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Passed OCAJP 8 failed twice - my experience

(2 cows) 7
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Hi all,

I have taken the exam 3 times now and passed during my last attempt. By sharing my experience, I hope I can help others.

First of all I used:

-OCA: Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide: Exam 1Z0-808 - Jeanne Boyarsky and Scott Selikoff.
-Enthuware

As part of my traineeship I had to pass OCAJP 8, the exam was pre-scheduled and I had 4 weeks(fulltime) to study.
I literally had 0 programming experience, I had seen some html, that's about it.

I hear you ask: Woots is it possible to pass the OCA exam in 4 weeks of studying?
It is, 2 out of the 4 trainees passed it after 4 weeks of studying.
They passed it with minimal %s and never scored a passing % on enthuware (somewhere mid 50s).
The 4 weeks were not fulltime, it was more 60+ hours of studying a week


I failed miserably the first time, today I am happy I failed that day.
The re-sit exam was also pre-scheduled and it was very short after the first failure. I failed again.

The biggest mistakes I made:

-reading the whole book in one go, then start to study
-using the IDE too soon
-starting Enthuware before I had a good understanding of the study material
-planning

If I had focust on understanding every aspect of chapter 1 before moving on to the next chapter, I would have definitely built a better basis.
When reading the whole book, I was overwhelmed by the amount of new information I had to work through.

The usual and highly recommended helped me a lot:

-lots of small code snippets
-lots of trying

Maybe what helped me most was explaining other guys that had to pass, the concepts I understood quite well.
Also visualizing certain concepts, drawing them on a white board, helped to "save" them in my memory.

If I can help anyone explaining concepts or just helping to structure the studying, you can send me a PM any time.

Woots.









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I will try to summarize the approach on how to study the chapters in a way I would do it if I had to retake the exam:

more to come...
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Congratulations. Please post your experience with how you started and what kind of pattern lead you to success after taking multiple attempts.
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Hi Wouter,

Congratulations champion! Great achievement Now it's time to relax a bit and have a (well-deserved) (or 2 or 3). And if you want to spoil yourself have a Belgian beer, our beers are the best of the world

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Other ranchers will definitely benefit! Have a cow!

Don't forget to add your name to the OcajpWallOfFame!

Kind regards,
Roel
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Wouter Jetta wrote:If I can help anyone explaining concepts or just helping to structure the studying, you can send me a PM any time.


That would really be nice! But please do not use PM, because then only one person can benefit from this knowledge instead of a whole community. Please note at CodeRanch we prefer to UseTheForumNotEmail, so the whole community can benefit from public discussion.
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Wouter,
Congrats! Thanks for sharing your mistakes. Lessons learned will help other people from going down that same road. You also inspire people who have failed to try again. Have another cow.
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a bit of art, as a gift, that will fit in a stocking
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