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Whizlabs/Preparation

 
Greenhorn
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Well, I passed the exam on Friday!!! Wooo whoo! But I wanted to make a post here regarding Whizlabs, so that others who are in the same boat might not be discouraged. I used Whizlabs and took a lot of their practice tests. I think I only passed 2 times when taking those and when I passed it was just barely. Most of the time I failed by 5-10 percentage points. I thought I would let everyone know so others are not discouraged if they're using Whizlabs.
 
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I have heard the same comment about Whizlabs. Out of curiosity what is your score, if I may ask? Just to know what a score in Whizlab can entail in the actual SCJP.
 
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Hi Tim

Well I am in the same boat and have found Whizlabs to more difficult than the questions in K&B book. It can be discouraging when your initial scores are low , but I am going forth like a determined soldier. Can you give me more clarification on your preparation and scores in Whizlabs and on the real exam.
 
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what is your score on whizlab and after that on SCJP?
 
Tim Holmes
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Preparation: Read through the K&B book taking notes. Then I went through the Whizlabs tests (I think there are 8). After I got through about half of them what I did was submitted the whole exam without answering a question. Then i went through and tried to answer the question without looking at the answer and then reviewed it immediately. This helped me a lot. One thing I didnt' like about Whizlabs was that you do 60 some questions and have to remember what you were thinking on each one in review. I found this hard. I also went through some of the short custom tests.

On Whizlabs, like I said, I scored usually just below passing. On the actual exam I scored a 68%. As an aside on Whizlabs in threading a I did great and usually got them right. On the actual exam I scored the lowest in that area.
 
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Tim, firstly well done passing, you're brave to fail mocks and write anyway.

Anyhat it's a little late for you now, but for others this might be useful.
Instead of submitting the whole exam and reviewing each question, cheat on some of the exams. By that I mean treat it like an open book exam, use your IDE and use your API docs, even google.
Do this for the first few exams, you'll start to find the pattern in the questions and soon you'll answer them without any help.

The K&B book you bought comes with an open book exam option, use that too and check the hints before the reference. Try to solve the problem, even if you go to your IDE and compile, this counts as experience and I find it's so much richer than merely cramming facts.

PS did you take SCJP 5 or SCJP 6?

Spare me some best wishes as I'm planning to write on Friday, else late next week.
 
Tim Holmes
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I guess I forgot to mention that I did a lot of coding, referring to notes and looking at Java Docs. Honestly, it helped me more to just see their answer specifically on the ones where it was more complex and there was not a quick API type reference answer.

As far as being brave...because of when I signed up I had a free retake (which I didn't have to use).

I did the Java 5 Exam.
 
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Congratulations! We are glad to have contributed to your success! We look forward to contributing to your future certification exams.

Best wishes
Ritu Sharma
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Whizlabs Software
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