University of California, Berkeley: How can I prepare for CS70 well enough to get a good grade for next semester?

I just took 70 this last semester (Spring 2016) and managed to earn an A in it. This was the first math or computer science course I managed to get an A in, and it’s not easy to do, given only about 15–20% get As in a semester (the class is a forced curve).I spent my winter break reading last semester’s lecture notes and then doing the homeworks associated with each lecture immediately after the lecture. The homework will be extremely hard compared to what’s being presented in lecture. You have to repeatedly go back to the concepts and just try again and again until you succeed. Even fully understanding the concepts, I found that problems required a degree of creativity and cleverness that unfortunately, I did not have in abundance, but I made up for it by doing a ton of problems.Come class time, try to pay attention to the lectures; Pr. Walrand can be extremely boring and difficult to understand due to his accent, so I’d recommend listening to the webcasted lectures. Do the problems along with him, pausing the video as needed.Problem sets took about 20–30 hours a week on average for me. There will be some very easy, mostly computational problem sets, that took me 2 hours to finish, to massive 10 proof problem sets I couldn’t even completely finish. The tutors are a great resource, but don’t rely on them as a crutch. Try to come up with the solutions on your own; that way you think about them more deeply.Exams are always extremely stressful. I always spent the week leading up to midterms reviewing old exams, doing the problems, and trying to “diagnose” what areas I was weakest at and improve on them. Know all the proofs covered in lecture and be able to modify them, and be able to explain them to someone in plain language. You will be allowed a cheatsheet—do the cheatsheet, even if you feel like you know everything, since it forces you to condense your knowledge into one or two sheets. I cannot tell you how many points I would’ve lost if not for that cheat sheet. And I cannot overemphasize the importance of doing old exams—problem “types” (e.g. dilution, the birthday problem, etc) come up on exams with frightening regularity, so being able to do them in a pinch is handy.Come exam day, don’t panic. You know the material well, you’ve studied harder than everyone else. Tests are fair. They test your knowledge—if you’ve prepared adequately, you should be fine. Work through everything at a moderate pace. Time will be an issue, but as long as you’re not hung up on one problem for too long, you should be fine. Read through every problem once, quickly. Classify it, then tackle it using strategies you know. If you can’t do that immediately, think about what tools you have to tackle it. The readers give partial credit for “promising thinking,” and you’ll gain lots of points from that.The average score for tests is around a 50/100, lower for the final. This score translates to about a B-/B. That means in order to get a B+ or higher, you have to outperform the average, which is incredibly difficult to do, given that this is Cal computer science. You’re competing against these incredibly smart, driven people. But don’t worry—I had very little background compared to many people, who had years of math olympiad or coding experience, and I managed to achieve an A based on sweat, blood and tears.It’ll be a lot of work. It’ll be a lot of pain. But if I could do it, so can you. I believe in you.

I realize this question is really old but I just want to chime in for anyone who comes across this in the future looking for advice.As Kevin mentioned, the material doesn’t really change. Fortunately you can take a look at the course website to see very detailed course notes and lecture slides http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs70/sp16/. I recommend at least skimming all of these before the semester starts so you know what you’re getting into. Homeworks and discussion worksheets are posted as well but the homework solutions are usually taken down after the semester (to prevent cheating), but I believe old discussion worksheet solutions are still active so if you’re really ambitious you can work them and check your answers.During the course, the best thing you can do is read the appropriate course notes before each lecture and really struggle with them to understand each theorem and proof. In my opinion, at least for this course, lecture shouldn’t really be the place where you see material for the very first time. Instead, lecture is where you fill in gaps, get some intuition, and see approaches to solving problems. It’s very easy to get lost which is why it is better to have struggled through the material before you get to lecture. Your time is important, so don’t waste it being confused in lecture!Unless you did a lot of math competitions in high school (and did well in them), you should really be studying a little bit each day throughout the semester. The topics in CS 70 do not come easy to most people and you might be in for an unpleasant surprise after your first midterm if you just study two days in advance. Seek out problems, know the notes cold, and build your problem solving skills. There really is no substitute for practice.Lastly, look for patterns. Every example problem they give you will have a key insight that will likely end up on the exam. Prof. Walrand kept reminding us that CS 70 really is not that bad. You just have to connect the dots. Enjoy it too! It’s a great course.