Let me tell it this way.It's possible for a Engineering Graduate to pass this exam and even
score better than experienced persons provided he puts his efforts.Becuase this exam focus
more at high level issues and practical experience helps but it's not mandatory.What matters
is how one applies this knowledge at his day to day work.
If a person who has architectural knowledge but does't have a code knowledge
can't become a architect.Architect must also have good command over code only then he can check
wheter his design has been converted to code.He can not always rely on developers to cross check becuase
developers may not having such high level knowledge as designer.In realtime situation the design patterns
have to be tweaked to suit the requirement.So architect withiout hands on coding experience will not be
of much use.
But i would agree with vignesh apprach of doing
SCJP and other certoifocation before doing this.Also
it does't harm any developer(even who has less expereince) of reading the SCEA matirial as it would also
change his style of thinking.
Lastly i would like to add one thing Sun had designed SCEA for existing architects rather than to-be architects.
Though sun had not made any restrictions for developers/leads in taking these certification but sun's objective
reamains same.