The exam will cover the entire semester. It will only include topics that are covered in the coursepack. The exam will not cover material from extra slides that were not in the original coursepack.
The exam will be held on Monday, Dec. 16, from 9-11 a.m. in the following locations:
Please aim to arrive 10 minutes before the start of the exam.
Students with an exam-related conflict should have already notified their instructor, and they will be emailed the details of their exam.
The exam is NOT optional. It is worth 35% of your final course grade, regardless of how well you have done on the problem sets and midterm exams.
You must bring your BU ID to the exam, and have it verified when you turn in the exam.
The exam will consist of three parts:
Part I will contain multiple-choice questions that you must complete.
We strongly recommend that you bring a pencil and eraser for use on at least this part of the exam. There will be a “bubble sheet” for the multiple-choice answers that will be graded automatically by Gradescope. You will need to ensure that your final answer for each question is the only one that is bubbled, and thus we recommend using pencil so that you can erase answers as needed.
Part II will consist of several multi-part problems. The individual parts of each problem will be similar in format and difficulty to the problems on the midterms. You will have some choice in this section (e.g., complete 3 out of 4 problems, or 4 out of 5), and you must clearly specify which of the problems you don’t want us to grade, following the instructions that will be provided on the exam.
Part III will consist of a single multi-part problem that you must complete. Parts of this problem may require a bit more work than the typical midterm problem, but they will still be doable in the time available.
You will have two hours to complete the exam. The questions will be worth a total of 100 points. You should plan on spending approximately one minute per point.
You may use one 3-inch by 5-inch index card with handwritten notes (both sides). However, you must use a card that we provide. These cards will be distributed in lecture. If you aren’t able to get one in lecture, they will be available in the CS office (CDS 639) on weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm. Please turn your card in with your exam.
You may not use any other materials during the exam. In particular, you should turn off and put away cell phones, watches, ear buds, and other devices.
You should either use a pencil (recommended, especially for Part I) or a pen with blue or black ink.
You may not leave the exam room and return, so please use the restroom before the exam.
One way to prepare is to review the lecture materials, labs, and assignments, and to make a summary of the key points in your own words. “Boiling down” the material in this way is a great way to ensure that you really understand the key concepts.
We also encourage you to do practice problems. Options include:
redoing the pre-lecture quiz questions. They are available as review problems on Top Hat, and you can check whether you obtain the correct answers.
redoing the questions posed in lecture–both the Top Hat questions and the open-response ones–and in lab
the following sets of additional practice problems:
first set: practice problems on references, 2-D lists, object-oriented programming, and FSMs
second set - practice problems on a variety of topics from throughout the semester
When working on practice problems, try to come up with your answers on paper, rather than through a trial-and-error approach on Spyder or in another programming environment. This will be give you an experience that is similar to the one that you have during the exam.
Feel free to post questions on Piazza (using the final_exam tag)
or to email the course account (cs111-staff@cs.bu.edu).
Last updated on December 11, 2024.