I passed, but it was MUCH HARDER than I expected. Two big complaints:
1. A couple of the questions were very poorly worded. In contrast, I felt that all of the practice tests that I took were precise. One would expect the opposite.
2. The questions were not selected well. E.g., instead of asking a range of questions about a particular topic, they asked the exact same question in multiple ways. This was good when I knew the answer, and bad when I didn't.
Also, I found the level of difficulty of the harder questions to be similar to the tough / very tough questions on the JQ+ tests. In fact, on my
test, 1 or 2 of them seemed to come directly from JQ+.
I only did the trial JQ+ tests and I got a 57% (which freaked me out) and a 78%. I should have bought JQ+ but I only found out about it 2 days before the test, thanks to a visit to JavaRanch.
I prepared for the exam by reading Exam Cram, filling in details with Khalid Mughal's book, and taking every free practice test I could find. I've been a
java programmer for almost 2 years, so I originally thought I didn't need to prepare at all. I was so wrong.
My advice is:
1. Buy JQ+ and memorize every question.
2. Make sure your study books are up to date! My copy of Mughal's book (1st printing) has some big errors in it, which I had to figure out the long way. This was definitely my fault.
3. If, while studying, you start to ponder some obscure java question ("hmm, I wonder what would happen if...?"), make sure to follow up and figure it out!!! I had 2 such questions come up on my test. While studying, I didn't pursue it because I thought it would be too obscure to ask on the test. _Nothing_ is too obscure to ask.
Btw, thanks to all of you for posting your stories. I spent most of the last 2 days looking through the success stories, following the advice and gaining comfort that people actually pass this test.
Kim