The APE, question by question

• Registering and then not showing up counts as a failed attempt.
• You may be allowed 3 attempts. After the third failure you are invited to talk to the chair about continuing enrollment.
• To cancel a registration, email the coordinator 2 weeks before the exam.
• You cannot walk in unregistered. The machines are set up in advance and you will be turned away.
• The department cannot move your sitting for a personal schedule conflict. You sit it in person, in CAT 219 or 216, on the scheduled date and time, or you take it the next quarter.

Official site: the home page, and FAQs 10 to 12.

• Registration usually opens after the first week of the quarter, for about 10 business days. Summer may differ.
• The exam usually happens about a month after the quarter starts, for fall, winter and spring. Summer differs.
• You may get an EWU email when registration opens. The department asks you to check its site regularly.
• To check that your registration went through, open the Canvas course: canvas.ewu.edu/courses/1647366. If you can see its main page, you are registered.
• There is no cost and no fee.
• You do not drop a class to take it, it does not count toward your credit load, and you do not need to be in a summer course to sit the summer APE.
• It runs once a quarter, summer included.

Official site: the home page, and FAQs 2 to 9.

• You write Java in IntelliJ on Windows, at the default settings the lab machines use.
• The department recommends trying IntelliJ in the lab before the exam. Download IntelliJ IDEA for Windows.
• The exam time allotted is 4 hours.
• The reference you get is the Java API documentation: Java SE 19 API documentation.

Official site: the home page, and FAQs 5, 13 and 15.

• If you are a DSS student and want to take the APE this quarter, email the coordinator immediately.
• After you register, email the coordinator at least one week before the exam to verify your DSS documents.
• If approved, you get an extra hour on top of the 4 hours. In the department's words: you must go to CAT 219 to take the exam 30 minutes earlier than the scheduled start time. You cannot take the APE exam elsewhere.

Official site: the home page, and FAQ 13.

• It is a degree requirement for the BSCS and BCS, and a prerequisite for some, not all, advanced CS courses.
• Who may sign up, in the department's words: BSCS and BCS majors who have NOT passed CSCD 300 before 01/10/2023 AND have NOT passed APE before.
• Transfer students who already passed CSCD 300 elsewhere still take the APE at EWU.
• The department advises taking it after you pass CSCD 211, because it covers linked lists and recursion.
• The catalog is where the per-course requirement lives: catalog.ewu.edu/course-listings/cscd.

Official site: the home page, and FAQs 1, 2 and 14.

The FAQs page says the topics may include the following four areas. Quoted as the site has them.

Data Abstraction and Class Design. Extending a class. Overriding a method, such as toString. Creating a class. Accessing super class methods and/or fields. Implementing an interface, such as Comparable.

General Program Design. Penalty points can be assessed in this category for grossly inefficient code. File input and output. Exception handling. Order-related manipulations, such as addOrdered, sort, and search.

Linked List Manipulation. This will be a non-circular singly-linked list, either with or without a header/sentinel node. Operations will be chosen from the following list

The list, in our words: adding nodes in every case (to an empty list, to a non-empty list, at the front, at the back, in the middle); removing nodes in every case (by index, by object equality, from the front, from the back, from the middle); retrieving an item by index or by some other criterion, such as the maximum or the minimum; order-related manipulations such as addOrdered and sort, which may be shown inside the linked list; generating a sublist by some criterion; adding or removing a sequence of items; and processing two input lists into another list, for example combining two lists into one.

Recursion. Simple recursive methods to accomplish a task, which may or may not be list related. Examples would be printing a linked list in reverse, computation of factorials, and other recursive algorithms at the level of those covered in Programming Principles I and II and in Data Structures.

Official site: FAQ 15. The list is what the exam may draw from, not a promise of what one sitting holds.

In our words, from the department's list of problem areas identified from previous exams:

• Not following directions.
• Not reading the specifications in their entirety. Read all the directions before you write code. The department's own example is ignoring whether the linked list does or does not have a header/sentinel node.
• Not placing files in the specified location.
• Not naming files as specified.
• Modifying files that were to be left alone.
• Not knowing the Java keywords for inheritance (extends) and interface use (implements).
• Spending too much time on one item.
• Being unable to implement simple recursion.

Official site: Common Problems, which has the department's own wording.

In our words, from the department's Basic Strategies page:

• Stub out the methods you have to write, then fill them in when you are ready.
• Read the directions, then the sample input and output, before you write any code.
• Comment out what does not compile so you can test the rest of your solution. That includes methods you cannot get working and the calls to them from elsewhere, such as in the main method.
• Your code is tested with the original testing/main file, not your edited one.
• You may get points for code that compiles, and you get none for code that does not compile.

Official site: Basic Strategies, which has the department's own wording.

• The documents need an EWU Google login. Log out of any other Google account first, then sign in to Google Drive with your EWU email. The password is your Canvas password.
• Read the Practice APE Exam Instructions before you code. They cover importing the source into IntelliJ.
• The official exam is not formatted the same way as the practice exam, with the same number of classes and methods, and it may include topics the practice exam does not.
• The amount of code is similar to what you will write on the real one, and the practice topics are a selection from the official topic list.
• Four documents are posted: Practice APE Exam Instructions, Student Version, Solutions Version, and Upcoming APE General Instructions Preview.

Official site: Practice Exams.