Hi guys,
I passed the exam this past Monday.
Here are my thoughts on how I would go about studying for the
java exam if I had to do it again:
Visit these links:
This person has categorized some good studying materials in stages:
http://www.geocities.com/kongwenyu/sjpc.html Here you can measure your mock exam scores against the scores of people who have passed the exam:
http://www.jdiscuss.com/Enthuse/jsp/ViewAllResults.jsp Great resources:
http://www.javaprepare.com/ List of more resources:
http://www.javaranch.com/gramps/SCJPLinks.jsp JQPlus is the best (and very affordable - $20) exam engine. This is the one
you should buy if you only buying one. I didn't like the one from whizlab (it had many questions on
applets and I was getting 75% at a time when on Marcus I was getting 50-60%). It has 300 questions and you can see your week areas:
http://enthuware.com/jqplus/ To me paying $75 for the Sun exam was worth it. If anything it gave me a good idea of the style and level of difficulty (it's pretty similar to the real thing) of the real exam. I pretty much only used it the day of the exam before I went in. I went through every question checking my answer. It has I think 290 questions.
http://suned.sun.com/US/catalog/courses/WGS-PREX-J025B.html The free practice exam from Sun is here:
https://tmn.sun.com/WLC/servlet/GuestLoginServlet?id=programmer Good mock exams:
http://www.jtips.net/index.html Marcus Green excellent mock exams:
http://www.jchq.net/ Velmurugan excellent study notes (you're not going to learn from these, but they are an excellent and concise review material)
http://www.geocities.com/velmurugan_p/notes.html Books I used:
-Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide (RHE) - If you are not very experienced with Java, this is the book for you.
-A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification - Mughal - Very hard book. Twice I wanted to give up the exam after reading this book and taking the exercises in it. However, it is excellent, it throughly explains the concepts. There are some chapters in it you don't need to study though (applets, painting, others).
-Java Exam Cram - Excellent and concise. With the topics less known to me I often read this book, THEN I read RHE, THEN I read Mughal. This was the best approach.
My recommended strategy:
First read the books and learn the material, take the exercises in the books. Have a notepad and take notes of the topics and you don't know in a way that you can study them from you notes. I recommend going through one book, then start taking JQPlus, then pick up another book and focus on the areas where JQPlus tells you are week. At this point, I had discarded my first notes and started a new notepad, this time with less topics that needed my attention. After you're done with the second book, start taking some mock exams. At this point you should have a very good idea of your week points. So get cue
cards and write what you don't know by topics with a full explanation, including examples, one for each topic. For example: methods, inner classes, variables, one for each i/o class, one for each layout manager, etc. Go through these EVERY DAY at least once. If you think you'll end up with more cue
cards then you're able to read in one day, you should still be focusing on studying the books instead of doing the cards or taking mock exams. Once you're working with the cue cards and doing mock exams, write on new cue cards those questions that you get wrong on the mock, even (and specially) if they are the ones you know that you know. You might end up with card of repeated topics, but that way you'll end up reading the topics you're having trouble with twice at least. When you start getting those right you can take them out of the stack. Save your best exams (Marcus, Sun, JQPlus Random) for the last days before the exam. Being able to immerse myself in the mock exams and the notes (not watching tv, not doing anything else) for the last 2 days before the real exam was crucial.
Someone at JavaRanch gave a really good tip on studying for layout managers and i/o: read the J2SE documentation. You need to know the classes hierarchy and the methods that they inherit and create. When you're studying this topic and the book presents you a class, have the documentation near and go through the entire class.
Know the fundamentals.
Also, try and participate in the JavaRanch discussions. If there are questions you don't want to answer that's fine. If there are questions you can't answer that's not a good sign. Searching for the answer and answering questions that you don't know are a good way of engraving that in your head.
I coded, but didn't code as much as generally recommended.
My scores:
JTips 1: 38%
JQPlus Ramdom: 61%
JQPlus
Test 3: 51%
RHE Exam 1: 62%
RHE Exam 2: 68%
RHE Exam 3: 66%
Marcus 1: 73%
Marcus 2: 68%
Sun Certification - Passing score: 61%; my score 74%; studying time: 3 months; java experience before start studying: 3 months; my next step: study for the SCWCD while I look for a job in Boston.
I would not have done it without all the info on JavaRanch. It was really helpful to know where I was and where I should go, based on everyone's comments and suggestions. I too always wanted to have my name on this section, and am very happy I've made it! Guys, I was smiling all the way home after the exam.
Ah, one thing to comment about the facilities: The computer had Win3.1 (never thought I'd see this again in my life) and a 10" monitor. I couldn't see the question and the code at the same time, it was very annoying and time consuming to go from one window to another.
--Carlisia
