Hi fellow ranchers,
I passed OCAJP8 yesterday with 95% marks. I studied "OCA/OCP
Java SE 7 Programmer I & II Study Guide" by Kathy and Bert, completed the OCA part and then referred to "OCA Java SE 8 Programmer I Certification Guide" by Mala Gupta for Java 8 features. I loved the contrast between the two books and ended up reading the second book as well. I felt material in Mala Gupta's book was just about enough to what I needed to pass the exam and the questions in the final mock quiz were similar in nature to actual exam in difficulty level. Kathy/Bert's book is a different beast altogether, it doesn't just prepare you but rather hardens you up for the exam.
Below are my scores in Enthuware exams. Special thanks to Enthuware team for coming up with such an amazing product.
Foundation
Test - 82%
Test 1 - 74%
Test 2 - 79%
Test 3 - 71%
Test 4 - 75%
Test 5 - 79%
Test 6 - 83%
Last Day Test - 86%
During the actual exam, I tried to mark and skip any question that took me longer than 2 minutes, while making sure, I was striking out the incorrect options, that I could determine during my initial triage of that question. After completing the exam, I got an email within 15 minutes to check my score and that's when I got the pleasant surprise.
Regards