First of all, i would like to mention that I have been a silent member of this community for the past 15 days. I want to thank all the various people for sharing their experiences on taking the
scjp.
i took the
test last friday in nyc, and it was a little tricker than i expected. I thought i would get an 80 something, but when i was all done, i hit print and voila, a 91%! wow!
The new test format gives you 2 hours, which was enough time for me to basically take the test twice. I REALLY recommend that you guys take the full 2 hours, because i found like 10 questions i had the wrong answers for... this is because
some of the code snippets i had were really long (almost full screen!). Did anyone else have code that long? Also, the real test is a bit easier because they tell you the exact number of choices. So instead of selecting "Choose all that apply:" it is now "choose the 3 that apply". Some of those choices are long though, and you gotta read more carefully.
I think as long as you are clear on fundamentals, it's not that tough. Just gotta watch out for all the tricks. Know Overloading/Overridding. There are
alot of code snippets that basically boil down to is it correctly overridden/overloaded correctly. ALso, you have to know threads. I had 10
thread questions. Also, memorize the I/O constructors. I had 6-7 questions. Collections and Util package was not that bad. only had like 4. just know the collections and what the restrictions are on each one (set holds unique values, etc.). I only had 4 awt questions (I guessed one right) and chose to sacrifice time on AWT to focus more on threads. You may want to do the same since threads had SO many ?s.
As for my prep, i studied for like 10-11 days. I took the jchq mock exams and scored about an 80 for each one. i also took 2 of the more difficult mocks on the internet. Believe me, the test is ALOT easier because you know exactly the right number of choices you need. That is the reason for my grade jump.
Anyway, thanks to all the people that shared their exam experiences and to the ppl here at javaranch. i don't think i would have done it without you.
jae park
