Hello mates,
Finally I clear this exam. For my preparation I used K&R study guide and their mock exams book (1), the study time was around 2 months doing a lot of coding. The exam felt like having a progressive level of difficulty, meaning the first questions were a piece of cake whereas the last one were very tough. It took me around 30 minutes for the first 40 or so and around 1h30' for the last 20, even if I slowed down a bit. I gave in before the time limit of 2h30'. The plastic sheet used for notes was nice, better than the whiteboard I had imagined, basically it is a double side A4 paper (with squares) with a plastic film on it. You write with a marker but I must admit mine ran out of ink in the first part of the exam, so I asked for a second one. Sometimes writing can be difficult, but it is very precise, it is a marker with thin pointing very like a pen. I didn't have any cloth to wipe the plastic sheet.
The [1] toughen you up for the exam making you hyper prepared: this was somewhat a double edged sword because I would have cared about a lower score but even in less time. And I panicked a little when, after booking the exam for two days later, I took the fourth mock scoring around 60% in 3h. This was unusual because before I scored around 85%-90% (but in more than 3h) even though I took the first three mocks twice. Consider that the real exam have just 2h30' and I had a borderline passing score so you can imagine! Anyway, first, in the real exam you've got the number of questions that are right and this saves a lot of time when you have the confidence to mark the answers as right without reading the others (practice that I developed doing the "choose all that applies" questions) and, second, the difficulty level starts as very lower so you build confidence and momentum, I felt like the first 40 were impossible to get wrong. Anyway, this was super preparation, the only points I missed were on some API memorisation and generics, two topics I was a little lazy to study in depth (well not that I did study them superficially either, but less than the rest). The books are perfect though if you want to score very high, and that is very nice =)
There weren't any questions on serialisation in case you're wondering.
Cheers and break a leg! =)
Gil Vegliach
PS: will you add my score to the wall of fame or shall I do something more?
References
[1]: OCP
Java SE 6 Programmer Practice Exams (Exam 310-065) (Certification Press)