MC Strategy
70 questions, 120 minutes: just under 2 minutes each — but the real math is easier: the exam is 57 short single-selects, 5 passage questions, and 8 multi-selects. Most short questions take 45-90 seconds. Bank that time for the passages and the grid questions.
Pacing plan
- Pass 1 (about 80 min): every question in order. Answer every one you are confident in; star and skip anything that makes you stall.
- Pass 2 (about 30 min): the starred ones, hardest first — you are warmed up now.
- Pass 3 (about 10 min): bubbles checked, guesses made. Never leave a question blank — there is no penalty for guessing.
The question types
- Single-select (57): four choices, one right. Mostly code reading: "what does this pseudocode display?" — trace it like we traced the enemy state machine.
- Passage (5): a paragraph about a computing innovation, then questions about benefits, harms, data, and bias. Read the questions FIRST, then skim the passage for the answers.
- Multi-select (8): pick exactly TWO of four. You need both for full credit. If you only see one that is right, the other is usually the "obvious but wrong" twin — find the one the question is really about.
The trap catalog (learn the traps, dodge them for free)
| Trap | Looks like | Dodge |
|---|---|---|
| Reference-sheet indexing | "REMOVE(aList, 1)" — the exam's lists are 1-indexed, your C# is 0-indexed | Cross out index 0 in your head. The reference sheet itself calls this the #1 trap. |
| Off-by-one | REPEAT 5 TIMES vs a list of length 5; index 5 is out of range | Count on your fingers. Literally. |
| Integer vs decimal division | 3/2 displays 1.5, not 1 — the exam's / is real division even between two integers | Opposite of C#: the exam does NOT truncate, C# DOES when both are ints. Cast, or use MOD for remainder. |
| Reversed logic | "Displays the number of values GREATER than x" — the answer choice counts less-than | Underline the comparison word in the stem. |
| Not-quite-loops | A loop that runs but never updates the counter → infinite | Check the update line before anything else. |
| Bandwidth vs latency | "Faster download" answers on a question about ping | Bandwidth = how much per second; latency = how long until the first byte. |
| Lossless vs lossy | "ZIP restores exactly" vs "JPEG restores close enough" | ZIP/PNG/GIF = lossless; JPEG/MP3/streaming video = lossy. |
| Correlation vs causation | "Games cause grades" from a dataset | Pattern ≠ cause. That is the whole answer choice. |
| Phishing vs virus vs DDoS | Mixed-up threat types | Phishing = social engineering; DDoS = traffic flood; malware = code. |
Using our clinics
May 5-11 we run three full practice sets + one written-response drill. The 48 questions are on the clinic pages themselves —11.4a Set 1 (mixed),11.4b Set 2 (data + networks, the targeted set), and 11.4c Set 3 (mixed, compressed time). Answer a set, press Grade this set, and you get your score, the per-family breakdown, and a list of exactly which traps from the catalog above you fell for.
That trap list is the point. It turns "I did badly on data questions" into "I keep reading the exam's lists as 0-indexed" — a sentence you can actually fix tonight. Take the traps the scorecard names, re-read their rows above, and bring the top three to the next clinic. The last week is for fixing YOUR specific leaks, not for more content.