Passed scjp with 88%---my experience

[Alan Chong]

Hello guys,
I've passed scjp today. Thanks for everybody here,especially those who answered my postings.
Let me share my experience with you.
After I started learning java for two months I started preparing scjp, and that took another two months plus. I spent four to five hours a day preparing.I was having financial difficulty and so I tried all of my effort to try to pass the exam in the first time without buying another voucher again. I bought two books and JQPlus. JQPlus was very helpful for me. The
questions there are not too strange so they
match the questions of the real exam. Some mock
exams present you with questions that can never
appear in the real one. I didn't see any extra-
ordinary questions like(Float.NaN == Float.NaN )
in the real exam. Of course I worked hard with the books and I spent a lot of time doing mock
exams. I think I have done more than 30 mock exams. Everybody will tell you to study hard and
do a lot of mock exams as I did. So I don't want
to talk about them anymore. I just want to emphasize that you should know how to control time when you take the real exam. When I first
started doing mock exams,I spent about 80 minutes. But I found myself tending to jump to
conclusion when I saw the explanations for the
questions which I did wrong. I could have answered the questions right if I was careful enough. I regreted many times that I didn't analyze the questions with great care. Then I decided to spend more time understanding the
questions. After that I spent about two hours
for a exam. Wow! That was too close to the allowed time period. Yes, that is just too close
and risky.I have no time to review the questions.
Finally I decide to limit the time to 100 minutes
so that I have 20 minutes to do reviewing. Afterwards whenever I did exam I divided the 60 questions to 3 portions, 20 questions each. I must complete 20 questions in 35 minutes( some time a bit less than 1/3 of the overall time ).
With this target in mind, I was able to "examine
the question as thoroughly as possible and "still
have some time to do reviewing" for the rest of
exams I did. Today when I took the real exam I was able to examine the questions carefully enough even for code which is quite short. Note
that short code is where you will most likely jump to conclusion. When I finished the last questions I have four questions which I marked and had not give answers. And I have 18 minutes
left ( Just as I used to be ). Wow! that was just too good. I had just enough time to think about those questions and the rest of the marked questions. I went through them without missing anyone of them. At last I answered all of the questions without any of them chosen by random.
So the conclusions is :

       // For the last 10 or 15 questions
 if ( time left / number of unanswered questions 
      == more than two minutes )
    System.out.println(" You will be very nervous
    and you will miss up the answers to the rest 
    of the questions you've not yet answered.");

So develop your time-control !

[manasa teja]

Congratulations Alan...
thats a nice score. and you really desereve it.
Please be around sometime, so that it will be helpful for us..

[Jamal Hasanov]

Congratulations, Alan
Nice method for time slicing:-)
Jamal Hasanov
www.j-think.com

[Valentin Crettaz]

Good job Alan

[Alan Chong]

Thank everybody.
Strange ! When I put this posting, I saw it appeared here immediately. But after a short while I discoverd that it was removed and cannot be seen anymore. Today I came back and it is here
again. Magic !
Anyway developing time-control while doing mock
exams is really important. Time makes people nervous in the real exam.