Passed Part II with a 79%

[Douglas Kent]

Got word that I passed (good thing) but the certmanager test site did not reveal the breakdown on how I did on each section. Just FYI, I took a week calendar time, 40 hours or so actual work time, to complete the project. Used Visio with UML addins. The score was not the best--I think one reason was that I left out user state tracking discussion, so make sure you cover how to do this in your discussion. On to the next cert!
Good luck all,
Doug (SCJP, SCJD, SCEA)

[Himal Chuli]

Congratulation Douglas!!!
I would appreciate if you could give me some idea on how to prepare the First part of it. Any preparation materials you know of.

[tom walters]

Originally posted by Douglas Kent:
I took a week calendar time, 40 hours or so actual work time, to complete the project. The score was not the best--I think one reason was that I left out user state tracking discussion, so make sure you cover how to do this in your discussion. On to the next cert!
Good luck all,
Doug (SCJP, SCJD, SCEA)

79% and on to the next cert? are you collecting these things like baseball cards? maybe if you took a little longer than 1 week you would have gotten a better score. what is the hurry?

[Abadula Joshi]

Posted by Tom,

79% and on to the next cert? are you collecting these things like baseball cards? maybe if you took a little longer than 1 week you would have gotten a better score. what is the hurry?

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Tom, I think 40 hours on it is a good deal for the certification. If he has more meaningful and chanllenging real world project waiting for him to work on, I don't see any point of spending another extra 1 hour on the SCEA "mini" project.

Abadula
SCJP/SCJD/SCWCD/SCEA

[tom walters]

Originally posted by Abadula Joshi:
Posted by Tom,

Tom, I think 40 hours on it is a good deal for the certification. If he has more meaningful and chanllenging real world project waiting for him to work on, I don't see any point of spending another extra 1 hour on the SCEA "mini" project.

Abadula
SCJP/SCJD/SCWCD/SCEA

maybe i have higher expectations than you and we have different goals wrt the scea and certifications in general. I use them as a means to improve and refine my skills. I go beyond what is needed to "just pass". i couldn't care less if i used it on the exam or not, to me the most important aspect of a certification is the road to getting it.

[Mannu Sureka]

Congratulations Douglas !!
So what is the next certification that you plan to take. How about you Tom, what's next for you.
I am planning on BEA Weblogic, i guess that would be a reasonable path to take after SCEA. Any opinions .
Ashish.

[Douglas Kent]

I guess I did sound a bit flip (on to the next one), but the real world intruded and I just did not have the time to ensure the highest possible score. My intent was to score well enough to pass, not get the best possible. It's a matter of priorities and balancing everything you have to do...all in all, getting the SCJEA was a worthwhile pursuit. I am debating whether the next cert ought to be SCWCD or the IBM XML certification-both would be useful in my work. In terms of preparation, I mentioned a few of the now-standard works - Cade, Roman, etc. Just keep poking around on the Web and you will find a good bit on preparation.

[Abadula Joshi]

79% and on to the next cert? are you collecting these things like baseball cards? maybe if you took a little longer than 1 week you would have gotten a better score. what is the hurry?

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I never disagree that we should learn something from taking the certificate. Neither did I say "just pass" should be the goal. But I certainly don't think it is worthwhile to spend too much time on it. In reality, this type of FBN design should be done within a 40 hour time frame. It just depends on how you view it --- A person who spent 40 hours shows more of his real capability, that's exactly what he can do in a real world environment; but we don't know what's real capability of the 80 hours guy in real world.
No matter you agree or not, for any exam (not just Sun certificates), if the high score is achieved only when you input much more extra time/energy on the assignment that only requires a medium amount of effort, the score doesn't reflect your capability. Learning from studying the certificate can never as efficient as learning from real experience. So my opinion is: if you have extra time to input, input it on real project instead of on studying exam. You prefer to put that extra time on studying certificate and he prefers to put it on other project, that's it. Who is doing the wiser thing depends on who eventually "learns" more...

[Del Edwards]

Douglas,
if you are already familiar with the Servet API and Servlets/JSP/web programming in general you might want to take the SCWCD exam - but if you are not all that familiar you might want to skip it. In my experience, the SCWCD involved *a lot* of memorization of classes, interfaces and deployment descriptors. Not much "fun" if you are not already familiar with the stuff and not as valuable as (studying for) the SCJP2 exam or the SCEA exam (or working the SCJD proj?? -not personally familiar...) for actually learning something you will *want* to use (IMHO - if you are using MVC patterns, Struts, XML/XSL, etc in your web tier - why would you want to learn every last detail of the Servlet and JSP spec when the purpose of most of these patterns/frameworks/technologies - is to remove as much of this type of coding (Servlet, JSP) from the development of J2EE apps???). Just my 2 cents.

[Abadula Joshi]

maybe i have higher expectations than you and we have different goals wrt the scea and certifications in general.

Tom, My expectation was high but I didn't achieve it by over spending time. My point is simple: If you spent extra 60 hours to learn some more knowledge than that 79% guy, it is not that meaningful because that "extra" knowledge is still just book knowledge, that 79% guy can spend this 60 hours to learn way more from his real work.

Abadula
SCJP/SCJD/SCWCD/SCEA

[Del Edwards]

If the score was soooooooo important it wouldn't be pass/fail, now would it?

[Sanjay Raghavan]

Doug,
Congratulations and good luck.

[Jacques Rodes]

Congratulations Doug. Thanks for the feedback.
Best wishes
JR

[Douglas Kent]

Thanks, all, for the good feedback. I wanted to post my results in order to give the community some feedback on the effort required to pass Part II (& III, but of course that's neglible). In other words, I spent about 40 hours and got a mediocre score. OK, then perhaps we can assume that if you spent 60 hours you might improve to a good, say 90+ score. Part of my motivation in getting quickly done was crassly financial, ie, being on the hook for the $400 on the ole' credit card and getting reimbursed by the company. On the philosophy of certifications, it's really a win/win no matter how you slice it. If you don't know a lot about the subject area, then you win. If you do, then get the credit. I know some folks who have completed various certs and still have a tough time finding a job--but look at the market. My experience is that completing a cert from an existing job (no matter what your score) is a plus. For instance, when the HR folks do a search for people with SCEA, my name is one of the few to come up. Result, more opportunities.