Hey all,
I am feeling very proud and happy to share the good news with you all that Today I appeared for SCWCD exam and cracked it with 85% marks. I want to thank you all ranchers who answered my questions�. in fact this forum was one of the source of inspiration for me. I would like to share my preparation strategy with all of you.
Preparation time:
2.5 months in total. Previous experience in Servlet�s and
JSP:
NO Stage 1 of my preparation: One day I was traveling in the bus where I saw the Head First book (by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates and Bryan Basham) in the hands of my friend. From there the idea of cracking SCWCD came into picture. I bought the book on the second day itself because I like the way concepts are explained in that book. I was impressed by the cover page and funny ways of explanation. This book has a very friendly approach of studying no doubts about that. Hats off to all the authors. I finished this book in 25 days flat.
I made the personal notes of mine in my notebook. Up till this time I was not as member of this forum of
JAVA RANCH.
Stage 2 of my preparation: Once, I finished this book I heard of Java Ranch and become the member of this forum of SCWCD (the vital ingredient of my success) I visited regularly at this forum, I must say ALL PEOPLE WERE VERY HELPFUL. So I would like to thanks each one of you.
After this I purchased the �Study Kit-Second Edition� book by Hanumant Deshmukh, Mathew Scorpino. I finished the book in 25 days. I would say it�s an equally good book as compared to Head First. It has altogether different approach of study and the syllabus is consolidated in a precise way.
I continued to make the personal notes in mine in my notebook. Stage 3 of my preparation: After finishing these 2 books I searched the internet for all the available free mocks. I solved all the free mocks. It took 15 days of time. But somehow I was not satisfied with the preparation of mine.
I keep on making my personal noted in my notebook. I have NOT used any commercial simulator like Whizlabs, Enthuware etc.
Stage 4 of my preparation: Finally, I get back to the wonderful HEAD FIRST BOOK again. This time I finished the book this time in 10 days. I keep on making the notes of mine during this, then I gave the much awaited final mock exam of Head First book (With the exception that I know how many correct answers were there. I make an excel sheet and noted the no of choices against each question, similar to the real exam). I scored 65% marks in that. So
�+20% rule� worked for me.
So my suggestions to all the fellow people of this forum is that, keep on noting important points and concepts while you study any book/material/mock
test. IT WILL BE VERY HELPFUL at the end of preparation.
There were no outside questions as per the syllabus of head first BUT keep an eye on the language of the questions in the real exam it's very tricky sometimes. ALSO I got 2 questions which were testing the
SCJP knowledge but its very basic everybody can understand that.
That�s it for now. Time for party folks. It�s the time to Disco... All the best to each one of you...
[ December 20, 2006: Message edited by: Siddharth Purandare ]
