2020 College Board MC Review

December 2023 (461 Words, 3 Minutes)

My score:

• I scored 62/67
• This post will cover my journey, learnings, and discovery throughout the test

Journey:

• Last trimester, I scored 57/66 on the 2018 Practice MCQ so I’m pleased with the stellar improvement
• The prime factor of this improvement was the quality of the team teaches
  • All of the team teaches had enough content to give me an idea of the concepts the quiz tested me on, but I definitely need to do my own research and watch the college board videos myself to minimize the time I spend on those types of questions.
  • I’m happy to say that I only lost one point regarding conceptual topics covered this trimester.
• However, I should give myself just a little bit of credit as I have noticed a more rapid improvement in my computer science skills as of late. I feel like I’m finally starting to peer over the learning curve and develop into a decent coder
• To be fair though, there were certain conceptual topics I did need to look up as I hadn’t learned them yet, which I will bring up in the “learnings” section of this review.

Learnings

• A key learning for me when I was taking the test was on question 40:

Which of the following best explains how a certificate authority is used in protecting data?

Responses
A
A certificate authority certifies the safety of a particular Web site so that users know that it does not contain any viruses.

B
A certificate authority issues passwords that grant access to secure databases.

C
A certificate authority maintains a secure database that maps all Web domain names to the IP addresses of the servers where the sites are hosted.

D
A certificate authority verifies the authenticity of encryption keys used in secured communications.

• What I learned was that a certificate authority is a entity which verifies whether or not a website, domain, or organization is trustworthy and certifies the ownership of a public key accordingly
• I hadn’t learned this before, which meant that the question was a good learning opportunity for me
  • However, this means I’ve only scratched the surface of computer science and shows how I need to start becoming more involved in this field to acquire the necessary knowledge to be successful

Discovery

• My biggest discovery was the type of questions college board tends to ask
• For example, for most of the coding related problems it is essential to think fluidly and see the big picture
• I missed the following question because I hyperfocused on one part

The following procedure is intended to return true if at least two of the three parameters are equal in value and is intended to return false otherwise.

PROCEDURE AnyPairs (x, y, z)

{

IF (x = y)

{

RETURN (true)

}

ELSE

{

RETURN (y = z)

}

}

For which of the following procedure calls does the procedure NOT return the intended value?

Responses
A
AnyPairs ("bat", "cat", "rat")

B
AnyPairs ("bat", "bat", "rat")

C
AnyPairs ("bat", "cat", "bat")

D
AnyPairs ("bat", "cat", "cat")

• I chose D because I was only looking at the code and saw how the “y” and “z” values of AnyPairs were equal and should return true even though it is intended to return false. However, I didn’t see in the intructions where it specically gives context for when it is intended to return true or false

Conclusion

• Overall, I think that this quiz was a rousing success and a good benchmark of my progress so far
• I have big plans for the future, and this progress check is giving me even more motivation to pursue said plans!