Hello All,
I completed the Part I of
SCEA 5.0 successfully on Monday. I got only 67%.
I am a bit disappointed with my lower marks. But considering the long duration of my preparation and various other factors, I think I will take it. Because, during the exam, I thought I would not even pass. I have taken
SCJP earlier(93%), but this one is vastly difficult and vastly different. This exam was really difficult. You have to really think long & hard, factor in so many things before arriving at an answer.
For one question, I remember I had to choose 2 out of 4. For me, all the 4 appeared correct! For another one, had to choose 3 out of 4, could select 2, but had a hard time in choosing the 3rd one (Most of the questions are like this). For one question, there were 7 choices of which I had to choose 5. I am sure that was gone.
I marked 20 questions - meaning I was doubtful of that many and in the end, the results showed that I had answered 21 incorrect which is a bit demoralizing.
Also, there was a bit of drama too in the way of power fluctuation after I answered 7 questions, but once it returned, I could start where I left off.
Thanks a lot to everyone on this forum. I have been following this forum for long and plan on participating more to give back.
There were lot of questions on
JSF. Questions on whether you would go with
JSP or JSF. Security questions were too difficult. I felt
Patterns were much easier than I thought, but surprisingly I did not get that good marks in patterns too.
I have more than 8 years of experience (5-6 years in
Java). I worked on a really strong
EJB 2.1 project for 3 years, so that was easier for me. I hadn't worked much in web projects, so I was weak in JSP related stuff. Security as I said, I was kind of beginner in that.
I used the following:
1) GOF for Design Patterns
2) corej2eepatterns.com for JEE patterns
3) Professional EJB by Rahim Adatia and Faiz Arni
4) Google for Web Services, JSF and EJB 3.0
5)
http://java.boot.by/scea5-guide/ This is a excellent study guide particularly for Security.
6)Mock exams -
http://www.javabeat.net/cert/scea/mock-exam/scea-mock-exam-questions-1.php These mock exams are for the older exam. But still very good, there are 11 exams of each 25 questions. So, do attend this. You can ignore questions on i18n and UML.
I scored over 80% consistenly in these exams.
7) Whizlabs Simulator
My weak points were JSP and the new things like EJB 3.0, JSF and Web Services. Since there are no free mock exams available, I bought whizlabs.
I scored consistently around 75-80% in all exams including the final exam. Also, I could finish the mock exams in 40-45 minutes.
But, the real exam questions are way more difficult than Whizlabs. I took 1 hr. 15 minutes to complete and I did have time enough to review all the questions.
The real exams are definitely more lengthy, much more subtle, much more indirect than any of the mock exams. I remember only 2-3 questions which had straightforward answers.
Nevertheless, the mock exams were pretty useful for me for the diagnostic exam showed me how weak I was in some subjects. The study notes are excellent, but they are for the old exam. Only thing I felt was, propably pricing was a bit on the higher side.
Thanks once again to everyone on this forum. I will take a break now before deciding on when to go for Part II.
Ranga.
