Hi,
I wanted to share my experience studying for the
OCAJP exam. By way of background, the last real programming class I took was a decade ago as a freshman in college. Since then I have dabbled in coding here and there but nothing serious. More recently, I wanted to transition from finance to more fin-tech.
I started with the OCA: Oracle Certified Associate
Java SE 8 Programmer I Study Guide: Exam 1Z0-808 - by Jeanne Boyarsky, Scott Selikoff. I scored 2/20 on the first assessment in the book, which was shocking even to me. I then read through every chapter and coded along with the examples in the book. I also completed all the questions at the end of each chapter and reviewed the answers. I spent a total of 2 weeks reading. After that, I completed one of the mock exams and moved on to Enthuware's
test bank. This is a must have that I would recommend to everyone. I took 7/8 practice tests on there and scored from 56% to 79%. My last day exam came in at 79%. The practice exams took me another 2 weeks to complete. So in a total of 4 weeks of pretty dedicated studying (while working full-time with light workload) I was able to get 80% on the test.
I hope this was helpful. I'm going to get started on the OCPJP prep now following the same strategy. Jeanne and Scott's book followed by Enthuware. I hope I can knock the pro out in 2-3 months.
Good luck!
J