Requisites for passing SCJP6 has changed

[Rodolfo Landa]

I just found out that the requisites for passing SCJP 6 has changed:

Number of questions has changed from 72 to 60
Pass score has changed from 65% (47 correct answers) to 58% (35 correct answers)
Time limit has been reduced from 210 min. to 180 min.

At first sight, it will be easier to clear the exam but,

Are the questions harder to answer?
Did the objectives changed in any way?

If somebody knows about it, will be glad to hear it

Thanks in advance!!!

[Jason Irwin]

What? Can you cite a source for this?

Sound like the SCJP5 exam to me; or are you confusing it with the new SCJP Plus exam that is only in beta at the moment?

[James Elsey]

Hello,

I am currently studying for the SCJP for Java 5, but I see it being some time before I'm ready.

Where did you find this information regarding the changes? I've seen in another thread here that the SCJP could be phased out and replaced with a similar exam, SCJP+?

Can anyone give a heads up on what is likely to change? It would be useful for myself and anyone else that comes across this thread

Many thanks

[James Elsey]

Just to add, I've found this post which may be of some info

http://blogs.sun.com/rpeleias/entry/d%C3%BAvida_tirar_a_scjp_normal

most of the links are to a Brazilian Java forum, unfortunately I can't speak Portuguese, but maybe someone here can offer a few translations!

[Rodolfo Landa]

I found that at Sun's web page:

http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/CX-310-065.xml


I found out because yesterday scheduled for taking the exam and today received confirmation from the prometric center. They told me that the exam will last 3 hours and I just got as surprised as you. Then I went to Sun's web site and confirmed that it was true.

Weird doesn't it?

[Jelassi Rim]

Saturday, I have schedule to take the SCJP exam on 3th August, and I have have received the eMail Confirmation from Prometric containing that the duration of the exam is 3:30.
So, what I will take the new or the last version of the exam?

[Lucas Smith]

I think that this version will be easier to pass. Sun wants to encourage people to get SCJP6, because Sun wants to earn more money. It can be the last chance to get SCJP6 because the Plus version is near.

[Jason Irwin]

I'm sitting mine on the 4th and have enough stress about it without Sun playing silly beggars with the marking system.

I'll call Prometric tomorrow and find out, but I doubt they'll know anything.
Is 75 questions and a 58.33% pass mark too much to hope for? Probably.

[Jason Irwin]

Lukas Smith wrote:I think that this version will be easier to pass. Sun wants to encourage people to get SCJP6, because Sun wants to earn more money. It can be the last chance to get SCJP6 because the Plus version is near.

Easier...hmm, every question you get wrong takes a bigger bite out of your overall mark and, if the exam hits one area you are weak in slightly harder, then it is probably more likely you will fail. With 75 questions there is more chance that stronger areas can pull the mark up.

Or it could just be a mistake on the website. Stranger things have happened.

[Charles Guo]

Rodolfo Landa wrote:I just found out that the requisites for passing SCJP 6 has changed:

Number of questions has changed from 72 to 60
Pass score has changed from 65% (47 correct answers) to 58% (35 correct answers)
Time limit has been reduced from 210 min. to 180 min.

At first sight, it will be easier to clear the exam but,

Are the questions harder to answer?
Did the objectives changed in any way?

If somebody knows about it, will be glad to hear it

Thanks in advance!!!

Hi Rodolfo. I just took the SCJP6 yesterday (7/27) and found it surprising that there was only 60 questions. I ended up with a 86% (52/60), but was hoping to reach the 90% plateau, oh well...

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about the exam, but I will anyways . But I'll first disclaim that my test may or may not be indicative of the entire set of SCJP6 tests. My test, at least, was pretty straightforward, definitely not nearly as many tricky questions like those in the K&B book/MasterExam. The time limit was indeed 3hrs (180 min), but my score sheet indicated that 66% was a passing grade (meaning 40+/60). There were no questions on Serialization/Backed Collections/Navigable Set or Map on my test, which was quite surprising. There were more questions on Enums and Inheritance (IS-A Has-A) than I expected. Overall, it was ok. After leaving the testing area, I felt I did pretty well, but was a little disappointed after finding out the results.

Hope I didn't give away too much, lol

[Deepak Bala]

Interesting info. Thanks for sharing

[Nitish Bangera]

Hey thanks for the info.....This is a big change that SUN is doing. This means they are really going to take off SCJP once and for all and put in programmer plus. Well the stakes have gone up for the exam as 1 question will award you 1.67% now. It looks great but also some thing else too.. well i will be giving the exam in mid August. I hope i am totally prepared with subject.

[Lucas Smith]

So what about the passing score?
Is that 55% or 65%?

[Nitish Bangera]

60 questions and we have to get 35 correct answers i.e 58.33%s.

