Passed SCJA 92%

[Robert D. Moss]

Passed the SCJA exam yesterday with 92%.

I'm not sure if the following is a commentary on the value of the exam, my ability to regurgitate information, or how fantastic Cameron McKenzie's books are. It's probably a little of all three.

I'm an Adobe Flex developer with a ColdFusion background. The only Java I have written was for a Master's class taken 5 years ago. As a Flex developer OO concepts are not new, but most companies want you to have both Flex and Java. So I needed something other than a single class 5 years ago to show potential employers that I can easily pick up Java. I decided last Saturday (3/13) that I would get a Java certification and the SCJA sounded perfect. I ordered McKenzie's books, after reading everyone's recommendations on this forum, excluding Cameron's of course They arrived Tuesday afternoon, at which point I started reading the study guide cover to cover. The book is easy to read and makes the concepts clear and concise. It took me 3 days to finish the study guide at about 4-5 hours a day. I spent most of Saturday going through the Mock Exam book. For both the study guide exams and mock exam questions I was consistently averaging 85% - 89%. Sunday morning I finished going over all the questions in the 2 books that I had missed, and decided I wanted to sit for the exam. I found a testing center that was open and took the test.

So I received the books on Tuesday and sat for the test the following Sunday and passed with a 92% without ever writing a single line of Java code. This does not give me a warm fuzzy about the value of this exam. Yes it tested my knowledge of OO concepts and allows the conversation about my lack of Java experience to potential employers go a little easier. While it does meet my needs, I'm just not sure it was worth the $400 and week's worth of time to get it.

As stated on this forum before, all you need is Cameron's 2 books. I found Cameron's exam questions to be a very good representation of the actual exam questions. His are a little more difficult as he does not give you the number of correct options for his multiple answer questions. While I found this annoying, it's the best part of studying his material.

[Joe Harry]

Congrats!

[Ankit Garg]

Congrats Robert

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

Congratulations!

[Roberto Perillo]

Congrats, champion!

[arulk pillai]

Congrats and keep up the good work.

[Abhay Agarwal]

Congrats