From: Brian Van Benschoten (vader@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Mon Jul 05 1999 - 12:07:44 GMT-3
fell a bit short. I ended up in the high 20's. I needed 30 out of the
possible 45 to get past the first day.
There's a few things I can share with you regarding the test that wont
violate the rules.
I took my test in San Jose.
The email I received from Janet Swain stated that the lab would run from
9:00 am to 6:00 PM. THIS IS NOT TRUE. The lab ran from 9:00 am to 5:00
P.M.. with a 1/2 hour lunch. The lab guide stated that the lab was 7.5 hours
long. The proctor stated that "around 5 I will remind you to save your
configs". No one really explicitly stated that the stop time was 5:00 P.M..
I was preoccupied and nervous, perhaps I should have paid better attention.
I would encourage you all to get the proctor to tell you the exact stop
time. Needless to say, I planned my strategy around a 6:00 P.M. stop time.
I ran out of time. I think another 15 minutes would have done it for me.
I asked the proctor why the time difference? She stated that the times are
stated to assist in flight scheduling and allow for a minor hardware failure
during the lab.
Now the best part...
I got to the first day 1.5 hours early. (My hotel was about 10 miles away)
so the second day I planned how much time I needed for travel and set off.
There was an accident on the freeway and I arrived 5 minutes late. The
group had already been let back in to the lab. I told the receptionist that
I was there for the lab. She stated that the proctor would be out in a few
minutes to get me. I asked the receptionist to call back to the lab or let
me pass. She stated she would not call the proctor and would not let me
pass due to security reasons. Well, 25 minutes passed. she left the
proctor a voice mail message. I knew the proctor was busy starting the next
group of students on the first day lab and talking to our group about our
first day results. I'm sure she was quite busy. So I called Cisco security
and asked them to escort me to the lab room. Which they did. I couldn't
believe the attitude and lack of assistance the receptionist showed me. I
paid 1000.00 to take the lab and was barely treated like a person. It was
frustrating to say the least.
Tips for the lab.
TIME MANAGEMENT !
In a real network you don't leave pieces undone. On the test you may need
to if you are spending too much time on a section. Count the number of
sections and divide by the time you have. This will give you a rough guess
of how long you should spend per section. Skip things you don't know how to
do or take too much time. Get the points you need to pass to the second
day. In general I found the material fairly easy, there is just alot of it.
Good luck to you all. I'll try again in a few months.
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