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My review of the SCEA study guide - new version

 
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Here is my review of the SCEA study guide.

Major Plus Points

  • The tremendous insight into the SCEA certification that the authors provide in the book makes the book worth every penny you pay for it.
  • I think that the book is very neatly organized and is not just a bunch of random material thrown together into a book.
  • The questions at the end of each chapter provide an insight into the thought processes of the examiner. This is extremely crucial since your real life experience may make you lean towards a different option in some situations. The questions really helped me a lot when I cleared my part 1 this month.


  • Some Minus Points

  • It looks like there was a rush to bring the book to market. So proof reading probably took a back seat. There are several typos in the book sometimes more than one on the same page.
  • A lot of answers to the questions at the end of each chapter say one thing while the description says something else. For example, the answer might say that A,C are the correct answers, but the reasoning provided might indicate that B,C are the right answers. While this is not as much of a problem, it is still annoying when you mark your answer wrong only to realize that you were right after reading the answer reasoning.


  • What would have been even great

  • Would have loved it if the answers to the questions at the end of each chapter were NOT provided immediately below the question. The human mind has a tendancy to take a peek at the answer even before reading the question. Once you have the answer in your mind, your thought processes will flow towards justifying the answer that you just peeked at. Ideally the answers should have been provided after all the questions either at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book.
  • Would have been great if a CD was included with the book with a test exam. The software similar to Prometric's software is available in the public domain. So the authors just need to form some questions to create a CD with prometric like software.


  • One of the things with the SCEA certification is that the amount of information that you need to have is open ended. While it is possible to clear SCEA without using this book, you could spend a whole lot more time to do so. This book acts as a roadmap and provides you relevant information and points you to other sources that you need to read in order to be prepared for the exam.

    All in all, this is a great buy and I would strongly recommend this book to anyone preparing for SCEA.
     
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    Teja, thanks for the feedback. If you could let us know which questions are marked incorrectly we can get that fixed before the next round of printing. I agree with you on moving the answers to the end, but I lost that fight with the publisher. They thought it would be more beneficial to have the answer immediately after the questions so that you wouldn't potentially have to flip pages. Doesn't make sense to me. As for the CD of exam questions, we will look into that. Thanks again for the feedback.
     
    Teja Saab
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    Mark Cade wrote:Teja, thanks for the feedback. If you could let us know which questions are marked incorrectly we can get that fixed before the next round of printing. I agree with you on moving the answers to the end, but I lost that fight with the publisher. They thought it would be more beneficial to have the answer immediately after the questions so that you wouldn't potentially have to flip pages. Doesn't make sense to me. As for the CD of exam questions, we will look into that. Thanks again for the feedback.



    Thanks for your reply Mark. I will send you the list of questions that I think have typos in them. Off the top of my head, I do remember that the first question in the chapter on security on page 95 has a typo in the answer.
     
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    Hi Teja,

    How would you compare Mark's book with Mikalais' study guide for SCEA? I know that Mikalai's guide is incomplete but still how do the objectives common in both books compare?
     
    Teja Saab
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    Vedhas Pitkar wrote:Hi Teja,

    How would you compare Mark's book with Mikalais' study guide for SCEA? I know that Mikalai's guide is incomplete but still how do the objectives common in both books compare?



    Hi Vedhas,

    I think that would be like comparing apples and oranges. One is a complete book while the other one is notes and articles from various sources consolidated together. Don't get me wrong. Mikalai has done a fantastic job consolidating material from various sources into a single PDF. However, I don't think that the SCEA study guide and MK notes are mutually exclusive. MK's notes can complement the SCEA study guide and not replace it. Moreover, the SCEA study guide addresses part 2 and 3, which MK's notes obviously don't.

    Good luck.
     
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