So I just passed about 3 hours ago, and am very grateful Sun made this certification. Why? Well, for me it's really more of a confidence booster and path setter than something that will have financial impact. I know the
SCJP is very difficult and demanding. To me the SCJP is like holding a
string just high enough above a cats head so that it can't get it: eventually the cat gives up if it never even touches the string. Well, getting the
SCJA is sort of like touching the string for me. I had originally studied the SCJP on and off for about 4 months, but gave up, at least until I heard about the SCJA about 1.5 months ago. Now I'll pursue the SCJP once again.
I have studied, either in an academic setting or on my own, all of the SCJA objectives except the
J2EE stuff. However, this was all over a year ago.
So, I bought Cameron's book (EXAMSCAM) and instantly felt I could obtain this cert with little effort, due to having studied most of it previously.
I also bought Sun's online
test software, which gives you 3 tests composed of 51 questions each, which is to simulate the real test. Several questions on the real exam were identical to questions found in Sun's practice exams.
I viewed the "free UML pdf" found on the SCJA FAQs link at the top of this web page about 3-4 times.
All of the studying, reading the book, testing software, etc, were all done within the last 6 weeks.
Also, I had one 'lollipop' question, which happened to be my last question.
Overall the test, I think, was noticeably more difficult than questions found in EXAMSCAM, though the questions within that book were also very useful. And slightly more difficult than Sun's testing software I mentioned above.
Good luck to everyone else.