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.  

Hello all,  I am planning to take my exam in about 2 weeks.

Now, i know that no two tests are the same , but from your experience what topic is most covered on the exam?
I have heard from a few people that by far the most common topic they encountered were streams.
Most of my practice in my own time has been with streams, generics, and concurrency.
I am asking because there are 1 or two topics that i dont get at all such as the fork/join framework.
If i am only to get 1 or 2 questions on this topic, then i wont even bother to learn it thoroughly as it will take me many days to fully understand it.
Imo its not worth the effort putting so much time into one small topic where i could be reviewing something else.

Also another questions even though it may seem kind of silly,
With covid-19 and all, and with the availability of taking the test from home now, is there anychance the test may be harder at home than taken at a testing center?
idk just a weird thought i had, im assuming you must have a camera, mic, etc but from my pov i just thought with the possibly of a candidate cheating they might give harder questions. lol.

Thanks again,
Sebastian

Nathan Milota wrote:

I've been learning Java for over two years, have an associate programmer certification and still not even getting the most basic low paying job offers or even an invite to an interview.  

Exactly this. Where are you located? I am fortunate enough to live in chicago where there are thousands of java jobs but I still am having trouble.  I passed the OCA this month and have many personal projects done and yet to be invited for an interview. I am currently in school but only in my second semester and my graduation date is long away.

What frameworks do you know? i noticed a common theme with jobs ,is that even at entry level they still want knowledge of couple frameworks.  I am currently learning spring boot and building rest apis, JSF and microservices, but it is a pain in the ass. I am also currently studying for my OCP in hopes that it might atleast somewhat improove my chances.

Whats funny is that I know damn well alot of people arent being taught these frameworks in school. I know a few people that got a bachelors in C.S and barely know how to code.

Thank you everyone for the kind posts!!

On my way for the OCP now, Wish me luck!!!

Hello all,

I am fairly new on this forum but just wanted to talk about my experience with taking the oracle certified associate 8 exam today.

I have no prior experience working as a software developer. My previous jobs were a meat market manager and a stock broker lol. I recently finished my first semester in college where I had a few basic programming courses and these involved python. I tried many times to learn and prepare for this exam but after getting a 10% on the VERY EASY test a couple months ago, I thought there would be no way for me to ever pass this.

I finished off my current semester December 12th 2019 and I missed the feeling of having to learn and having to do homework(weird right i know lol). So starting that day I told myself I will pass the OCA in one month. (My original plan was to take it by the end of last year). I bought the book by Jeeane Boyarksy and Scott Selikoff and got to work. My current job is mostly based from out of the office and I am only required to come in 3 days a week which gave me alot of time to study. I read the book front to back I would say atleast 10-15 times. I spent the last month 12 hours+ studying, this included christmas, new years eve, new years day. I celebrated the start of the decade by doing enthuware mock tests lol. My enthuware mocks were as follows.
test 1: 50%
test 2: 70%
test 3: 77%
Finaly day test: 74%

As you can see I skipped a fair amount of tests because I noticed that a lot of the material repeats itself. My biggest source of knowledge came from doing all the objective tests on earthenware and in the book.

In my humble opinion, I think the real exam is cakewalk as compared to the enthuware tests. I finished the whole exam id say in about 50 mins or so and for the rest of the time I went back and reread and re-analyzed every single question. This is mainly due to the fact, that when i first sat down, I was so nervous and and my brain was foggy. I didnt sleep good last night either.

Guys do not stress this exam. It is nowhere near as hard as the examples in the book or enthuware. Or maybe did I just get lucky with my questions?

Anyways best of luck to everyone, and please let me know if you have any questions about what was on the exam. I am glad to help out.

Hello all!

I would like to first of all thank everyone here for the amazing threads that are being posted. I have been "stalking" these threads for a couple weeks now but only today did I create an account.

I am currently 26 and just now  finished my first semester at college in CS. I have been meaning to take the OCA for the past year already , but was always intimated by it and thought that I would for sure fail.

School has given me more confidence and I am willing to take the OCA just to see if i can do it, especially since the exam is now 50% off till the end of the year

I know that no 2 tests are the same but  my questions for you are:

1.  What is the most prevalent topic on the exam? (From my point of view after doing the practice tests, polymorphism and class design seems to be the bulk of the questions)
2. Java apis: How many questions relating to date did you have more or less?
3. How do you deal with "does not compile on line x" and "runtime exception" questions? Approximately how many questions did you see yourself mostly answering that some code will actually NOT compile?
4.How much harder is the real test as compared to the enthuware tests? I got a 57% on my first attempt about a week ago and and a 65% on my second attempt this morning.

I plan to take the oca8 before my next semester starts at the end of January. Im not really concerned if i pass or not but of course I would like to pass. Feel free to leave any suggestions and I would really appreciate all your responses!!

Sincerely,

Sebastian.