Exams

Here’s how the prelim and final will work. Any exceptions to the information below will be posted in Piazza.

General Information

The exam times and locations are listed on the course schedule. Please arrive 15 minutes early to be seated.
You must bring your Cornell ID card to the exam to swipe in.
Exams cover lectures, textbook readings, recitation assignments, and programming assignments. The textbook exercises are an excellent way to study for exams. The two books on programming philosophy will not be in scope for the exams.
There will be a TA-led review session to which the entire class is invited. It will be announced on Piazza.
The exam is “closed book”, but you may bring one 8.5x11” double-sided page of notes. Anything you can fit on that page (by handwriting, .001 font laser printing, etc.) is allowed.
The exam will include an appendix with brief descriptions (names, types, and one-line documentation summary) of any standard library functions that we think you might find useful.

The prelim is offered twice: once at 5:30 pm, and again at 7:30 pm. You may choose which one you wish to attend. You do not have to tell us in advance. You may not attend both. We will use ID card swipes to detect that kind of cheating.
The prelim covers everything that occurs before it on the course schedule.
There will be review sessions in section on the day of and day before the prelim. No attendance will be taken. You are permitted to attend multiple review sessions, but students registered in the section receive priority for seats if the room fills up.
Lecture is canceled the morning of the prelim to give you extra time to study.
The only makeup offered for the prelim is the 5:30 offering. No other makeups will be offered unless required by Cornell policy. Religious holidays and SDS accommodations are the usual two reasons that happens. There is no Cornell policy regarding multiple prelims within a 24 hour period.

The final covers the entire course.
You may bring three pages of notes instead of just one.
The last discussion section meetings of the semester will be review sessions. No attendance will be taken. You are permitted to attend multiple review sessions, but students registered in the section receive priority for seats if the room fills up.
If you have a conflicting final exam, or 3+ exams within a 24 hour period, contact the Course Administrator at least two weeks before the scheduled exam date. Provide your final exam schedule, as well as the estimated size of the other courses. Please note that according to Cornell policy it is the responsibility of the larger course(s) to provide the makeup. So if your conflict is with a course larger than 3110, you should be taking 3110 as scheduled.

For both the prelim and final, two sample exams and their solutions will be posted in CMS about 7–10 days before the scheduled exam date. These sample exams are from past incarnations of the course. Recognize that they do not necessarily reflect the topics we have covered in this semester.
A sample appendix from a previous semester will also be posted in CMS, but recognize that the exact content of this year’s might naturally vary.
You are welcome to discuss the problems and your solutions with course staff and other students. But the copyright on these course materials belongs to Cornell, so do not re-post any of the problems or your own solutions in venues outside this course or you might expose yourself to legal liability.

If you have a letter from SDS recommending that you be granted exam accommodations, those letters are due immediately to the Course Administrator.
Based on the accommodations that are necessary, you will receive an email from the Course Administrator with further details about one week before the scheduled date of the exam.