Passed with 95% in SCJP 1.4 today

[Ambapali Pal]

Hi All,
I am just back from the exam center and so excited to get 95% score.
There were lots of loop question. And yes I got the lowest score in Garbage Collection.
I started with Sybex 1.2 book(which is not enough),followed by Dan's exam (not all), Kathy's book, and other mock exams.
I browse through few chapters in Mughal/Rasmussen in the book store.
Thank you,
Ambapali

[Bert Bates]

95 % WOW !!!
Congrats !!!
p.s. Maybe on the cert forum you could share why the G.C. stuff got you...

[Dan Chisholm]

Congratulations on your great score Ambapali!

[Sridhar Srikanthan]

Congrats Ambapali, Thats a great score....
I am really worried about Collections...most of the mock exams ask questions about methods in collections and also strings and stringbuffers.
Is kathy's book enough ? or do i have to memorize all the api for Collections Framework
Thanks in advance
Sri

[Dan Chisholm]

Originally posted by Sri Sri:

...do i have to memorize all the api for Collections Framework
Thanks in advance
Sri

No you do NOT have to memorize the API for the collections classes. Instead, you just need to know the most appropriate application for each type of collection. For example, when should you use an implementation of a List or a Map.
You will need a good understanding of the API for the String and StringBuffer classes. The exam objectives don't list the String methods that you need to memorize. Kathy or Bert would be the best source of information on the best list of methods to memorize for the String and StringBuffer classes.

[Ruff Young]

Congratulations!
Sri Sri!
Don't much worry about collections!
It's really easy in real exam.

[Sridhar Srikanthan]

Thanks Dan and Ruff...
That really helps
Sri

[Valentin Crettaz]

Nice shot Ambapali

[Ambapali Pal]

Thanks a lot for the wishes.
And also thanks to everybody in the Certification forum for helping me getting confidence quickly through question/answer , dicussion, doubt clearing. This site is really very useful for preparation.
Bert, about the GC I have no idea why I got 66% since the questions were very very basic and simple. Still now I am sure that I have done 100% correct if not my eyes ditched myself while reading them. I was expecting some answers to go wrong in Threads as they were quite tough and toughful. But I got 100% there.
About the Collection classes Dan is right. Kathy's book is perferctly enough for this.
For Math class's methods(mentioned in the objectives), it is better to know the boundary condition(specail cases) return values which you will get in API. That is my feeling after going through the Dan's topic exams.
For String and StringBuffer you need to know the very common methods and whatever you come across in the different mock exams to be well prepared. But the most inmportant thing here is to know when it is returning/pointing to the new string and when it is not. So you have to know the methods keeping the string immutability in mind .
One more tips is be very very clear about threads. As I mentioned before the questions are tough here.This chapter is very good in Kathy's book in describing the basics. Only thing missing there is Daemon thread and related methods in Thread class.
Thank you once again,
Ambapali