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some exam advice

 
Greenhorn
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I passed the exam last month; here are some observations about the exam and my preparation:
- as far as mocks, I studied the first 2 Marcus exams and found the similarity to the real exam remarkable (mainly the length
of code and the type of phrasing used)/ I also took the Brogden exams several times
- during the last 2 weeks before the exam, I hit I/O and awt hard, thanks to the tips on the Ranch, memorizing all listener interfaces and I/O constructors...
some of this may have been overkill but it helped my confidence going into the test
- one of the most useful things one can do is to really pore over the exam objectives on the Sun site, they basically tell you the spirit of what you are expected to know ...and I found that you could really read between the lines and come up with a clear strategy
- on the test itself, the thread q's came halfway through, and proved difficult, but I marked them and came back later...the awt wasn't terribly difficult but it was expansive, some q's required a wide knowledge of layout managers, something like 6 choices of which 2 were right/ inner classes were also big on the test
- as far as books, I didn't even know of RHE when I started buying study materials... and I benefited from the Syngress book even though I wouldn't recommend it because of the errata and total lack of I/O. But the self-test q's in the Syngress were helpful, the simple layout of the book helped facilitate clear thinking also... the lang spec book was helpful but I didn't spend too much time with it, only to nail down some thread and array concepts - I enjoyed the clever quotes though.

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Ranch Hand
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Jeff Thanks for the advice!
Well something more:
The latest pattern is getting me very tensed. Approx. how many questions are code based and how lengthy are they? What should be the right approach so that we don't waste too much time on them? Also do all the multiple choice questions have the no. of correct answers marked??
Thank you in advance.
 
Ranch Hand
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ash,
the new pattern has the opposite effect for me. the multiple choice questions now tell you how many answers are correct. i do better on the mock tests now than earlier, but I still miss questions I would have gotten right if I had known how many answers were correct. also the passing score was lowered from 71% to 61%. the offset to these plusses is that we only have 90 minutes for 60 questions now instead of 2 hours and i heard some of the code examples are longer. I heard from someone who took it though and he said it took him only an hour.
the only advice I can give is that if a piece of code is not easy for you to figure out, skip it and come back later so you can answer all the easy ones. I sometimes am slow at reading nested for loops. so I might skip a question that has one and come back to it at the end.
[This message has been edited by Randall Twede (edited December 18, 2000).]
 
Ash Rai
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Thanks Randall,
That was indeed encouraging!!
 
Ranch Hand
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hi jeff,
thanx for ur advice. I've some qns.
1. how many of the qns in the exam were coding
2. Of the following pkgs on which were more qns asked and which pkgs were tough??
a) java.io
b) java.lang
c) java.util
d) java.awt
e) java.awt.event
 
Jeff Berger
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there were 5 I/O, 4 Awt, 1 gc, about 6 threads, seemed like several inner class q's(maybe around 5-6), util was pretty simple(no code), no awt code either(2 event/listener type q's, 2 layout q's
- The amount of code q's on the test is not disconcerting at all, i think the proportion of code q's is quite similar to the Marcus exams, (the thread q's definitely had the most code, one had about 30 lines) also- there was no elaborate wording in the q's before the code in any of the q's (For instance: there was no
usage of hypothetical scenarios like you have been enlisted to take over such and such software project at a fruitgum co or anything like that) ... you do have to beware of the exhibit button which you have to select in order to get the code to appear, it blocks the question and you have to tile the windows or close the exhibit - also there didn't seem to be tricky q's
- grid bag was barely mentioned on the exam, although most people seem to get one grid bag q - a given layout q may actually test your knowledge of several layout managers
- i was always notified as to how many answers to select
- i would recommend really studying the example q's from the Sun site as well, i actually think the Sun example q's are a little harder than the real exam
- i would also take the roundup several times, i took roundup a day before the test and one of the q's really came in handy
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