[Lucas Smith]

Charles Guo wrote: The time limit was indeed 3hrs (180 min), but my score sheet indicated that 66% was a passing grade (meaning 40+/60).

OK, so what about that?

[Jelassi Rim]

Charles Guo wrote:

Rodolfo Landa wrote:I just found out that the requisites for passing SCJP 6 has changed:

Number of questions has changed from 72 to 60
Pass score has changed from 65% (47 correct answers) to 58% (35 correct answers)
Time limit has been reduced from 210 min. to 180 min.

At first sight, it will be easier to clear the exam but,

Are the questions harder to answer?
Did the objectives changed in any way?

If somebody knows about it, will be glad to hear it

Thanks in advance!!!

Hi Rodolfo. I just took the SCJP6 yesterday (7/27) and found it surprising that there was only 60 questions. I ended up with a 86% (52/60), but was hoping to reach the 90% plateau, oh well...

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about the exam, but I will anyways . But I'll first disclaim that my test may or may not be indicative of the entire set of SCJP6 tests. My test, at least, was pretty straightforward, definitely not nearly as many tricky questions like those in the K&B book/MasterExam. The time limit was indeed 3hrs (180 min), but my score sheet indicated that 66% was a passing grade (meaning 40+/60). There were no questions on Serialization/Backed Collections/Navigable Set or Map on my test, which was quite surprising. There were more questions on Enums and Inheritance (IS-A Has-A) than I expected. Overall, it was ok. After leaving the testing area, I felt I did pretty well, but was a little disappointed after finding out the results.

Hope I didn't give away too much, lol

On 25th July 2009, i have received the confirmation mail to take SCJP 6 on 3th August 2009 with the last requisites of the exam (72 questions and the pass score is 65 %)
Yesterday, I just found out that the requisites for passing SCJP 6 has changed (only 60 questions)

So what I will take the last or the new version of this Exam???

[Nitish Bangera]

If the testing software doesn't provide 72 questions then how will you answer 12 questions more...... Its changed means that now the testing software all over the world will have only 60 questions.

[Nitish Bangera]

Lucas the grade sheet that they gave him wasn't an updated one that's y. It used the old standards of SCJP 6 probably. Well now that its clear from the sun website....y are you bothering with the grade certificate. The original sun people will give a certificate and if the score is above 58.33 then they wil obviously print as A sun certified programmer line.

well with the help of the Ranch, the score will be much higher than that.

[Jason Irwin]

I have just got off the phone with Prometirc - their systems are showing 60 questions and 3 hours (I forgot to ask about the pass score).
They could no tell me when or why it has changed.

Must say I am pretty annoyed - how hard would it have been to send an email; or at least make a public announcement!

[Rizvan Asgarov]

Hi Friends,

Rodolfo Landa wrote:
Number of questions has changed from 72 to 60
Pass score has changed from 65% (47 correct answers) to 58% (35 correct answers)
Time limit has been reduced from 210 min. to 180 min.

This is a beautiful news for us for the present. Because I plan to take my SCJP exam on September. But it is very interesting for future people if it can be the last chance to get SCJP6.
I hope that everything will be good...

Jelassi Rim wrote:
I have schedule to take the SCJP exam on 3th August

Good luck on your exam! By the way, don't forget for giving information about exam. Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
Rizvan

[Lucas Smith]

Rizvan Asgarov wrote:
But it is very interesting for future people if it can be the last chance to get SCJP6.

No, it can not be the last change. Sun has to inform 3 months before the SCJP6's retirement.

[Ken Truitt]

Given that they are going to switch to another format, I can see no compelling reason for this small change.
Most of the remaining test takers will take the current version because they've already been studying it
for a while--and preparing for the 72-question version. Why change it?

[Jason Irwin]

I have no idea - but Prometric confirmed to me that it was 60 questions and 180 minutes.

[sneha pandey]

I passed SCJP 1.6 today. Pattern has been changed now.

No. of Questions : 60
Time: 180 mins
Passing score : 66% (though on website they have mentioned 58%, but in my score report passing score is mentioned as 66%)

The questions were more practical than theoretical. Also there were very few questions from sample papers.

I found the level bit hard and tricky than Java 5


Thanks,
Sneha

[Jason Irwin]

66%? What the heck are sun playing at? Are there a plans for these certs or just a random number generator?

Oh, and someone better up the the FAQ as it is now out of date!

[Vamshi Jampala]

Hi I am planning to write SCJP and wondering which one to choose either 1.5 or 1.6.

Can any one help in selecting the exam ? I have seen suns website pass % was 58.33, but sneha shared something different. So whom should I beleive ?

Thank you All

[Jason Irwin]

This thread is about the changes to the SCJP6 exam - there are lots of threads about your question, I suggest you search for and read them.

[Vamshi Jampala]

Hi All!

