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SCJP 5.0 Preparation

 
Greenhorn
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Hi, everybody

I've been a lurker for quite some time in these forums -well since I decided to take up the Certification over 2 months ago-, and finally I decided to become a member to share my two-cent opinion with you.

First of all, I'm pleased to say that I cleared the SCJP 5.0 with 75% this morning. I know this info really belongs to the results forum, but I'd like to share some tips on my preparation with other members, which I believe makes it worth posting here. Please let know otherwise.

- I read the Heller (5th edition) and the Sierra & Bates (for 1.4) in parallel (the former to cover the new topics and the later to enjoy learning :-) I must say the Heller book is quite superficial and hard to read at times -definitely not worth the money, I'm glad a friend of mine lent it to me-, but until the new S&B is published, it's the only one available.
- I have been doing the daily question from Marcus Green's examulator, as well as his free questions. Definitely worth it, I don't know about his study notes "TigerTamer", they are probably worth buying and reading too, but I only found about it 4 days ago, too close to the exam to go through 200 pages.
- The Whizlabs questions constituted very good training, as they are the only mock exams for this version; despite having quite a few errors and an unfriendly interface (the exam one is much better), I found them to be an invaluable help in my preparation.
- The generics tutorial from the sun website is excellent. If contains far more that what's required for the exam, but if you understand the tutorial, you know everything you need for the exam.
- I did the mock questions from javabeat (11 from S&B and 14 on generics).
- And finally the study notes from MZ (tiger guide in java.boot.by).

And now to the exam itself.
- There's a debate in this forum about what version to prepare. I didn't have any doubts in going for the 5.0. It's better, though harder, much harder than the 1.4, and in any case I have been using generics for quite some time at work now. I understand some people may be scared of failing it, but that's what precisely makes the latest version more worthwhile. Don't attempt it without the right preparation though.
- The level of the questions is somewhere in between Marcus Green's ones and the Whizlabs simulators. Some people have said Marcus' are on the same level, but I don't agree, the exam is much harder.
- My weakest point was API, which is fairly surprising, I believe I had that part under control. This probably means that the obvious answers weren't the right ones (or that I didn't know my methods as well as I thought :-). On the other hand, I found the concurrency questions quite hard, but my marks were fairly good, which I guess it means no tricky questions there.
- I found the first part of the exam quite hard, and it wasn't until half way through it when I encountered a batch of more accesible questions, that I got that warm fuzzy feeling of "ok, I think we are doing alright now", if you know what I mean.
- Overall, it was quite a mentally tiring exercise, but rewarding nevertheless.
- Time wasn't really an issue, I finished with 25 minutes to go, and spent about 15 reviewing.

I hope people find this post helpful, and good luck to everybody.

Regards,
Alex
 
ranger
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Actually, you are correct in first posting here to give your tips. Then what happens is that I move this thread to the Certification Results forum, but a copy stays here for people to see. But I will move it later to give people a day to respond if they need to.

Mark
 
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Congratulations, Alex !

 
Ranch Hand
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Congrats Alex,

I hope the time is enough as you said bcos some of the questions that i come across are really very lengthy.
[ December 06, 2005: Message edited by: serish selvaraj ]
 
Ranch Hand
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Congratz Alex!
I took (exact) the same level of preperation although I waisted my (boss') money on the Heller Book.
I scored 73% with control flow as major weak point. Concurrency and API where quite good, but these were mine weakpoint coding experience so I focused on those.
I also spent some time on this forum which was quite helpful and even a fun thing todo.
regards,
Jeroen.

BTW I found the Marcus Green questions quite accurate.
[ December 07, 2005: Message edited by: jeroen dijkmeijer ]
 
arch rival
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Congratulations Alex, and thanks for the name check.
Marcus
 
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