Sean Yeomans

I passed SCJA with 92% using McKenzie's two books, a couple free online mock exams, and reading all the posts in this forum.

I used to be a VB guy (before .NET) but have been totally out of the IT industry for 6 years and decided to do SCJA to help me get back into development. So I have prior knowledge of UML and polymorphic design but most of the content of SCJA was totally new to me.

Three pieces of advice:
1) Get both books! There is actually some information in the explanations for answers in the exam book that is not in the study guide and often information from the study guide is represented in another way that helps it stick.
2)When taking practice tests in the books, read the explanations for the answer even if you got the answer correct. There is a lot to learn in the explanations for why the others were wrong!
3) When taking the test, don't panic if you don't know the answer. There were questions on the exam that I just did not know the answer to and weren't specifically covered in McKenzie's books or were only covered peripherally (which is to be expected.) BUT I could eliminate the wrong options because they were specifically covered in McKenzie's books and I knew they didn't apply to the topic of the question.

Good luck to everyone who is preparing for SCJA!

Sean