Passed SCMAD 75%

[Dean Fredericks]

Passed SCMAD today.

Score was bit low - but it was to be expected since the exam doesnt have a nice Head First Book to go with it. Also i was a bit impatient, so i didnt review my answers cause i had to get back to work ASAP... And when i got home I remembed some of my mistakes - Like I remeber this code example was instanting CLDC datagram connections, but i forgot that the CLDC datagram stuff is all interfaces - so i def answered wrong.

I study the book "Professional J2ME" just to get basics, and left out anything in the book to do with bluetooth or 3d graphics, which is not in the exam.

Studied the specs alot - more than the book. The specs are pretty clear.

To suceed in the exam, study the specs. Study the CLDC and MIDP java docs, jusr check out all the packages and what they are for, how they work etc.
Study things like WMA well - cause the WMA spec is so small and easy, that u can learn it quick and get 100% for that section of the exam.

Pacticed with Whizlabs scmad simulator. What a bad peice of software, but anyway... there is another post on this forum about that. You should still use it to practice with though, otherwise u just wont be prepared for the things u are going to be asked, and way they ask it.

I felt whizlabs focused on alot of details that, while is part of the specs, just wasnt in the exam. Like remembering names of system properties like "microedtion.encodings" etc,... no questions like that.

I Did get tested on heirachy of MIDP UI classes and CLDC connection classes.
Questions on GameAPI and MMAPI was dead simple. Questions on RMS, aimed to trick u so badly. Questions on networking were aimed to trick you badly too.

The exam doesnt seem to test differnece between MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0 like whizlabs did. MIDP is tested only. You do need to know the differnce between CLDC 1.0/1.1 - because JTWI could be use either.

The exam was tough its easy to pass, HARD to do well. Multiple choise answers gave many many options to choose from. Alot were not just 4 choices select 2. Like 6+ choices select 2.

My biggest gripe about the exam is the english used wasnt clear. I feel multiple choice answer should be easy to read, so u can understand easy what u are going to select. But often I coudlnt make out what they were asking. I felt some questions could be answered depending on how you understood the question - not on weather you knew what they were trying to test or not.

So far - I rate that SCBCD was the easiest. SCMAD the most difficult - but not impossible, you should still pass, just ur score might be a little lower then SCBCD and SCWCD. For comparision, i scored 80% for SCJP (i was a noive at java then) 85% SCBCD, and 81% for SCWCD.

SCMAD has the lowest pass mark of 55%, so if you dont care about ur score, u can still easy scrape throuh by just getting the basic questions right.

Thanks
Dean.

[Abiodun Adisa]

Nice Score men 75%, you can give me 20 points out of that and still be comfortable So how long did it take you to pass this exam? Did you just read the specs or you practised with writing some codes and understanding j2me in particular. The reason i ask this is that with some certifications you can actually read for the exam without really understanding what the technology is all about

[Bert Bates]

Congrats Dean!

Your comments are really interesting! (I have a true confession, I wrote a lot of the RMS questions, I thought they were pretty clean I didn't want them to be tricky, just to see whether you know the stuff or not without being able to guess the answers :roll: )

Anyway, it's interesting that you thought it was harder than SCWCD and SCJP - I wouldn't have said that but maybe it's true! We'd really like to write an SCMAD book - we keep waiting for J2ME to get more popular. Personally, J2ME is my favorite part of Java!

- Bert

[Rohan Piyathilaka]

Originally posted by Dean Fredericks:
Passed SCMAD today.

Score was bit low - but it was to be expected since the exam doesnt have a nice Head First Book to go with it. Also i was a bit impatient, so i didnt review my answers cause i had to get back to work ASAP... And when i got home I remembed some of my mistakes - Like I remeber this code example was instanting CLDC datagram connections, but i forgot that the CLDC datagram stuff is all interfaces - so i def answered wrong.

I study the book "Professional J2ME" just to get basics, and left out anything in the book to do with bluetooth or 3d graphics, which is not in the exam.

Studied the specs alot - more than the book. The specs are pretty clear.

To suceed in the exam, study the specs. Study the CLDC and MIDP java docs, jusr check out all the packages and what they are for, how they work etc.
Study things like WMA well - cause the WMA spec is so small and easy, that u can learn it quick and get 100% for that section of the exam.

Pacticed with Whizlabs scmad simulator. What a bad peice of software, but anyway... there is another post on this forum about that. You should still use it to practice with though, otherwise u just wont be prepared for the things u are going to be asked, and way they ask it.

I felt whizlabs focused on alot of details that, while is part of the specs, just wasnt in the exam. Like remembering names of system properties like "microedtion.encodings" etc,... no questions like that.

I Did get tested on heirachy of MIDP UI classes and CLDC connection classes.
Questions on GameAPI and MMAPI was dead simple. Questions on RMS, aimed to trick u so badly. Questions on networking were aimed to trick you badly too.

The exam doesnt seem to test differnece between MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0 like whizlabs did. MIDP is tested only. You do need to know the differnce between CLDC 1.0/1.1 - because JTWI could be use either.

The exam was tough its easy to pass, HARD to do well. Multiple choise answers gave many many options to choose from. Alot were not just 4 choices select 2. Like 6+ choices select 2.

My biggest gripe about the exam is the english used wasnt clear. I feel multiple choice answer should be easy to read, so u can understand easy what u are going to select. But often I coudlnt make out what they were asking. I felt some questions could be answered depending on how you understood the question - not on weather you knew what they were trying to test or not.

So far - I rate that SCBCD was the easiest. SCMAD the most difficult - but not impossible, you should still pass, just ur score might be a little lower then SCBCD and SCWCD. For comparision, i scored 80% for SCJP (i was a noive at java then) 85% SCBCD, and 81% for SCWCD.

SCMAD has the lowest pass mark of 55%, so if you dont care about ur score, u can still easy scrape throuh by just getting the basic questions right.

Thanks
Dean.

"superb keep it up i am also planing to finish the exam"

[Bert Bates]

ok - time to move this over to the results forum!