<p>I know this is a bit late and I don’t mean to bump.</p>
<p>I took the test last year and got a 5. Of course, I did take the class, albeit it was an online course with a really lenient instructor and at this excruciatingly slow speed (I love CS).</p>
<p>Besides this, my only preparation was taking the 2009 test as practice. IMO, the actual 2010 one was way easier. When I took the practice test, I panicked on the free response GridWorld questions. However, you should realize that you get about 10 minutes more than you need per question. When I had finished my free response and double-checked all my answers, I had about 10 minutes left and I actually went to sleep…before I decided to check my answers one last time and realized I wrong one of my answers on the the DO NOT WRITE ON THIS PAGE page. I was transferring them when time was called and led to perpetual anxiety about my score for the next 2 months.</p>
<p>What kept me from going crazy was reading that almost 25% of those who take it get 5s in recent years.</p>
<p>Now to actually answer your questions:
Self-studying should be viable.
Seeing how you’re a mathematically competent, I don’t think you’ll need to devote more than an hour a week after you’ve grasped Java. The latter part may take a while by yourself though. </p>
<p>After this, I suggest you to write a program such as a standard-deviation calculator (this is what I did) every month as part of your preparation. I find that learning computer science out of a book is utterly boring and near impossible, while coding is just the opposite.</p>