hello all. i passed today with 77%. thanks to all those who answered my questions and to this wonderful site. as for the exam, it is not hard at all. JQ+ is awesome. some of the 'near exact' questions in the mock were on my exam! as for what you've heard about getting tough questions on i/o, forget it!! know the constructors for file, filereader/writer, datainput/output stream, inputstreamreader/writer and buffered.. i scored 100% using just these tips. as for threads i scored 71%, the questions delt mainly with sychronization and understanding
thread states - read
scjp chap. 9 at least 3 times before taking the exam. my major downfall was operators and assignments, where i scored 57%!!! i could not believe my eyes; then it hit me, this is why everyone keeps saying 'know the fundamentals'. in my mind that phrase is very vague and can be loosely interpreted. so let me help those of you who feel the same way.
1. really understand assigments to references and to unlike dataypes.
2. understand |, &, && and &&
3. understand variable shadowing
4. understand array's being passed as parameters
that's all i can recall from that section, but i must know say the same thing 'KNOW THE FUNDAMENTALS'. my background is a degree in comp sci. and programming in ASP for 2 years. i spent 3 months studying about 1-2 hrs a night (as i have 2 kids and work full-time). i did very little coding, and took around 20 mock exams (15 were jq+, marcus 1,2,3 and jtips 1,2); jq+ being the most useful. as you've heard before time in not an issue i finished in 1.5 hrs. people at the
testing center seem to be unorganized f-ing idiots so be prepared. alas, my best advice to all is simply to read scjp, and take jq+ until you get 90% on all 9 tests, write some sample code, if you need; and remember 'learn the fundamentals'. good luck to all. i'm off to study for the component developer exam.
