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Disappointing SCJP 5.0 but passing grade

 
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Hi all,

Well, I passed the SCJP 5.0 exam today, with a fantastic 62%. At least it's passing. It would've been much more embarassing to fail it. I was feeling pretty confident about this exam, since I do pretty well on the mock exams, and did 85% and 97% on the K&B exams in the past couple of days. For my study guides, I used K&B 1.4, and the http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ Tiger guide. I sprinkled in other websites and mock exams when I got the chance, but nothing major. Obviously, I didn't study the Tiger guide as much as I should have. The test is so different from the 1.4 mock exams, I may have done myself a disservice by getting ready for 1.4 and then deciding on 5.0. It might have been better to just wait, and study for 5.0. I know, I had a warning when I saw that K&B was going to be changing by like 50%!

Generics were my biggest fault. I thought I felt good about them, and have used them at work, but I didn't study nearly enough on the many tricks you can do with them.

The way the exam was structured didn't help either. The drag-and-drop questions were a killer! Just when I thought that a point-n-click exam couldn't be just like real coding. ;-) I used all of my 3 hours, with no time to really go over marked questions.

I'm not complaining - at least I passed, with no 5.0 study guides on the market. But, this hardly seems worth bragging about.

I do have one question.. one "Task" question I ran into had answers that all referred to Cars and other real-life objects, when the actual question/code had nothing but objects named A, B, and C. This might be a bug. I typed something about this in the Comments section. Do people read those? Who else should I ask/email about it?

There was also another issue I had with that question. I had not answered it, expecting to get prompted for it at the end of the exam. But, I didn't. I think these "Task" questions with the popup-window of drag-n-drops don't get flagged when you don't answer them. Has anyone else seen this? I also didn't like how if you went back to it, you'd have your answers wiped out, and you'd have to re-answer it. But, I can deal with that part.

I was thinking about getting the 25% discount and getting the voucher for SCJD, but these results have my confidence a little shaken. I've never had a score like this. Should I be worried?

Any feedback is appreciated!

MS

[ June 27, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Sanders ]
[ June 27, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Sanders ]
 
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A pass is a pass!

Well done!
 
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Congratulations, Mike!
 
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Hey,

Congrats man! Don't be panic, do WELL in developer exam..

Regards,
Ganesh..
 
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Basically, SCJP Tiger is far difficult than SCJP 1.4, and thus, getting good result in SCJP 1.4 means nothing in SCJP Tiger.

Anyway, a pass is a pass!

Go ahead on SCJD Tiger.

Nick
 
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Hi Mike
Congratulations.
I am planning to write SCJP 5.0 somewhere in August.U have opened my eyes.
By reading ur post, i am able to estimate the effort needed to pass the examination.
pass is pass,past is past
Best of luck for SCJD.
bye
suresh
 
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Hi Mike, Thanks for this post. I was going to attack this the same exact way that you did (I own the K&B v1.4 book and have been studying http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ as well). I agree with the others by saying that "a pass is a pass". You have your SCJP and I don't, so I envy you. I think I am going to wait until the K&B tiger book comes out before scheduling my exam. I pre-ordered this morning!
 
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Congratulations! Moving to Sun Certification Results.
 
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Congratz !

You're lucky devil !

regards,
MZ
 
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Congratulations!!!
 
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Heartly Congratulation !!!

Go for next step...............


-Sanjay
 
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still worth congratulations and enjoy the result!
 
Mike Sanders
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I was afraid this post might get moved over here if I started getting lots of congrats. :-) I do appreciate them though.

I wanted to talk about the "Task" (drag-n-drop) questions, how you're not prompted for non-answered ones later, and how you can't go through them later because you wipe out your previous answers.

I also wanted to know if anyone else got the "Cars" / "A,B,C" question that I thought might be a bug.
 
Mike Sanders
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Also, Suresh and Patrick.. don't be scared off too much by what happened to me. If you study the MZ guide THOROUGHLY along with your K&B, you should be ok. I didn't take the new objectives seriously enough, and I also spent too much time on the old objectives that didn't even appear in my test.
 
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Congratulations!

Does the study guide at http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ basically cover all you need, for example about generics?

Kai
 
Nicholas Cheung
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Does the study guide at http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ basically cover all you need, for example about generics?


Yes. I used it as one of the resources to prepare for my SCJP Tiger Beta exam.

Nick
 
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grrr... why didnt i know of javaranch and all these good tips about http://java.boot.by/scjp-tiger/ before I took the test yesterday? Instead I studied like a fool with the tutorials on java.sun.com website. I got 64% so I passed, but still... im bitter =)

talking about the drag-and-drog. U are right. those sucked. whats up with they deleting the answers when wanting to review the questions? In my oppinion thats stupid programming - didnt they hire professionals to program the exam?


arrrrgggg
 
Nicholas Cheung
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didnt they hire professionals to program the exam?


The test engine is developed by Prometric, NOT SUN.

Nick
 
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