Failed CCIE SP lab and OEQ mystery feedback!

time for feedback..i'll keep everything under the NDA.. -

i got screwed on 2 things -

1. OEQs!!
2. oblivious miscalculation of time and the great proctor

oeqs were too much ..one was too ambigious, there cant be a correct answer
for tht without more clarification. the proctor had no clue, he is anyway
not supposed to assist in the oeqs. another oeq isnt a thing to be found in
books, atleast not in the 5-6 books i have read on tht topic. after srching
more, i found a reference in the RFC with no reasoning. i'll hv to test and
do an analysis on it some time later once i chill down.
only one oeq was directly technically related to the lab, rest all were
purely theory which have nothing to do with configuration.

now the lab..
the cisco ccie webpage says lab timing 815am to 545 pm....i never bothered
to count the hours for this range..this totals as 9.5 hrs..always had an
illusion tht its 8.5hrs including the lunch...a silly mirage..the exam
started late, so i added the late hours thinking the lab will be over around
645pm..infact the others doing the lab did the same miscalculation and we
had a cogent discussion on this thing in the lunch time!

lab was pretty difficult comparing it to any of the vendor mocklabs..atleast
an 8.5 to 9 on IEWB scale.. too much stuff in the lab but i was very well
prepared to beat it. the difficult part mostly went smooth other than basic
issues. my lab was over in total 5.5hrs (including the oeq time) with
5-points in one subsection not wrking. i kept doing all my RnD/doc
cd/multiple restarts etc. no help. i left it after trying for around 1.5
hrs. silly me still thinking tht i have 2 hrs left while in reality i had
only 1 hr left...did the reverification very slowly, kept correcting..and
moving forward..found many basic missouts, corrected, and all was wrking
flawless, word-by-word as per the instructions..2 sections were left to be
verified when the proctor came for a final stop..i still thought i have
atleast an hour left! ...he simply closed all the my console sessions
without letting me even do the write mem! i asked for a minute to just do wr
mem but the answer was a blunt no. fair on his part, foolish on mine.

game over.

bad score in oeq, and an ok score in the lab. i dont even remember at wht
stage i saved the config on which device. relating the scores to the
configuration save, i missed out some of the late config changes for which i
lost point the labs. i'm sure now tht SP rack is reloaded before grading,
atleast for me it ws done tht way.

learning of the day - i covered a hell lot of stuff for the OEQs but it fall
short in the end..and honestly i dont see much improvement in future
attempts for oeq preparation..after one stage, u feel comfortable with
theory but a lot of luck is needed especially for the ambiguous ones....the
intent of oeqs shud be configuration related as the ccie-written is already
focusing on theory but unfortunately tht's not the case.....for the lab
part, my current level was pretty much sufficient for the clearing the lab,
hope i can maintain the same standard for the next attempt...

thanks for the wonderful group...together we win

big best of luck to everyone gng for the lab and the awful oeqs.

Swap
#19804

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Thu Jan 14 2010 - 01:43:06 ART