Hi,
I passed OCAJP7 yesterday. Main purpose of this post is to thank everyone in this forum and also to give motivation to fellow
test takers who are confused with mock test results. I used to get inspiration from such posts.
It took me 2 and half months for the preparation and I referred the following study wares. I used notepad and cmd.exe to compile and run my programs.
K&B (main)
Mala Gupta
Enthuware mock tests
CodeRanch.com
I initially started with Mala Gupta's book but then I was not sure if I am getting the concepts correctly. So I switched to K&B and I feel that I am understanding better. So I continued with it. After completing the book for 2 times including the self tests, I did the practice questions from Mala Gupta book too. I was scoring pretty good so decided to move on to mock tests.
My first mock test was from Mala Gupta book and to my shock I failed. I took 2 days to go through the mistakes and took the first master exam from K&B - Failed again. Repeated the same process and took the second master exam from K&B - this time also failed . I was so depressed and started to think why did I ever decide to prepare for this exam.
I made up my self and decided to stop doing mock tests. I read the same books one more time including all self tests. Now I retook all the 3 mock tests and I scored above 95%. So I thought its time to go for Enthuware.
Since I was reading in coderanch, I had an idea about the difficulty level of Enthuware. But only after going through the questions, I understand how useful they are in giving me the implementation knowledge. After couple of exams I feel like I started to think like a compiler. I didn't pass ALL the exams of enthuware in my first attempt but my confidence used to rise with each exam. I used to go through each and every question - even if I answered correct to made sure my understanding was proper and prepared a self-notes.
I feel the real exam was much easier compared to all mock exams. It is not that the real exam was actually easy, but because of the practice from enthuware I was able to do it easily. I should've scored even better but because of the time limit, I had to rush the last 10-15 questions. I got 75%.
This forum helped me a lot. This used to be my first point of contact if I had any doubts. Thank you so much, each and every person. Enthuware support was also excellent.
My BackGround: I worked as MainFrames developer for 3 yrs and for past 8 yrs I remained as Homemaker taking care of kids and family. Now I want to start my career again and thought
Java is the best to start with. This certification is to
boost up my resume.
Thank you so much once again
Satya