Hi All,
Passed
SCJP 1.4 with 81%. I think it was an okay score as i spent just three weeks to prepare for the exam.
Many thanks to
- Khalid Azim Mughal, Rolf Rasmussen, for an excellent book,
- Velumurugan for his notes,
- Bill Brogden, Marcus Green for their book which i read in 2 days (didn't feel like leaving it., dealt the concepts amazingly)
- Dan Chisholm -> I enjoyed solving your problems.
Here are some tips for experienced ( 3+ years atleast) programmers who wish to get certified fast.
Here is how i prepared for the exam.
a) Week 1 -> Logged onto
http://javaranch.com and read messages of successful candidates. That gave me the much needed INSPIRATION. Also went through the Faq several times. I spent around 2 hours per day during this week.
b) Week 2 -> Went through Mughal, Rasmussen's book atleast 5 - 6 hours a day.
c) Week 3 -> Started solving Don Chisholm's papers. Though i couldn't solve all of them but i covered about 50% of them in 4 days.
d) Bought Brogden, Marcus Green's book and read it for couple of days. I liked the book so much that i spent around 7 to 8 hours each day.
e) One day before the exam i printed Velumurugan's notes and went though it thoroughly, Though the notes is designed for 1.2 version it covered 1.4 too.
f) I had enough time to take just one exam of Marcus Green's Mock exams and i scored around 70%, i knew i was very careless when i took that exam and made silly mistakes. But i had enough confidence by then to appear for the main exam
Most of the credit goes to my 5 month old who gave no troubles at all during my entire preparation and my wife who kept on discussing the topics with me even during dinner
What next ? Want to take the Web Component Developer exam as i am working with JSP/Servlets for the last couple of years.
Many many thanks to all of you ranchers. This website is a paradise for
JAVA guys..., Excellent website.
Thanks
Kumar Vadlamudi