What Are the Best AP Computer Science Principles Textbooks and Prep Books?
5 min read•october 18, 2021
Harrison Burnside
AP Computer Science Principles ⌨️
80 resourcesSee Units
Understand the Exam 📑
The AP Computer Science Principles exam is FIVE-able when you have the right resources. 😉
The exam includes two sections: the Create Performance Task and the End-of-Course Multiple-Choice Exam.
Create Performance Task:
- Worth 30% of the exam score
- 12 hours of class time
End-of-Course Multiple-Choice Exam:
- Worth 70% of the exam score
- 2 hours long
⚠️NOTE: most prep books and online resources are not updated to the 2021 CED, so ignore all references to the Explore Performance Task and the 7 big ideas (now only 5 big ideas).
Prep Books 📔
Rating Scale:
🥇 = Best Value
🤓 = Easiest to Read
💸 = Cheapest
🖊 = Most Thorough
✍️ = Best for Create Performance Task
🔠 = Best for Multiple-Choice Questions
5 Steps to a 5🥇🤓💸🔠
I, personally, used this book to study for tests throughout the course and to review for the AP Exam in May. Reading this book for the content review a few weeks before the exam was very helpful in reviewing what was necessary to know for the exam‼️
Pros:
- Useful pseudocode guide 👨💻 at the end of the book for the code that the College Board uses on the AP Exam.
- The practice questions at the end of the units are very helpful to check for understanding!
Cons:
- We don't recommend using this book for help on the create performance task.
- The practice exams 📝 in this book are also not similar enough to the types of questions on the AP exam.
- Many of the AP exam questions contain stimuli and situations while the practice tests mainly are looking at basic recall.
In Review:
This prep book is my top recommendation, as it is one of the only ones on the market. The book is pretty thin and not too word-heavy in a nice style to read. The book is currently less than $8.99 on Amazon. 💸
Barron's 🖊️✍️
This prep book is great to use for people who are looking to prepare consistently all year 📆 before the exam or already have a schedule to study more than a week before the exam!
Pros:
- 3 full-length practice exams on paper and another 1 online + even more practice questions!
- Create Performance Task sections of this book are great 🤩 so make sure to consult this book while working on that section.
Cons:
- Barron's prep books are known to have high-caliber content and hard review questions, but this book is a slight exception.
💡If you read the Amazon review 📝 on the link above, you might see many complaints about small content inaccuracies, but don't let that impact your whole decision process! The book is almost all correct and awesome 💫 but some of the content is not proofread ☹️
In Review:
This prep book is my secondary recommendation if you want more enrichment than 5 Steps to a 5. The book is pretty thin and not too word-heavy in a nice style to read. The book is currently more expensive than the 5STA5 on Amazon at about $15 💰
While the College Board lists some APCSP textbooks on their website for classes to use, they actually have a disclaimer at the top of the page that they do not actually recommend or endorse those textbooks for the course. Since there are not a lot of textbooks that fit the course requirements, we have compiled a listicle 📜 of online resources that could substitute for a textbook!
Online Resources 🖥️
Rating Scale:
🥇 = Best Overall
🤓 = Easiest to Understand
🖊 = Most Thorough
🤯 = Best for All Learning Styles
- none of these resources will win the cheapest 💸 award since they are all free 🎉
Fiveable 🥇
Fiveable offers free live streams 📽️ (and their replays), study guides, trivia games, videos, and slide decks for APCSP students. Beyond the content, Fiveable also offers a community platform where students can ask questions and receive feedback from AP Computer Science Principles 💻 teachers and other students.
Khan Academy APCSP Quizzes and Articles 🖊️
Pros:
- There are articles to read, annotate, highlight, and review 📋 with practice questions that are actually similar to the style of questions on the real AP Exam.
- Khan Academy has units quizzes that you can take to earn points to prepare for the AP CSP Exam in a game-ified way 👍
- Khan Academy is free, which allows you to use their practice tests.
- Online practices with coding samples in 4 different programming languages which can be helpful in finding a platform to create your Create Performance Task Projects in.
Cons:
- No Direct PT Create Instruction ☹️
Harvard’s CS50 YouTube Lectures Playlist 🤓
A Harvard Professor Teaches a lecture called CS50 which closely aligns with the AP CSP curriculum.
- The lectures about Algorithms, Data Structures, Computational 🖥️ Thinking, and Information help emphasize content in a video format for visual and auditory learners.
- The lectures are very easy to watch and listen to and help prepare for the AP Exam. They are posted on YouTube 📽️ in a playlist that is linked above!
codeHS AP CSP Exam Review Playlist 🤯
Source: codeHS
A teacher, Calvin Studebaker, created a playlist on a coding website for students to help review for the AP Exam!
- These questions are very similar to those on the AP exam, so this playlist was one of my top resources preparing for the exam.
- Benefit most by using all 30 activities including printing 🖨️ out the reference sheet to practice for some of the quizzes that needed it.
- These AP Style Quizzes are very good reviews as each quiz has 5 questions that can be self-paced.
- You can do all of the quizzes in one day if that is the time you have left before the exam or you can do 5 quizzes per week if you have 6 weeks before the exam ⏰
Closing Thoughts 💭
APCSP is a relatively small class 👨🏫 with a small number of resources online, but there are some amazing ones! If you use a good mix of the resources in this article, then you should be all set to do awesome 🤩 on your Create PT and ace your MCQ 🧐 exam.
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