24su ver.

Note: this is for the Summer 2024 iteration of CSE 121. Looking for a different quarter? Please visit https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse121/.

There will be one in-person, timed exam in CSE 121 this quarter. The exam will be on the following date

  • Final: Friday, August 16th 12:00 - 1:00 PM.

More details about the Final Exam will be released as we get closer to the date. Please reach out to Simon as soon as possible if you cannot attend the final exam in-person on the assigned date/time!

Exam Rules and Information

Logistics

The following points outline the rules and expectations that we will use during the final exam.

Materials

  • Please bring your UW ID card with you to the exam.

  • You are allowed to bring as many printed or written notes as you wish for the final exam.

  • We will provide you with a reference sheet written by us for the exam. Importantly, you are restricted to using the Java methods on this reference sheet.

  • You may NOT use any electronic or computing devices during the exam. This includes calculators, cell phones, music players, smart watches, and any other electronic devices.

  • You will need to bring your own writing implement to the exam. Responses must be written in pencil, blue ink, or black ink.

    • You may use other colors or writing implements (e.g. highlighters) to make notes, but your responses must be written in pencil, blue ink, or black ink.

Behaviour and Etiquette

  • Please be quiet during the exam. If you have a question or need assistance, please raise your hand.

  • When you have finished the exam, please turn in your exam quietly and leave the room.

  • You should not leave the exam room in the last 5 minutes of the testing period to avoid disruption during the final moments of the exam.

  • If you are sick, you should not attend the exam. You will need to contact Simon before the exam begins to arrange an accommodation for a make-up exam due to sickness. You do not need to provide medical documentation or proof of a positive test. If you’re sick, you need to stay home.

The Exam Itself

  • You will have 55 minutes to complete the exam.

    • We will distribute the exam early and you can read and fill out the cover page of the exam, but you should not look at the exam questions until you are told to begin.

    • At the end when time is called, you are required to stop writing and close your exam.

    • Students who look at the exam before being told to begin and students who make changes to their exam after time is called will receive grade penalties on the exam.

  • The exam will be conducted on paper. All answers must be written legibly and in the provided booklet. If an answer cannot easily be read or found, it will not receive credit.

  • Please be sure that the answer you want graded is clearly indicated.

    • This is particularly important if you provide more than one answer or if you have notes in addition to your final answer. You can draw a box or circle around the answer you want graded, and you can draw an “X” through anything that you do not want to have graded.

    • When in doubt, we will grade the first response written in the indicated space.

  • Space will be provided for your answers. If you need additional scratch paper, raise your hand and a TA will give it to you. You are not allowed to use your own paper during the exam outside of your single reference sheet.

  • You do not need to turn in scratch paper unless you have all or part of an answer on that sheet of paper.

    • If you have a sheet of paper with all or part of an answer, please write your name on that sheet of paper, staple the entire sheet to the end of your test (not in the middle) with a single staple in the upper-left corner, and clearly indicate under the corresponding problem that your answer is attached on an extra sheet of paper. A stapler will be available.

Code Style and Forbidden Features

  • Unless a coding question specifically mentions otherwise, the code you write will be graded purely on external correctness (proper behavior and output) and not on internal correctness (code quality). So, for example, redundancy or lack of comments will not reduce your score.

  • Please make every effort to make your Java code syntactically correct.

    • In the case of a syntax error, the grader will attempt to interpret your intended behaviour.

    • In cases where it is unambiguously clear what you meant, your score will likely be unaffected.

    • However, if the intended behaviour is not unambiguously clear, then it is likely that your score will be reduced.

  • Answers must be written as proper Java code—we will not grade pseudocode (i.e., an English explanation instead of code) or comments.

  • Unless otherwise specified, you should write each solution as a public method. You may define helper methods as part of your solution.

  • You don’t need to write any import statements in your exam code.

  • You may not use extraneous material to solve exam problems. In general, you are restricted to the classes and methods listed on the provided reference sheet. You are not allowed to use break, continue, a return from a void method, try/catch, or Java 8 features.

  • For standard Java classes such as Math, Random, Scanner, Arrays, and String, you are limited to the methods listed on the provided reference sheet. You may not use the Collections class or other standard classes and methods that aren’t included on the provided reference sheet.

  • You are also allowed to abbreviate “System.out.print” as “S.o.p” and “System.out.println” as “S.o.pln”, but you should otherwise NOT use any abbreviations on the exam.

Exam Content

There will be 3 questions on the exam, split into two parts each. Each of the 6 parts will be marked with one ESN grade, meaning you will receive 6 ESN marks for the entire final exam. Some questions may have sub-parts, but they will all be clearly marked as part of the same question.

The exam will focus on the following topics:

  • Console output (System.out.println and System.out.print)

  • Variables, datatypes, expressions

  • Control structures: methods, loops, conditionals

  • Random number generation (using Random)

  • Parameters and return values

  • User input (using Scanner)

  • Arrays, 2D arrays

The following topics are guaranteed to not be on the exam

  • Turtles
  • Reflection Topics

Exam Resources

  • Final Exam Resouce Bank - start here! A list of exam preparation materials and links to lessons and practice problems for the items on the final.

  • A reference sheet will be provided as the last page of the exam. In general, you are only allowed to use methods and classes shown on the provided reference sheet on the exam.

  • Past exams:

    • Important Note: Reminder that the format for this Summer will be different from past quarters! Notably, exams in the past are timed for 2-hours long, so keep that in mind when using them to study.

    • We strongly suggest that you try to solve all of these problems yourself, on paper, without a computer, and without looking at the answer key until you’re done. A very important skill to doing well on the test is being able to look at your solution and figure out if it works without relying on a computer or the answer key since you will have neither of those available during the test.

    • CSE 121 Spring 24 Final Exam (Solution)

    • CSE 121 Winter 24 Final Exam (Solution)

    • CSE 121 Winter 24 Alternate Final Exam (Solution)

    • CSE 121 Autumn 23 Final Exam (Solution)

      • three of our lovely TAs (thank you Trey, Hannah, and Nicole!) made an annotated set of solutions for this final! Scanned PDFs are available.

    • CSE 121 Winter 23 Final Exam (Solution)

      • NOTE: In Winter 2023 we covered File I/O, but did not cover 2D arrays, so there is a difference in topic coverage between this exam and what will be covered this quarter.

      • A previous TA (Hannah!) has made a set of practice notes for this final!

  • Online Final Review Session on Wednesday, August 14th from 4:30pm-6:00pm. The Zoom link will be posted on the Ed discussion board, and the session will be recorded.

  • Other general practice materials:

    • Past quizzes: The quiz questions we have been using this quarter are designed for our course. These are great examples of the format and concepts we will ask on the exam.

    • Past section materials: The section resources are great study problems for the exam content. In particular section 17 will be targeted for exam review.

    • Past lecture examples

    • PracticeIt!

      • Note: Practice-It! has many full exams from past courses, but these do not necessarily line up to our course content. Please take the practice exams there with a large grain of salt since they do not necessarily line up with the CSE 121 exam. If you are curious what is and will not be on the exam, re-read the section above.