Before I begin, I would like to give some words of advice to anybody that may be taking the computer science exam in the future. When you get to the free response section, write your responses in pencil, not pen.

Overall, the computer science test went very well. When my class did practice exams in class, I was averaging an 85% raw score on the tests, when a 60-65% is sufficient for a 5. Multiple choice section went smoothly, even though I was working and checking my answers up until the time limit. There was one question, however, that I omitted. The problem is, this was more of an English issue than a computer science issue – I literally couldn’t understand what the question was asking me.

Then came the free response section. My proctor specifically told us that we would need a black- or blue-inked pen for this section. What I didn’t catch was that we were only supposed to use pen to initial and date the front of our free response packets, not to complete the entire free response section. Within 50 minutes, less than half of the time permitted, I had finished all the problems and checked my answers. I was going through my responses and commenting my work to make the scoring process a little easier for my grader, when my proctor announces: "I noticed that some of you are using pen for your free response, but the test requests pencil." I looked up and stared at him blankly, then let him know that I finished the entire packet with pen. He quickly replied: "It’s okay, just switch to pencil now." I didn’t really see the point of switching to pencil when I was already done.

I talked to my computer science teacher after the test, and he said that he was pretty sure the graders receive the original copy to grade, or a copy that doesn’t require HB graphite. Hopefully that’s right, or else the grader might be receiving a blank page…