From: Michael Dorion (m.dorion@live.com)
Date: Tue Feb 24 2009 - 19:29:25 ARST
Well, no dice in Sydney. Another close attempt. I'll get em' next time I
guess. Great trip though, the proctor in Sydney is awesome and everyone just
kind of wanted to hang out after the exam. I don't think I got bashed too
much for being American. He was about as cryptic in answering some questions
as the RTP and San Jose proctors were so it's not like it's easier in one
site than it is in another. I went down a day early and I got to meet other
proctors from different sites (they happened to be there). They were pretty
cool also, and I got to pick their brains about the exam a little bit.
About the written questions, they wouldn't talk about points and percentage
grading, so I guess I can't talk about it either, but basically if you have
taken the exam before you can throw your point strategy out the window.
(like how IE and NMC says you want about 15 points per target hour). This is
not to say you shouldn't keep track, just kind of read the exam first and
wing it. They did say, however, if you don't pass the open ended part, but
you do pass the lab, then you fail. They have already seen a couple cases of
this and it had just started a few days before.
Also, the exams' questions haven't changed, you just have less time to do it
now with the written part. It's not the SATs don't spend more than a couple
minutes on the entire thing. I think I wrote the whole command reference of
one question which was a big waste of time. Also, DON'T STUDY FOR IT. At
all. Just work on your speed for the lab as you have even less time now.
Like one guy said, if you have to study for them, you shouldn't be taking
the exam anyways.
Another interesting note: Proctors read the forums! (at least this and the
IE forum) so don't say anything bad about them. They are the ultimate
masters of the universe anyways. ;)
As far as traveling to take the exam, it seemed like a good idea in San Jose
(from Boston) but traveling halfway around the world is probably not a good
idea for performance. I definitely felt sluggish all day taking the exam,
even after giving myself 2 days to recover. On the bright side, it was hard
to be bummed about failing since I was in Australia and all. I went to
Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne and they were all amazing. I think I'll stick
to RTP for the next attempt.
-Mike
__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 3844 (20090211) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun Mar 01 2009 - 09:44:12 ARST