Hi all, I've been lurking around here for the past couple of weeks while preparing for the exam. I managed to pass the exam with an 83% yesterday- being a beginning programmer, I was very happy with this score. Anyway, I know that I found posts on this board with people's impressions of the real exam very helpful, so I thought I'd post the same and hopefully it will be helpful to someone:
- Personally, I found the real
test harder than the mocks. Not so much because the questions themselves were harder, but becuase when I took mocks, I would check each answer right after I answered the question- this was the best way to make it a learning tool for me. So when I was doing the mocks, I'd get constant reassurance after each question that yeah, I was doing well. Of course in the real exam, you don't get this constant feedback. So I definitely was NOT confident of how I was doing.
- However, I did better on the "real" exam than on the mocks. I attribute this to the fact that on the mock exams, I'd give a question a little thought, then go look up the answer. On the real exam, I went through the questions very slowly, thought about the answers over and over, etc. On my first pass through, I "mark"ed any question that I wasn't absoultely 100% positive about (about half the questions)! Then I went back through the marked questions a second time- I think I changed 2 answers (1 of them I know I changed to the right answer, the other I'm not sure). Even with going through SLOWLY and re-checking about half the test, I finished in about 1 hr. 30 min. So I really recommend taking your time and not rushing.
- I've seen people post that they encountered a bunch of questions on the real test that were basically identical to mock questions. I did not find this to be the case. Same topics, of course; similar questions, of course; but I don't think I had any questions that were exactly (or even almost) the same.
Nonetheless, i think that taking lots and lots of practice tests was VERY instrumental in preparing me for the real thing.
Topics I got:
- 1 question on GridBagLayout (it was a tough one- I had to make an educated guess).
- A few other AWT/layout questions.
- 2 File I/O questions (1 easy, 1 harder)
- 4 or 5 "fill in the blanks". Most were easy, but 1 was a little unclear as to what they wanted you to do- but I think I figured it out and answered it correctly.
- The rest were on pretty typical topics- Threads (nothing too advanced), exception handling (basic knowledge of try/catch/finally), rules of equality (== and equals()) rules of overloading/overriding, etc.
- I've noticed people saying they got a question on "media tracker". I did NOT. I'm very glad because I don't even really know what it is!
[This message has been edited by Katie McCann (edited July 25, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Katie McCann (edited July 25, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Katie McCann (edited July 25, 2000).]
Katie: Congratulations! and thanks for the tips.
