In my freshman year of high school, I took the AP Computer Science Principles Exam and got a 5. To help others succeed in this class I will be providing some resources I used and review them for how useful they were. In some later posts, a summary of the five units in this AP Class. So, let’s begin.

To begin with, my first resource I used was the 5 Steps to a 5: AP Computer Science Principles 2022 made by 5 Steps to a 5, a series of books for preparing for AP Exams. The usual format consists of 5 steps which are:

1. The first chapter of Step 1 consists an overview of the exam such as the format (e.g. Multiple Choice, Free Response) and which topics are covered or more specifically the units covered. The next chapter then consists of some advice on how to spread out your time to prepare for the exam with three possible recommended methods.
2. The next Step 2 consists of a diagnostic test in the format of the actual AP Exam. There is also an answer key and at the end each question is sorted by unit.
3. Step 3 consists of some test taking strategies such as how to eliminate answer choices and tips for the Performance Task
4. Step 4 consists of multiple chapters where each chapter consisted of important information from each unit and ended with some practice questions at end of each chapter with an answer key
5. Step 5 mainly consisted of two practice tests and an answer key for each. Once again at the end they sorted each question by which unit it was from.

I only briefly used this book for my preparation for the AP Computer Science Principles exam as I later shifted to the 2023 version due to which my review may not be accurate. I personally did not find the overview of the exam to be helpful because this information is easily available on numerous websites just by searching “AP Computer Science Principles format”. I personally did not use the advice from the “Planning Your Time” section and just prepared when I had the time to, but if time management is your thing, go for it! If you are self-studying like me, I would recommend using the school-year plan as you can focus more time on each unit to gain a better understanding. However, for students taking the class, I’d recommend the one semester or 6 week plan as you’d already know the theory and rather need to skim knowledge. I would say the diagnostic test is about the difficulty of the AP Exam or even slightly difficult so I would say it is high quality as at the end it gives you which question belongs to which unit so you understand which units are your strengths/weaknesses. One downfall I would say at least as a self-study person, is that the solutions to the answers aren’t exactly the best for someone who isn’t taking the class at school because they are not clear sometimes. I also studied Unit 2 from this book and would say that the book does a well job with giving essential information for each unit. However, the end of unit questions are sometimes confusing and can be easy to get wrong. It also takes a while to understand the solutions.

Overall I would say that this book is good for students taking the class at school as this book helps to understand your strengths and weaknesses for the AP Exam and covering the important information, it is not exactly the most friendly to a student self-studying as it has some confusing questions which can be difficult without more detailed knowledge of the subject.