Hi all,
I just passed the SCJP2 exam with 95%. Yay!
Thank you to everyone on the forum for making it such a great place to prepare, and particularly to Tony and Jim for all your effort!!!
I'll try and pre-empt some of the questions with some comments ...
I had been working on a
Java project for about a year before starting to study for the certification. [If I were to have taken the exam based on just my working knowledge, I think I would have got 20% (if I was lucky).] Thereafter I worked for about a month towards getting prepared. I primarily used "A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification" (Mughal and Rasmussen), and to a lesser degree "Java 2 Exam Cram" (Brogden). I found the first book particularly good (and quite a bit more detailed than will be required for the exam). I also used the JDK docs in conjunction with these. [I didn't use any of the study notes on the Web.]
Most of my time was spent going through Mughal and Rasmussen, and then in the last week or so I tried to do a good number of mock exams. My recommendation is to _first_ try and get as much of the detail understood (and for that Maghal / Rasmussed is a good choice), and then do more general revision as the time draws nearer. [That way your revision will be enforcing a solid foundation ... at least that works for me.]
The mock exams I did included the ones in the two books, the Marcus Green exams (1 & 2), and various others (which I forget now). I would recommend doing lots of mock questions, because if you're anything like me they will quickly show you that you don't understand things nearly as well as you thought you did :-) [I learn well by making mistakes.] I started out with the Mughal / Rasmussen one, and got about 74% ... thereafter I started doing better until I was getting around 90%.
As others have said the actual exam seems to be easier than many of the mock questions - largely because they are worded pretty well (and unambiguously). It's probably a good thing the exam is easier, because the pressure of "exam conditions" makes me consider myself lucky if I can remember my name :-)
Focus on the fundamentals (but obviously don't ignore the other stuff). Time was not a problem. [I was able to go through it twice, with a few minutes to spare.]
Details? I couldn't tell you much about the specific types of questions I got, as much of that is now a blur. I got multiple choice, multiple answer and straight text answer questions. [There weren't as many multiple answer ones as I had expected, which was good.]
I think I've run out of things to say so I'll cut it off there. Once again thanks to everyone out there for the help! All the best to you all for your respective tests!
Greg
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