The APE

Some later CSCD courses require it, and the catalog lists which ones.

The official APE site Dates, rules, registration and the practice exams.

Fall 2026 sitting: Friday, October 23, 2026 (tentative) Not posted yet. A guess from past sittings; the official site will have the real date.

Sit the official practice exam first Give it 4 hours in IntelliJ in one sitting, the time the real exam allows. It needs an EWU Google login. Then start with the area where you lost the most points.

Data Abstraction and Class Design 5 lessons and 3 practice problems General Program Design 3 lessons: files, exceptions, putting things in order Linked List Manipulation 7 lessons and 4 practice problems Recursion 4 lessons: the base case, arrays, lists, factorial

Answers from the official siteAttempts, registration, the room, accommodations, who has to take it, what is on it.

How the practice exam is scored

The Practice APE Exam Instructions on the official site give these points for the practice exam. The real exam's sheet is handed out on the day, and the site publishes no breakdown for it.

Practice APE Exam Instructions, for the Spring 2023 practice exam, on the official site's Practice Exams page
Part, then each problem inside it	Points
Data Abstraction	30
Inheritance: the Circle and Cylinder classes	20
Interfaces: Comparable on the Student class	10
LinkedList	20
clone, on the list with a dummy node	6
cutList	7
addAll	7
General	30
openInputFile	3
openOutputFile	4
closeInputFile	2
read	6
closeOutputFile	2
writeToOutputFile	3
sort, a linked list with a dummy head, by hand	10
Recursion	20
findLargest	10
reverseArray	10
Total	100

The site says two things about scoring, in its own words:

NOTE: You may receive points for compiling code but you WON’T receive points for code that does not compile.

Penalty points can be assessed in this category for grossly inefficient code

Official site: the Practice APE Exam Instructions on Practice Exams; Basic Strategies; the FAQs topic list under General Program Design.

More practice

One problem at a time on code.jdoner.me. It needs a sign-in.
Writing an iterator. The official topic list names Comparable and no other interface, so this one is extra.

Your progress

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Official text read from inside.ewu.edu/csape on 2026-09-10. Where this site and the official site disagree, the official site is right.

Games and interactive practice

Each one runs in this browser with no sign-in.

Linked List Manipulation

Linked List gameBuild the list class line by line, then test it on 0 and 1 nodes. Pointer WorkbenchMove the pointers yourself, rung by rung, then the boss round. Linked list sandboxBoxes and arrows you build and play, with scratch paper beside them. Hanging List PlaygroundThe list as hanging nodes on a physics stage.

Data Abstraction and Class Design

CompareToWrite a 2-key compareTo line by line, then predict its sign. Copy ConstructorA drill on the copy constructor.

General Program Design

File ReaderPredict what main prints when the file is missing, empty or mixed. Selection Sort traceStep through a selection sort on an array. Insertion Sort traceStep through an insertion sort on an array. Min ScanThe typed selection sort on the dummy-head list. Min Scan lessonSorting the dummy-head list, line by line.

The whole exam

Zero GauntletThe ways a part scores 0, as a drill. Zero Gauntlet lessonGreen tests and a 0 on the same problem, explained. APE CramA study plan by how much time is left, from the same day to the whole quarter.

The CSCD 211 class

Midterm 1 reviewLinked lists, copies, equals and hashCode, compareTo.