From: Price, Jamie (jprice@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Sat Mar 11 2000 - 23:57:17 GMT-3
Title: RE: Prep-Class or Actual Lab? A Survey...
Obviously for those who are funding themselves - taking the actual lab
is the more reasonable option economically. However - from a courtesy
standpoint to other candidates, I think it is good not to abuse the
lab services and to take prep courses. If you have the choice
financially (i.e. company pays) then I think the preps should be the
preferred method - besides, there's always the bonus of feedback from
the preps and other associated benefits that you wont get in the lab.
I tried to schedule my lab date in January this year for early-mid
march and couldn't get in until mid-late April. Admittedly there is a
wait list and opportunities arise to get in earlier than the scheduled
date, but for some people with busy work schedules that is of no
benefit as blocks of study/testing time need to be scheduled in
advance.
If I was in the situation where a substantial salary increase was
going to occur upon passing the lab then the last thing I would want
to know is that I can't get in for an extra month because a number of
the slots are filled with people who have not taken the effort to
sufficiently prepare and are using the first attempt purely as a prep.
I often wonder how many candidates that were filling those early-mid
March time slots were making a serious attempt.
As we all know - you shouldn't expect to pass the first time with the
first time failure rate that is occuring in fact I'd go so far as to
say "expect to fail to save yourself heartache" - but I think you
should DEFINITELY feel within yourself that you have prepared to the
best of your abilities, in order to pass, and will be committing 110%
of that preparation in your efforts to pass. If you don't feel that
then you shouldn't schedule and you should leave the slot free for
those that do. If you fail then use the failure as a further learning
experience.
Hope this didnt rub anybody the wrong way.
Jamie
-----Original Message-----
From: Mary Edwards
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Sent: 3/11/00 12:01 PM
Subject: Prep-Class or Actual Lab? A Survey...
I've had discussions with other CCIE candidates lately regarding the
attendance
of prep-classes vs. taking the actual lab. If you take a look at the
prices for
some of the prep-classes and combine that with travel expenses, it
turns
out
that you could take the actual lab at least once and maybe twice for
the
same
price. Of course we all would like to pass the lab on our first try,
but...
So what does everyone think? What are the advantages of taking the lab
a
couple
of times over a prep-course (and then potentially still taking the lab
a
couple
of times!)? What about the prep classes?
The financial support that you provide yourself or that comes from
your
employer will of course be an issue. What if it wasn't? What if you
could chart
the ideal course - what would that look like?
Mary
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 08:23:04 GMT-3