Preparing for Java OCA exam

[Ashana Hurkens]

Hi everyone,

I am preparing for the OCA exam which I will take on January the 28th (been studying since december the 20th).
I study as much as I can reading from the OCA Study Guide written by Jeanne Boyarsky and Scott Selikoff. I also practice almost every day the Objective tests and the Standard tests on Enthuware.
I purchased Enthuware a few weeks ago and I am very happy for buying this licence, because it gives me a better view of the subjects for the exam.
Unfortunately I fail every test I took so far (around the 30, 40% instead of 65%), which really makes me unhappy because I really want to pass this test.
But then I keep thinking "keep practicing and learning, you will get their".

Do you guys have any tips for me how to get a higher score in Enthuware?
And how much did you guys practice in Enthuware before you got a 65% or higher?

I also looked on coderanch for similarly posts about the exam and I noticed that some people spoke about practicing code snippets on NotePad, which I have on my computer.
But how can you practice these code snippets? Do you write them down from the mock exams from Enthuware and then test the in Notepad or do you make up your own code and then test it in Notepad?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Ashana Hurkens wrote:. . . around the 30, 40% instead of 65% . . . "keep practicing and learning, you will get their". . . .

Delay sitting the exam until your practice marks are better.

Find out about JShell for practising little bits of code.

Moving to our exam forum

[Paul Anilprem]

Ashana Hurkens wrote:
Unfortunately I fail every test I took so far (around the 30, 40% instead of 65%), which really makes me unhappy because I really want to pass this test.

Ideally, your score should improve after a couple of mock tests. If it has not then it implies that your concepts are still shaky. It would be better to stop taking mock tests at this stage and go through a book (preferably a different one than what you have already gone through to keep it interesting).

Ashana Hurkens wrote:
I also looked on coderanch for similarly posts about the exam and I noticed that some people spoke about practicing code snippets on NotePad, which I have on my computer.
But how can you practice these code snippets? Do you write them down from the mock exams from Enthuware and then test the in Notepad or do you make up your own code and then test it in Notepad?

Try doing the coding exercises given at the end of each chapter in this book. Go through the chapter and then do the coding exercises.

Once you do the above, do Standard Tests (instead of objective wise tests) from the Enthuware suit. After each test, go through the explanation of each question (including the ones you answered correctly). If you score very low (<30%) on a topic, then go through that topic from a book again before taking the next test.

You will see that your score will increase substantially after a few tests. Finally, once you are confident about your knowledge, take the Last Day Test (questions from this test do not appear in any other test such as objective wise test, so they will be completely new for you.).

All the best!

[Sebastian Drozd]

So i think the most important thing you should ask yourself is how familiar you are with java before starting to study for the OCA.
In my case, i knew the basics. variables,classes, methods etc.
So i knew how to write a java program before starting to study.
I studied for a little over a month , studying every day for 10+ hours, and cranking out practice exams like crazy and got a 90% on the exam.
The enthuware mock tests are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY harder than the real test.
I was getting like 60-70% on the tests right before the day of the exam.
But if your only getting 40% i would recommend taking some more time.  

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

How are you doing with the end of chapter questions on our book? They are designed to be able to be done many times. So keep going thru those until  you get a higher score. This will reinforce the points and train your brain to look for the exam gotchas.

[Ashana Hurkens]

The review questions at the end of each chapter are going good.
I made the questions of chapter 1 t/m 4 and every time I am around the 70%.
Today I am going to do the review questions of chapter 5 class Design.
And tomorrow I am going to make the questions of chapter 6.

I find these type of questions better to understand than the mock questions at enthuware.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Ashana,
If you do the review questions again, do you still get around 70%? If so, you need to study more before resuming the mocks. After a few tries, you should be scoring higher on the review questions for a chapter because you know the tricks. Training yourself to watch for those tricks will help with mocks.

[Ashana Hurkens]

No, at the beginning so when I started to study for the OCA exam (which was 6 months ago) I got around 30, 40% when I made the review questions.
So I studied the chapters in the book again and looked on youtube for videos about some of the topics like Exceptions and lambda expressions that were difficult for me to see some examples and more explanation about the topic.
Which helped me al lot and gave me a better view about the topics.
In december and january I started to make the review questions again and now I get around the 60, 70%.

I also make notes in the book so that it is easier for me to understand several topics in a chapter.

[Campbell Ritchie]

About 60% isn't a really good mark. I would consider delaying the exam if possible.