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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