how to study for computer science exam

[unoho]

just wondering how do you guys study for computer science exam? like im not talking about high school exam.. but rather university exam.

like i just had my cs137 (for waterloo software engineering) midterm today and we got killed (well..i should say i got killed)

if there are any other softies/comp sci students out there would like to elaborate on this,, it would be much appreciated.

[cavetroll]

Mostly to study for CS exams I write lots of code. I try to write a whole program out before compiling, and then find out what mistakes I made.

As a side note, I also wrote that CS 137 exam today. It didn't really seem that bad to me. With the exception of question 10, it was mostly stuff he showed us in class.

[unoho]

oh damn u must be in my class then lol..
9 and 10 was killer. but i found it harder then i expected it to be.

[DanShadow]

Personally when im learning/studying something, I figure how what im learning could be applied as a coding practice, which helps when answering questions.
One thing I did for studying is group all information about a subject together, and review it in a very focussed way, condensing the data into a series of specific notes. Than I would study the notes several times (specifically before bed, as you process information more efficiently while calmly asleep). This will do a lot of work training your brain to remember the specific information that you have been taught.

I found by studying this way, I could improve courseware memory retention, "practice" for tests by learning from a code usage perspective, and overall do better in exams.

[jcollins1991]

Study during the term, not just for exams. I'm in CS at UW and for all of my exams I've done nothing other than light review (if any at all), mainly because everything required in a course is covered in lectures and practiced on assignments. Just do all the work you're given and you should do well on exams.

[unoho]

ya the thing is i do all my assignments during regular classes and i do well too. and whn i get stuck in assignment, i cud usually open up my notebook and take a look at those notes. but for exam, they don't allow to take a look at those notes.. so tht kinda suks

[DanShadow]

Well, its a great idea to continually study over the course of a term, but I personally prefer to also give myself a big review of all major concepts discussed, and hard-core memorize them .
I mean, i've only been to college which I assume is more about practical demonstration then theoretical understanding, so this approach worked well for me.

[SmokeMonster]

I find that doing a big review before a computer science exam is quite unhelpful. Firstly, in most CS courses there are just not enough notes to review. If you keep up with the assignments through the term they pretty much teach you a large part of the course. I usually go over the course notes before the exam a couple of times paying extra attention to the concepts that gave me trouble in the assignments. I know people some like to do the assignments all over again before the exam, that imo is just tedious, a lot of the CS assignments contain a lot of "busy work" designed to make the assignment more challenging/time consuming and is never going to be tested on the exam or even a part of the course objective. For example in a Data Structures class they are probably gonna ask you about how certain aspects of say a linked list, tree or a graph are implemented and how they work. It is better to write a tree class making sure that you can implement it without looking at the notes rather than doing the assigment again which makes your write a whole layer of code above that tree class having nothing to do with the exam or the course objectives.

[Insectoid]

Take special notice of syntax and language features that you never use and never expect to. It's likely that your teacher will use them on the exam for that specific reason. A lot of questions on exams are made to be as confusing as possible. If you're asked to predict the output of a program, odds are the program makes no sense at all and you'll have to follow it very carefully.

[gvc]

Insectoid @ Sun Nov 14, 2010 11:11 am wrote:

Take special notice of syntax and language features that you never use and never expect to. It's likely that your teacher will use them on the exam for that specific reason. A lot of questions on exams are made to be as confusing as possible. If you're asked to predict the output of a program, odds are the program makes no sense at all and you'll have to follow it very carefully.

(1) Only a very poor exam will focus on the syntax of rarely-used features

(2) I cannot imagine any CS professor deliberately trying to make an exam confusing

(3) The purpose of a question that asks you to predict the output of the program is to see if you actually understand the operation of the program, as opposed to using your intuition to guess what it does. Only those who try to replace a solid grasp of the foundations by intuition will find such questions confusing.