Hi guys and gal,
Just wanted to let you know that I successfully passed the new exam with 88%

. I was expecting 95% but last night could manage just 2 hrs of sleep (not because i was tense or anything but coz i am basically a nocturnal creature

) and must have made some silly mistakes :eek

Some observations of the new exam that may be useful to aspirants.
1. The new exam does consist of longer codes but that is compensated by some of the easier theory questions. I was able to complete with 20 mins remaining for review. i would advice take time and try to make correct choices at the first go without assuming that you will get a chance to review. mark only when absolutely necessary. i marked a lot of questions (to be safe) which actually i shouldnt have marked and while reviewing i found it difficult to give justice to the real marked ones. it was actually a waste of time reviewing some of the easier marked questions.
2. I found the new exam of approximately the same difficulty as the mock exams. Clear indication of number of correct choices actually helped me out at least a few times.
3. I found the hardest section the section on threads. There are 7 questions here and most of them codes. I got 5 right here. There was one big code about synchronization which was 30 lines long.
4. If you have the fundamentals right, passing should not be any problem. In fact i believe its easier now with 61%
5. Books I refered : Main book Khalid Mughal (recommended) which is very well written except possibly on Threads. It was actually a pleasure learning and revising from the book. Book(2) the well know RHE-also a nice book. Some
testing on my own and basically thats it.
6. Time for preparation. I prepared for approx 4 weeks. I had some basic experience in
Java earlier (writing loops, strings) nothing hi-fi like events,
jdbc etc.
Typically i was scoring between 85-90 in the mock tests (including the three marcus exams). I must have given some 5-6 from Mahas site (which is actually a

site).Max was 95 and min was 78. typically I was making about 2-3 silly mistakes, other questions being wrong coz i didnt know them.(i guess becomes difficult to avoid silly mistakes in Multiple choice questions due to lack of concentration sometimes

)Today i guess i made more coz of numb mind (lack of sleep

)
I didnt study anything the day before the exam and went to bed early, but mother sleep had some other plans and refused to adjust to the new normal timings

My biggest advice to all: Give test with concentration and confidence and you will clear.
I would be more than glad to answer more specific questions.
[email protected] bye
and best of luck to the aspirants
Hope this message gets posted
Namit