Dear all,
Yesterday, I attended the certification exam and am proud to tell you that I passed with only 5 failures
... and lucky for the 54 others
.
It was very stressfull for me to take this exam as it was my first exam I took in nearly 10 years time
! It was at a point I had some difficulties to concentrate on the meaning of the questions, or lost in the code....
It took me about 50 minutes to go through all the questions. The exam application allows you to mark the ones you're not so sure. Try to use it more than I did (only checked 3 of them). The countdown itself is part of the stress, especially at the beginning as I took a lot of time for the first 10 questions. After having reviewed the 3 left questions, I had no courage to go through all the questions again and I ended the exam. Once done, I didn't see my score directly, and had to click a Print button to have the results printed at a remote printer somewhere. But you can't leave right now
, as you have to answer a questionnaire for Sun on your actual
Java experience. I guess they use it to see if the exam results reflects real Java experience.
I then exited the exam room and was given the exam report. After a moment of suspense while reading, I saw the following "TEST STATUS: pass" :P. The exam score report is very detailled, so that you know what to prepare again if you failed.
Some
thread questions are though and it took me more time than for other questions to reply, though I got 100% for those.
I am very gratefull to all of you who have spent some time in this forum, by asking questions or replying to. Many thanks to all those who have passed the exam and been able to give a lot of tips. I would not be able to give more than what was already given this week, since their description really.
Here are the advices I would give to those who are planning to prepare their exam now
:
1. Prepare Try to read as much litterature as you can on Java before the exam. There is a very large number of books on the subject so you will not have much difficulty to find one that suits you.
Two books I would recommend are:
- Java 2 (Exam Cram) by Bill and William B. Brogden
- Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide (RHE) by Simon Roberts, Philip Heller and Michael Ernest
2. Use mock exams (but don't waste them)
Be sure you have a good understanding of all subjects related to the objective of the exam before you run into all available mock exam. If you do that, it will be difficult for you to make a clear evalutation of your skills by trying them latter since you might remember the correct answers for a particular question. And even worse, we will get used to answering over and over again the same questions and will be lost the day of the exam (as me at the start of the exam :eek !
After each mock exam, for all failures, go again through you documentation, and if you think an answer on a mock is incorrect, or something is wrong in a book, verify yourself in the JLS (Java Language Specification) or in the Java 2 Platform certification.
3.Test yourself on this forum
I tried as much as I could to answer questions from others on this forum, which is a very good exercice. Sometimes, I was forced to go through the documentation, or to write some code, but it was worth ! There is a lot of brilliant people on this forum and you'll learn as well a lot by reading answers even on questions you thought you knew. I have spend a couple of weeks on this web site doing this.
4. Write code
There is nothing better that practical experience for the exam. Though most of the questions are theorical, it will help you to have hands on some subjects, like I/O or exceptions for instance.
I would like to thank you all for your contributions and ideas that have helped me to prepare my certification in the best way ever.
Best of luck for you all !
Beno�t