I passed the SCWCD exam yesterday with 89 %.
I had been preparing on and off for about 4 months.
My prep strategy was to follow a study-schedule. (spread over 2 months before the exam actual date). The schedule helped me in covering all exam objectives.
(The MS
Word calendar template available from microsoft.com is a cool add-on for creating schedules)
The Head First Book is the KEY to the exam. Thanks Kathy & Co for a great book. Thanks all ranchers for your valuable tips and experiences.
I read all chapters twice thoroughly and again in between while doing the mock exams. I took a few free mock exams (listed below) a day before
and attempted the HF MOCK exam on the morning of the actual exam day.
I made notes while answering the mocks, and these notes helped in the last minute exam cram.
Drag and Drop - The only way to place the answer boxes on the empty boxes
is from the right side corner. (A small rectangular icon indicates the position is correct). If u try to superimpose one over the other the boxes won't stick.
There were questions from all objectives - A bunch of questions from
Design
Patterns, Webapp security & Deployment, JSTL, Custom tags.
Suggestions:
If possible take the HF Mock exam either on exam day or the day before
and review the answers / errors. I got 62 percent in the HF final exam.
Close to the exam, again revisit design patterns, deployment, & security
objectives - as these are high on verbage and have a lot to memorize.
They can also be high-scoring objectives.
For reviewing Design patterns, the bullet points at the end of the chapter and the reference documents on corej2eepatterns.com should be enough.
The HF mock exam + enthuware free tests helped MOST for the real exam.
I did not purchase any commercial exams as I could not even finish all the free ones.
MOCK EXAM INFO:
--------------
1) All individual topic
coffee crams from Head First book and the
final mock exam.
2) jdiscuss.com -
( Was able to take only 3 of the 5 available free tests for 310-081
Very Helpful for the actual exam)
http://jdiscuss.com/Enthuse/jsp/ShowAvailableTests.jsp 3) Whizlabs demo mock exam - whizlabs.com
4) Enthuware demo mock exam - enthuware.com (20 questions)
5) Certgear Demo mock exam (20 questions)
http://www.certgear.com/products/info/scwcd.htm 6)
WWW.j2eecertificate.com : (All study tests)
(most of these for the 080 version)
7) Javaranch Mock exam (080 version)
http://www.javaranch.com/carl/scwcd/scwcd_mock.jsp 8) Anand chawlas mock exam (080 Version)
http://www.podar.net/scwcd/startexam.htm 9) Deshmukh and Malaviya final exam on CD (From book - 080 verston)
JWebplus for 310-080 (Check manning.com)
[ March 20, 2005: Message edited by: Ram B ]