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Passed OCA 7 exam

 
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I passed the OCA 7 exam yesterday with 86%, not a bad score but not wall of fame either.
I rushed the prep a bit, I was aiming to take the SCJP 6 exam, so I was preparing for that by reading K+B, and then changed my mind and wrote OCA 7 instead.
I found that K+B prepared me quite well. I neglected to check the objectives of the OCA 7 exam. I think I could have upped my score by a few percent if I was clearer about the objectives of the exam. There is some material in K+B that is not necessary for the exam. I didnt get any questions on Enums, static initializers, Boxing or garbage collection. The questions that I saw in the exam were on flowcontrol, operators, expressions, scope, exceptions, classes, access types, encapsulation, abstract classes, strings, arraylists, etc. The code fragments were mostly quite straightforward, not tricky. I think that there was quite a lot of flow control. Often, similar code fragments were used for different questions. There were a lot of questions which did not require unraveling code fragments. It wasnt really a problem for me to get through 90 questions in 2 1/2 hours, although I used all the time available. I found the type of questions & standard similar to the Marcus Green mock exams (these exams are for old version of java). I found repetition in the questions, for example, there was a question about switch which was asked 3 or 4 times with the breaks in different places. Maybe that's why I did so well ;) The questions that I answered correctly, I got right 4 times!
Thanks
Tanja
 
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Hi Tanja! Congratulations!

I am going to take the exam in a week or two too. Could you please tell us if the following objectives are on the exam? Did you get any questions from the list below?

1. Any kind of nested classes
2. Given the fully-qualified name of a class that is deployed inside and/or outside a JAR file, construct the appropriate directory structure for that class. Given a code example and a classpath, determine whether the classpath will allow the code to compile successfully.
3. Bitwise operators, something like this: x >> y, a ^ b
4. hashCode()-method


Thanks!
 
tanja valkin
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Alex, I didnt see any of those topics in the exam. But, I suggest that you check against the objectives. The code fragments were mostly very simple, not as complex as in the K+B book. There wasnt much weird syntax. In questions where you have to provide several answers, I was always told the number of answers to provide. About 40% of the questions did NOT include the options "Compiler Error" or "runtime exception". This made answering these questions a lot easier. I suppose it was quite a straightforward exam, but you have to know the material quite well.
Tanja
 
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Welcome to Java Ranch !!!

Congrats for becoming OCA Java 7 certified
 
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Tanja,

Congratulations !!

Can you answer my below queries -
1. Have you found any questions on Collection, Thread, Synchronization, Inner class, class path, Jar file
2. As per OCA 7 syllabus, basic of Arraylist and StringBuilder is in the exam, can you explain the scope of Arraylist and StringBuilder for this exam.
3. Have you found any thing which is not covered in the syllabus.

Thanks
Noi
 
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Congratulations!!! and thank you for your detailed feedback
 
tanja valkin
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Hi noi,
I suggest you look at the objectives on the oracle site.
As far as i know, threads and synchronisation are not in the exam at all. I didnt get any questions about this.
I also didnt get questions about inner classes. I found the code fragments to be simple, they didnt try to trick you with inner classes.
Collections: only stringbuilder and arraylist.
There were questions about stringbuilder and arraylest. I cant answer as to the scope.

I didnt get questions about class path and jar files. I dont know if this is in the syllabus.
As far as i know, they dont ask questions that are not in the objectives.
Hope this helps, and good luck for the exam
Tanja
 
Noirita Bera
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Thanks Tanja.
 
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I just passed today. There were a couple of surprise outliers like thread safety, which I wasnt expecting on this one but they werent too bad. There were many questions on StringBuilder, Switches (emphasis on String), Exception handling, and flow control. Several about arrays as well. All in all, not as difficult as the ePractizeLabs or Enthuware mock exams. There were a few tricky questions where you really had to read carefully. For instance where the code looks obvious but the answer has variables with the same name as an array et al.

JC
 
Noirita Bera
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Jonathan,

Congratulations..

Can you please tell me which topics you found in the exam but not mentioned in the syllabus..
 
Noirita Bera
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Jonathan,

Have you found thread safety questions related to StringBuilder or typical questions from Thread.. Let us know please..
 
Jonathan T Cohen
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Thanks! There were two relatively simple questions regarding use of Array/ArrayList and Stringbuilder. There were also a could of best practice questions where thread safety was one of the choices for use. That was it on the one I took. Only a couple of overloading. I was expecting a lot more. Lots of questions about arrays from every angle. Not nearly as many "this code won't compile" answers as I encountered in the mock exams.

JC
 
Noirita Bera
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Thanks
 
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Thanks for sharing your OCA 7 exam experience.It is precious nowadays , as there is no much review about it.I'm planning to set exam soon.
 
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Congrats and keep up the goo work
 
Noirita Bera
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Hello,

Today I scored 93% in OCA JP 7.

-Noirita
 
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Congratulations to Both of you Noirita and Thanja :-)
 
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Congratzz Noirita and Thanja... I have started preparing for OCAJ 7, studying from the oracle site and then will be doing scjp 6 mock papers...so is it going to be enough for the exam or do i have to do something more?? help would be appreciated
 
Noirita Bera
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Hello Shivom,

Thanks, I covered first 5 chapters + StringBuilder + Arraylist from K&B Java 6 book. Try to write good code while learning, this is the most important part of your preparation. Mocks tests are available in various sites, keep practicing.

Thanks
 
Shivom Shukla
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Hello Noirita,

Thanks for the information...i also want to know whether scjp 6 mock tests would do me any good for ocaj 7 exam ??
 
Noirita Bera
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Hello Shivom,

Yes, it worked for me as well.. You can also try some mock tests available in the market.

Noirita
 
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Hi,

First post, just joined javaranch.
I was wondering how well we have to understand import and package statements.
Anything from the command line?

Besides switch (String s) {}, is there anything else
explicitly not covered in k&b6?

Thanks
 
With a little knowledge, a cast iron skillet is non-stick and lasts a lifetime.
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