I called the Sun Customer care and they said that whats on their site is appropriate.

So, I will write 1.6

@Jason : Thanks for your time

[Jason Irwin]

Yeah - nice of them to tell people they were changing it and why!

[Charles Guo]

Jason Irwin wrote:Yeah - nice of them to tell people they were changing it and why!

The test got easier

chillax

[Nitish Bangera]

Why are people bothering about 66%? They updated the testing system but not the copy certificate.

[Abhijeet Pathak]

Does it matter what is the pass percentage?
One should reach a point where all of his answers tend to be correct.

[Ritika Angrish]

Hi I m planning of giving SCJP but m very confused about which version to give.. can anyone just help meinthis regard.. should it be SCJP5 or SCJP6? Whats the difference in all this and how to start preparing?

Thanku

[Jason Irwin]

This thread is about the changes to the SCJP6 exam - there are lots of threads about your question, I suggest you search for and read them.

I see little point in doing SCJP5 - it is an older version of the language and v7 is due to land next year; so SCJP5 will be due for retirement soon.
SCJP6 is the "current" one, although that will be getting replaced by SCJP Plus.

As above, use the search to find out what you need and start a new thread if you still have questions.

[Jelassi Rim]

sneha pandey wrote:I passed SCJP 1.6 today. Pattern has been changed now.

No. of Questions : 60
Time: 180 mins
Passing score : 66% (though on website they have mentioned 58%, but in my score report passing score is mentioned as 66%)

The questions were more practical than theoretical. Also there were very few questions from sample papers.

I found the level bit hard and tricky than Java 5


Thanks,
Sneha

Today, I taked the scjp 6 exam , me also, in my score report passing score is mentioned as 66%, Total os questions is 60, and Time=180 mins
, whearas, on the site web was 58.33% and the questions were more practical ...What Sun are doing?? Are there a plan for these certification

[Nitish Bangera]

Well that's ok if you have scored much better than that....How was the exam and what's your score? It doesn't matter what the requisites are, we still got to do our best.

[Jason Irwin]

I have just sat (and solidly passed) SCJP, so here is what I now know.

The pass mark is 66%, despite what is says on the Sun site. If you get 65% or something, I am not sure if you can appeal or do anything like that.

Questions:
Scanner, Pattern, Matcher, Locales etc: Nothing.
RegEx: one question, simple
File i/o: one API question
Readers, Writers etc: Nothing
Enums: Nothing
Serialisation/Deserialisation: Nothing
Compiler: Nothing
Running from the command line: One question,. sort of (mostly about the classpath)
JAR files etc: Two questions, sort of.
Threading: about 6 questions, ranging from the dreadfully simply to the quite complex. You will need to understand exactly how synchronization ect works.
Generics: About two. You will need to know the rules for defining a generic class and a generic method
Flow control: About 2 were explicitly on this, but this obviously crops up in many code samples
Exception class hierarchy: About 2 were explicitly on this. You will need to memorise the entire Exception hierarchy for those that are on the exam (RuntimeException, Error, ArrayIndexOutOfBound etc etc).
Member initialization: One on this. When finals can be initialised etc.
Inner, local and anonymous classes: Err...about 3 I think. Maybe 4. When can an inner class be directly accessed? Does it need an instance of an outer? What about local? How do you use an anonymous.
Set, Maps, Lists: About 4 explicitly on this. What offer constant insertion.removal time, traversing, random access etc

There were about 5 questions which relied on you spotting the simple syntactical mistake. If you have been using K&B you will spot these easily.

Everything else, and I mean, everything was on inheritance, overloading, overriding, shadowing and so on. You must be 100% sure you know what depends on Reference type and what depends on instance. When members shadow and when they override. When a class can instantiate another one and when it can't. When an inner class can be reached and when it can't. When methods are valid overrides and when they are not etc.

Almost every code question had "Does not compile" or "Exception at run time" as an answer. Again, if you have been using K&B you will be well prepared.

Be Careful
The exam software is very crude, it is quite easy to cause the wrong checkbox/radio button to be selected. Make sure the pointer is exactly on top before clicking. And then check every answer carefully right at the end - even if you are sure you are write; check that the correct option is selected.

So have the requisites changed? In one sense, no. The exam is just shorter, but obviously there is some serious breakdown in communication at Sun (maybe caused by the Oracle buy-out) and thus confusion over what is actually required.

Obviously this was just my exam - I think the contents have a random element, so yours may well differ.

(And what the heck is up with the ranch just now?)

[Nitish Bangera]

How much did you score??? Was it a full score?

[Jason Irwin]

It was good enough to be a very solid pass. The actual percentage does not matter in my humble opinion.

[Lucas Smith]

How do you know that passing score is 66%? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that 66% (40 good questions) is passing score?
I think it's unfair that Sun's site says something different.