Dear fellow members,
I passed the OCPJP7 exam with 78% on 9th Sep 2014. My version had 90 questions to be answered in 150 minutes and the passing score was 65%
Resources:
Mala Gupta's "OCP Java SE 7 Programmer II Certification Guide Prepare for the 1ZO-804 exam" book, for which, I was fortunate enough to be one of the humble reviewers too.
SG Ganesh, T Sharma's "OCP Java SE7 Programmer Exams 1Z0-804 1Z0-805" book.
I, largely, followed Mala Gupta, which is a fantastic book. I also referred to Tushar, Sharma for any additional material that was new from Mala Gupta's book e.g. I thought DAO design pattern was slightly better explained in Tushar, Sharma.
I also used:-
http://www.tutorialspoint.com
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/
Java SE7 API
Questions:
In addition to the chapter end questions and full-length Mock exams in both the books, I bought the official question set from Oracle (Kaplan) for the same exam. The question set was, certainly, useful but I thought it was a little expensive at $69. I also bought Enthuware and I would rate Enthuware more useful than the Oracle's own official exam preparation questions set.
Exam Venue:
I took the exam at the Pearson VUE test centre in Gurgaon, India. They have exactly the same set-up as when I took the GMAT exams too, which means, you have a dedicated video camera recording the whole exam for each of the test takers. You are not even allowed a bottle of water with you for a 2.5 hour exam. Another good thing about Pearson VUE is that I had absolutely no distraction from the other test takers as strict silence is maintained, while at the Oracle's own test centre for OCAJP7 exam, I, sometimes, got distracted by the fellow test takers.
Funnily enough when I took the test, there was only three of us taking different exams and all three were non-Indians. I hold a British passport, another guy was from America and the third guy was from Africa.
Lastly, at Person VUE test centres, you could take the exam any day (Mon-Sat), even on short notice. I booked my exam just 2 days prior to the exam date.
Exam itself:
I don't remember many questions. But I can give you the overall summary, which is that out of 90 questions, there was no more than 3 questions, that by just reading the question, I thought, oh that's easy, I know the answer to this one. Rest of the questions, were of medium-high difficulty level. Except for these 3 questions, all of the questions took me on average, 1.5 minutes to answer, which is the max time limit per question. When the 2.5 hrs of exam time finished, I was at the last question and had no time to review the questions that I had previously marked to revisit.
The level of questions seemed so high that when I finished the exam, I was almost convinced that I didn't pass the exam but was very happy to see that I passed.
A lot of questions were code based questions.
One of the things that I was worried about was running out of time. So, I was keeping an eye on the remaining time and, at every 10 questions, I would calculate a rough average of time I was taking to answer the questions making sure that I wasn't taking more than the average of 1.55 minutes per question.
Bottom line:
To all the fellow members who might be preparing to take this exam, I would encourage you to take this exam seriously. I really think Oracle has done exactly what they said - raised the bar with the OCPJP7 exams. Raising the Bar
They have made it much harder to pass. Even though its has been more than 2 years since OCPJP7 was launched in early 2012, linkedin shows less than 15 people with OCPJP7 certification. There might be more people still I don't consider OCPJP7 as easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Wish you all good luck!!
I passed the OCPJP7 exam with 78% on 9th Sep 2014. My version had 90 questions to be answered in 150 minutes and the passing score was 65%
Resources:
Mala Gupta's "OCP Java SE 7 Programmer II Certification Guide Prepare for the 1ZO-804 exam" book, for which, I was fortunate enough to be one of the humble reviewers too.
SG Ganesh, T Sharma's "OCP Java SE7 Programmer Exams 1Z0-804 1Z0-805" book.
I, largely, followed Mala Gupta, which is a fantastic book. I also referred to Tushar, Sharma for any additional material that was new from Mala Gupta's book e.g. I thought DAO design pattern was slightly better explained in Tushar, Sharma.
I also used:-
http://www.tutorialspoint.com
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/
Java SE7 API
Questions:
In addition to the chapter end questions and full-length Mock exams in both the books, I bought the official question set from Oracle (Kaplan) for the same exam. The question set was, certainly, useful but I thought it was a little expensive at $69. I also bought Enthuware and I would rate Enthuware more useful than the Oracle's own official exam preparation questions set.
Exam Venue:
I took the exam at the Pearson VUE test centre in Gurgaon, India. They have exactly the same set-up as when I took the GMAT exams too, which means, you have a dedicated video camera recording the whole exam for each of the test takers. You are not even allowed a bottle of water with you for a 2.5 hour exam. Another good thing about Pearson VUE is that I had absolutely no distraction from the other test takers as strict silence is maintained, while at the Oracle's own test centre for OCAJP7 exam, I, sometimes, got distracted by the fellow test takers.
Funnily enough when I took the test, there was only three of us taking different exams and all three were non-Indians. I hold a British passport, another guy was from America and the third guy was from Africa.
Lastly, at Person VUE test centres, you could take the exam any day (Mon-Sat), even on short notice. I booked my exam just 2 days prior to the exam date.
Exam itself:
I don't remember many questions. But I can give you the overall summary, which is that out of 90 questions, there was no more than 3 questions, that by just reading the question, I thought, oh that's easy, I know the answer to this one. Rest of the questions, were of medium-high difficulty level. Except for these 3 questions, all of the questions took me on average, 1.5 minutes to answer, which is the max time limit per question. When the 2.5 hrs of exam time finished, I was at the last question and had no time to review the questions that I had previously marked to revisit.
The level of questions seemed so high that when I finished the exam, I was almost convinced that I didn't pass the exam but was very happy to see that I passed.
A lot of questions were code based questions.
One of the things that I was worried about was running out of time. So, I was keeping an eye on the remaining time and, at every 10 questions, I would calculate a rough average of time I was taking to answer the questions making sure that I wasn't taking more than the average of 1.55 minutes per question.
Bottom line:
To all the fellow members who might be preparing to take this exam, I would encourage you to take this exam seriously. I really think Oracle has done exactly what they said - raised the bar with the OCPJP7 exams. Raising the Bar
They have made it much harder to pass. Even though its has been more than 2 years since OCPJP7 was launched in early 2012, linkedin shows less than 15 people with OCPJP7 certification. There might be more people still I don't consider OCPJP7 as easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Wish you all good luck!!