Just failed my SCJP/OCPJP

[alan alanalan]

Hi,

I just failed my SCJP/OCPJP exam. It was my first attempt I got 38%. I prepared for the exam with the Sierra and Bates book and used Certpal and some whizlabs/exams from this site for practice exam preparation. I scored well enough on the practice exams but obviously better the more times I did the same exams. No question on the exam completely stumped me. I don't want to fail this exam again so could I ask does anyone have any tips/advice on passing the exam or anyone that has failed the exam and then passed what did you do to pass the exam?

Thanks in advance.

[Himai Minh]

Alan,
No worry. Some people took the exam twice before they passed it.
Sierra and Bates's study guide is good enough to pass the exam. Review the self-tests carefully and digest the explanations.

[Paul Anilprem]

This page explains one way to make the best use of the mock exams.

HTH,
Paul.

[neil walker]

Here's a list of loads of mock exams, mostly free:

http://www.certpal.com/
https://coderanch.com/t/546876/sr/certification/links-OCJP-mock-test-preparation

Don't worry about it too much, do more mock exams and for everything you learn put some code down in as many stupid and seemingly pointless ways as you can to test your hypotheses (e.g. can you pass an int variable to function taking a short, is a null string an instance of a string) and it'll stick better.

Just remember that you can be a brilliant Java programmer for 15 years and fail the exam, there's no shame. The exam isn't about showing your ability as a programmer, all certification exams are mainly about finding ways to make you fail by using obscure and irrelevent coding practices, misdirection and obfuscation. I imagine by reading the book you'll have already noticed this. In my opinion there should be absolutely no questions on the exam resulting in a compiler error.