Chapter 19. The Essay Exam

Terms you'll need to understand:

Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
Design patterns
Design choices
Search algorithm
Multithreading

Techniques you'll need to master:

Describing your design choices
Answering essay questions about your solution
Recognizing legal and illegal Java identifiers
Justifying the technologies you used
Explaining the advantages and disadvantages of your design choices

In this chapter, you review the essay exam and learn what you need to do before taking it. Although the essay exam is short, you can still harm your final score if you perform poorly on it.

Study your design choices document thoroughly. Don't simply assume you'll remember that material for your essay exam without studying it. Also, you can't take any reference material into the exam room, so be ready before you take the exam. Certainly you know what you did, but trying to type the key details and names of classes, exact design patterns, and advantages of RMI versus sockets, all from recall, can be difficult while you're taking an exam.

The exam is simple. It took me 20 minutes to type complete answers to the five questions. I then spent 15 minutes reviewing and revising all answers. The entire exam took me 35 minutes, even though I was more detailed and careful than necessary. Even if you go half that speed, you need only an hour to complete the exam. Again, by thoroughly studying your design choices document to help you prepare, this exam will not be difficult.