Hi everybody!
I have just returned from the exam. I realize that considering a new
test all information about my humble person becomes desperately important
, so I decided to give more details.
I do not have CS degree, I have BS in math. I worked as a computer programmer 11 years, mostly with database applications. I never programmed in
Java before, this year I took 2 semesters of Java-for-first-year-students in college and after that decided: why not to get a certificate? I went through JLS and Bill Brodgen's Exam Cram, these were the only books I used. After finishing Exam Cram I took a test from this book, and scored around 75%. Then I found Java ranch... I did all mocks from Maha page, I browsed through this conference... It took me about 2 months of preparations, estimated 4-5 hours every day (after two semesters in college, which some practical experiemce but not so much theoretical knowledge).
Yesterday I took Marcus Green exam3. I had his 1st and 2nd exams before, but I've never tried exam3, I saved it for the last day to measure my scores. It took my one hour and one minute to finish the test, than I spend 28 more minutes for revision. I corrected one answer (from right to wrong
). Marcus Green said that I had 7 questions answered wrong. I agree that 3 questions were defenitely answered wrong. About others: one of questions had a wrong answer given on exam page, what was confirmed by Marcus himself. Two more questions had wrong answers (which means my answers were correct) as I could tell having made a research in Java Ranch. I posted my doubts about the last question yesterday, I can say that at least it is controversial. So finally my score on Marcus Green exam3 is between 93 and 95%.
Now about the real exam. It took me 1 hour and 28 minutes to answer questions, I had only 12 minutes for revision. I had a lot of questions on language fundamentals, 7 questions on threads, 5 on I/O, 2 on collections (very simple), 2 on events, 2 on layout managers and I cannot remember any questions on AWT classes (components, containers and so on). No questions on MediaTracker, Socket or
String append.
I bet one question was directly from Sun's examples!
I had no fill-in questions, mostly multiple choices. Sometimes it looked for me that all variants are wrong, or more than specified number are correct. A lot of questions (80-90%) had code, sometimes 4-5 lines, usually 6-10, one example had 30.
Difficulty level. My personal impression that generally questions were more difficult than Marcus Green exam, but it may be stress-related impression. We need more tacker's responses to have correct picture. Questions were not abi.. ambiquio... I never knew how to spell this
word... They were good worded. They were not tricky. I feel that probably each section has 1-2 very basic simple question, 1-2 �advanced� and rest ot them of average difficulty. So if you are not determined to answer ALL questions and get 100% you do not need to have detailed knowledge of Java classes, constructors, and methods.
I had no �advanced� questions like conversions from interface to array or static initializer's. Sun seems want to test us on �typical� situations.
I had 100% on all sections, except:
Flow control and exception handling � 85%
Overloading, overriding, Runtime and object orientation -�85%
Threads � 85%
I answered 56 questions correctly.
Paul asked people to estimate how much of their scores belong to Java Ranch. I would say in my case it's about 20%. I had different kinds of studying experience, but nothing can be compared to this conference in effectiveness and positive emotions I had. Thanks to all moderators, Maha Anna, Ajith, Jim, Rahul Mahindrakar, Jply, Vivek, Sathvathsan Sampath, Jane Griscti, mohit joshi, Sanjeev Verma, all others who posted such profound messages to our benefit, with whom I had fun to discuss my doubts, to everybody who asked question and had to tolerate my answers... I remember my teachers used to say that they receive more from their students that they give them. I always thought it's just a polite formula, but now I can say the same! When I thought about somebody question, it helped me so much to clear my our understanding! Folk here ask questions which would never come into my own head. So you all guys contributed to my result, even those who think they ask �stupid� questions!
I am sorry for unusually (for me) long post, it is my 100-th message
to this conference, and I seems decided to make it of the same length as all my previous messages combined together...
Mapraputa,
SCJP
:
score !
.
