After several weeks of studying, I finally took the OA today and passed.
Not too bad, right? I was hoping to get at least one “exemplary” in there but I’ll take the passing grade regardless. Glad to see my time and effort pay off!
The exam was an hour and a half long but it only took me 25 mins to get through it all since the material was pretty similar to the practice assessment. If you’ve done well in the PA like I did, I wouldn’t worry about the OA too much. It’s not a carbon copy, obviously, but both have similar questions and tackle the same topics.
This is the first time I had to use the new proctoring service called ProctorU/Guardian. You launch it by first installing their custom-made browser and doing the test in a tab inside that browser.
It is a multiple-choice exam. You are not writing code but you have to understand pseudocode if it is used in the question. You also have to understand how to read graphs, tree structures, explain Big O notation for time complexity, and know the characteristics/factors of an algorithm.
Now that I’m finally done with this class, I can share the study path I used to pass the course.
C949 Study Guide (2025)
- Don’t use the zyBook at the start, but instead download: A Common Sense Guide to Data Structures & Algorithms.pdf by Jay Wengrow – the best comprehensive book to learn DS&A!
Trust me, the zyBook starts going into some advanced concepts way too early and without really bothering to explain those things in a way you can understand. It will just make your head spin. Don’t try to go into the exam by using the zyBook alone. In fact, I would suggest not even using it for the first week, but instead starting with the book by Jay Wengrow as a solid introduction to DS&A.
Take notes as you go through each chapter and make sure you understand each topic!
P.S: You don’t need to do the coding portions of the book. As long as you understand how the algorithms do what they do at a high-level, you’re good for the test. The OA will not have you coding these things, only interpreting the code and asking you to explain how each algorithm works.
- Download this C949 checklist:
- Download my study notes:
Search & Sorting Algorithms Study notes
- After getting the C949 study guide from your WGU class page (read this to know what I’m talking about), you are ready to start using the official zyBook on WGU.
- The main chapters to focus on are: Ch. 1 — Ch. 11 (inclusive)
- If you already know Python, you can skip the Python chapters (12 — 19)
- Ch. 20 & Ch. 21 are also important, you need to know about Classes and why they are used, as well as recursion and recursive functions.
Finally, I would heavily recommend using this practice set on Quizlet to review everything you have learned so far. The reason I am recommending it is because most of the things that I found on there were very close to what was actually on the OA.
When you get on Quizlet to review what you’ve learned, please use the Learn feature on the page:
Trust me, it’ll be like taking another practice assessment.
And that’s it!
You should be good to take the OA once you’ve gone through everything in the checklist, the study notes, and the zyBook chapters on the study guide. Don’t forget to do the Quizlet!
Good luck
Last Updated on December 2, 2024
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