Just thought id let you know of my experience with the 1.4
scjp.
Leonardo i did the 310.035 exam and i think your doing the 310.055 exam which is probably a lot more difficult but maybe the same will apply.
I finished university in May and have been looking for a Software Development role in Dublin Ireland and they are very hard to get so i thought id do the scjp to help me get a job.Anyway i got a job in the meantime and thought id finish off the course as im not starting the job til January.
So in my case i had lots of time to study as i was not working full time.I would do about 4 hours a day reading through the K&B book which i found very good.I was writing notes as i went along to make sure that i was fully understanding each topic.I also find it really good for revision reading my own notes.
I did the end of chapter quizzes and generally got over 60% in them.I had booked the exam for the 21st even though I hadnt finished the course as i wanted to make sure i had it finished before christmas abd if i had a set date i would have to have all my study done by then
When i finished the course i started doing the mock exams on the cd which i got about 50 - 60% so i was a bit worried.
I was lucky hat a lot of the topics i covered i had studied in detail in university so most of the course wasnt new to me although i didnt know it in as much detail as the exam requires.
After that i remembered that the book mentioned a site called javaranch so i decided to check it out and im so glad i did
I started doing the mock exams that were recommended in this forum.I read through loads and loads of pages and found some good linnk to exams such as
http://www.jchq.net/phezam (marcus greens masterpiece)
https://coderanch.com/t/252044/java-programmer-SCJP/certification/useful-info-reg-SCJP I just kept doing exam questions from anywhere i could find them and i made sure i wrote down every question that i got wrong so that i woulcnt make the same mistake again.A coule of days before the exam i went back over the 2 minute drills in the book and only marked the bits i didnt know 100%.This way i had a list (long
) of all the bits i wasnt great at and i concentrated on those bits the day before the exam and it seemed to pay off.Wahoo
The exam itself had lots of tricky questions but it also had a lot of very easy questions so it balanced out fairly well. I started off slow and was worried in the beginning because i was sending a lot of time on the harder questions and was afraid i was going to run out of time.In the end i finished the exam with about 20mins to go so i spent that time looking over the questions id marked to make sure i answered them to the best of my knowledge.I ended up leaving the exam 1 minute early like the rebel i am
and waited nervously for my result which ended up to be a good one!!
I got lots of questions on threads which was my worst section.Think i got 62% in that but all in all i would say it was almost exactly as easy or difficult as Marcus Green exam and the euthaware exam i took here which was just a trial.Actually the exam engine itself was laid out a lot like the euthaware one.
www.enthuware.com Anyway if i can do it as a recently graduated student with no commercial
java experience (yet) then you can do it too