About OCA Java 8 exam - Question to Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates

[Femy Anish]

Hello,


   I am a java developer who really wants to get back to career after a long gap .Currently I have decided to take OCA 8 certification exam before applying for jobs.
I already had completed your certification guide on ' OCA/OCP Java SE 7'  and later on decided to take OCA 8 certification exam.

How long do I need to prepare? . Also just studying OCA Java SE 8 guide is enough for me to write  the exam?

Any guidence would be really appreciated.


Thanks and Regards,
Femy

[Bert Bates]

There is no way to know how long it will take to prepare. But there are many good practice exams you can use and they are a fine indicator of your progress and how far you have to go in your studies. So you could take a practice exam right now to get a sense of what you already know well enough now, and what areas you need to study.

[Femy Anish]

Thanks a lot Bert for your reply.

I have one more question. Iam already taken a set of practice exams in which I have scored only  from 69-75%. Is that enought to face the real exam or do I need to score more?

Thanks and Regards,

[Bert Bates]

personally i would want to be scoring a bit higher. i'd feel less stress if i had a bigger margin of error.

some practice exams are harder than others though - you might ask on the OCA forums which exams are harder and which are easier.

[Femy Anish]

Thank you Bert for your valuable advice.

[Ahmed Ibrahim]

Femy Anish wrote:Hello,


   I am a java developer who really wants to get back to career after a long gap .Currently I have decided to take OCA 8 certification exam before applying for jobs.
I already had completed your certification guide on ' OCA/OCP Java SE 7'  and later on decided to take OCA 8 certification exam.

Hi Femy, i'm also kind of in similar situation like yours, but after Bets's reply on my inquiry I prefer more to study from the new study guide which focus more on the objectives of the OCA Java 8, i think this will save time and ignore any confusion of the differences between the objectives of OCA Java 7 and OCA Java 8.

Regards,

[Roel De Nijs]

Femy Anish wrote:How long do I need to prepare? . Also just studying OCA Java SE 8 guide is enough for me to write  the exam?

That's very personal and really depends on your experience, learning speed and the time you can spend each day. Here you'll find a very extensive experience of another rancher. And here you'll find another thread about the time to prepare for the exam.

In this topic and this one very similar questions were asked (and answered).

In the OcajpFaq (besides other very useful information) and this thread you'll find an overview of all available resources (study guides, mock exams,...) to thorougly prepare yourself for the OCA certification exam. Another useful resource is the OcajpWallOfFame: you'll find plenty of (links to) experiences from other ranchers. Some of them have described their journey in great detail (even including how much time they spend on each item of their preparation). Other ones shared nothing but the resources they have used. So it can be useful too to determine which resources are useful (and which are not).

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[Roel De Nijs]

Femy Anish wrote:I have one more question. Iam already taken a set of practice exams in which I have scored only  from 69-75%. Is that enought to face the real exam or do I need to score more?

Regarding the (Enthuware) mock exams, I always provide the same advice. These exams offer excellent value for money! I would use them solely to monitor your progress and get an objective indication of your readiness to take the actual exam. So you should only take the first test after you have studied and you think you are ready for the exam. You should of course take the test as it were the actual exam, so with the time limit and don't use anything else but paper and a pencil. You have already taken the first test but didn't share your score. And the score is quite important. If you consistently score 80+ on the different mock exams, you'll probably pass the actual exam with flying colours. So you have a good solid knowledge about the exam topics and can go through the incorrect (and correct) questions, read and learn from the explanations. Then you can repeat the material with some extra focus on your weaker topics for a few days and take the next exam.
But if you score less than 80+ on the exam, you need to do some additional studying for a few weeks, because you still lack the required knowledge to pass the exam. And taking more mock exams will generally not provide you this knowledge. So you might want to study a course, read another study guide, write lots of code snippets, and so on before you take anpther mock exam. If you want some mock questions to practice your knowledge a bit, use the questions from the study guides (most of them have practice questions with every chapter and offer one or more mock exams as well) and/or the questions from the mock exams you have already taken. But don't use another mock exam, otherwise you have wasted this mock exam and can't use it anymore to monitor your progress and have an indication of your current readiness for the actual exam (because only first attempt scores will count).

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[Femy Anish]

Thank you Ahmed for your reply.

[Femy Anish]

Thank you so much Roel for your detailed reply,tips and guidence and also for sharing threads which will really helps me during my preparation.

As an addition, thought of sharing my current situation.I am a java developer with 4yrs of  experience but with a huge gap of 9yrs due to personal reasons.Now Iam in a position to return back to my career.So thought of taking certification before going further.

I have studied the OCA 8 exam guide by Jeanne Boyarsky and Scott Selikoff which I found really useful.I have used the SYBEX test banks in which I scored around80% before buying Enthuware.
Currently I took a couple of Enthuware standard tests in which I didn't score really well. So I am in a lack of confidence state.

After going through your reply, I realised my mistake that after each test I have to study the weaker areas and prepare more before taking the next one.

Thanks and Regards,