam.

  • The CED has a lot of useful resources, including practice multiple-choice questions.

• AP CSA Java Quick Reference: This Quick Reference sheet will be provided to exam-takers for both the MCQ and FRQ sections of the AP Exam.

• Released Free-Response Questions, 2021

  • This page also has some supplemental materials relating to these questions, including the official Scoring Guidelines used to assess student responses.

• Released Free-Response Questions, 1999-2020: These are all of the publicly-available Free-Response Questions from past AP Exams.

  • Note that several of these questions from AP Exams prior to 2019 refer to interfaces, which is a topic that is no longer assessed on the AP Exam.
  • The same supplemental materials as in the 2021 FRQs are available here too.
  • A table of all of these questions and the free-response categories they fit into is available here (this table was provided in the 2021 AP Live Review Sessions).

• AP Computer Science A Exam Tips: This provides a few general pointers for the exam.

• Writing Code on the AP Computer Science Exams: Important Advice for Students: A partially outdated, yet still very relevant, resource with some comments on writing FRQ responses.