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by hfdgiutdryg 2817 days ago
For example, from 2007 to 2017, the number of males taking the AP computer science test went up by a factor of 7,

Are AP CS exams relevant now? I took both in the early 90s, then got to college only to find out that nobody accepted AP credit in CS. Every school said "we use C, and the AP exam uses Pascal".

Curious if anyone younger has a different experience.

1 comments

A lot of colleges are using Java which is what is on the AP exam or at least the AP exam I am taking. I don't know many colleges that are actually teaching CS with C anymore sadly. Tbh, the AP exam does not prepare one for programming at all, any self respecting university should not accept credit for passing it.
Tbh, the AP exam does not prepare one for programming at all

That's why it's called the AP Computer Science exam rather than the AP Programming exam.

any self respecting university should not accept credit for passing it.

I don't think you appreciate what a CS degree means.

> I don't think you appreciate what a CS degree means.

Yeah, I will admit am not too keyed up on what a CS degree entails. I thought it was like CS 101, CS advanced or something like that, some other choice of CS electives like visual programming, and then the usual course load that is required for most other degrees like English, etc. I know for certain though, just by looking through some of the videos on MIT's opencourseware and Harvard's videos and problem sets for their beginning CS course, that the even if you could get a perfect score on your AP computer science exam you could easily be unprepared for advanced programming classes at university. I don't think an exam and a high school cs class is anywhere near enough to be worth college level cs credit.