Hi all,
I managed to clear the SCJP2 with 83% today..i am relieved that i cleared the exam in the first attempt..well my aim was strictly to get 71%
so i have no complaints with the score,the only complaint being i messed up one or two questions in Overloading and Operations which i considered my strongest point and got 100% in threads and AWT which i always considered my weak point.Anyway coming to the exam..without giving away the actual questions of the exam i would like to give some tips:
Learn about the Wrapper classes...like what happens when u use == and equals and just know the methods,there is no need to cram.
In the utility classes know the characteristics of collection,set,sortedset,list,map,hashmap also just in case understand the constructors of stack and build ur own questions.
For AWT just Mug up whatever is there in RHE and exam cram that would be more than enough,but for Gridbag layout make sure that you are clear on every constraint.
For threads i think i was fortunate enough to get all of the questions right,just remember what stops the
thread and all the methods including the deprecated ones..like suspend.
For IO remember all the constructors of the File,InputStreamReader etc etc.
Make sure that you know the concepts of OverLoading and Overriding verry clearly,there will be lot of questions in that.
Be thorough with for,while loops.
Excepitons is quite straightforward.
Well the books i referred to included Thinking in
Java,JLS,RHE and Exam Cram..personally i feel that if you want to clear the exam use RHE that will be enough,but i was not so comfortable with that because it is strictly written from Exam point of view and that book says 'This is like this' but it does not explain'
Why is it like this',in that aspect i would give Thinking in Java five stars,but you need to have lot of patience and time to go thru Thinking in Java and JLS,but from exam point of view RHE and ExamCram will see you through.Regarding Mock exams don't worry about the score so much because some of the mock exams just don't stick to the objectives and the score does not reflect the true scores but i think the Marcus Green
exams are Ok and regarding the commercial products JSecure is quite good,actually you can see the same style of questions though not replicas and regarding JQPlus..i think though the price is quite giveaway for 5 dollars (I think u have to go thru some site for that) be careful this exam really tests your patience sometimes by asking questions like "which of these is not a method in the Vector class" or something like that,if you have say about two weeks and you want to write as many mock exams as you want which resemble the real exam write Marcus Green and JSecure but don't use JQplus because you will be disappointed with scores(I never scored more than 60%) but if you have just started for the exam and you are going thru each chapter one by one then JQPLus is worth a buy because you have plenty of time and you can answer the questions chapter wise and identify your weak points.I think three to four months of exam preparation is quite enough with some knowledge of java.
Ok guys,i think my mail is getting boring..so i will stop here,all the best for the future
SCJP aspirants and thanks Javaranch for boosting my confidence level required to take the exam.Bye.
Surya
[This message has been edited by Surya B (edited August 10, 2000).]