difference between full and upgrade exam add to FAQ?

[John Summers]

Hi SCJPers,

I'm studying for either the full or upgrade SCJP6 exam and have not decided which one to do yet. The first thing I did was check the FAQ but it just gives the bare bones advice. After some use of the search facility I see this question is asked a lot. So can I tentatively suggest the SCJP FAQ is expanded a bit with the following issues or answers to them?.....

Key Points:
-should mention upgrade exam has less questions and a lower pass % mark
-say I have SCJP 1.4, can I do the 6 upgrade or do I need to do the full 6 exam?
-does the 6 upgrade cover a) solely the differences between 6 and 5 or b) can it test you on ANY feature of Java 6

Additional points... more 'subjective' but commonly asked:
-so is the upgrade "easier"?
-say you have the 1.4 SCJP... you want to learn Java 6 as deep as possible and be tested as hard as possible... would taking the full exam make you have to study harder (and thus "get more value from the process") than just doing the upgrade?

Cheers,
John

[Bilal Mughal]

Hi,

I agree with John. I passed my certification for SCJP 1.2 back in 2003, and now preparing for SCJP 6.0, but not sure if I should go for update
or the full one. Even Sun website is not clear about that.

Any response related to this will be helpful.

Thanks
Bilal

[John Summers]

I have emailed Sun UK Training department to ask the 2 most critical questions and will post their response.

John

[Jesper de Jong]

The upgrade exam is only for people who are already SCJP certified, but who want to upgrade their older version of SCJP to a newer version. If you're not yet SCJP certified, then you cannot do the upgrade exam - you must do the full exam in that case. You can do the upgrade exam if you have a certificate from any older version - so it doesn't necessarily have the be the previous version; e.g. if you have an SCJP 1.3 or 1.4 certificate, then you can do the SCJP 6 upgrade exam (you do not need to upgrade to the in between versions first).

[Ulf Dittmer]

John Summers wrote:So can I tentatively suggest the SCJP FAQ is expanded a bit with the following issues or answers to them?

You can do more than that :-) The FAQ is a wiki that everybody can edit - username and password are the same ones used by the Saloon. So feel free to add content as you see fit!

[John Summers]

ok i updated the FAQ.

Sun Training UK were pretty helpful. They said anyone with queries can contact them on:

[e-mail]

But please read the FAQ first before emailing them moron questions.

j