I passed SCJP 1.5!! - some tips

[Anamika Singh]

Hi,

I had only 5 days to prepare for the exam (and 6 years java coding experience ).I passed SCJP 1.5 yesterday with 62%. Just scraped through. I did a thorough reading of the K&B book. Read it in and out about 3 times and tried out the examples in the book(4 days). I spent a day trying out mock tests.
Some tips: Working out the questions at the back of each chapter of the book prepared me more than half way for the test.
Mock tests on the cd accompanying the book were great and close to the real exam.
Marcus Green exam was good too.
Just make sure you write enough mock tests before the actual exam.
I read posts at JavaRanch regarding the exam and peoples experiences.
When the exam began, I found the initial 8-10 questions to be time consuming so I marked questions that were taking time and did the simple ones first. Once I answered the simple ones and was reasonably confident and comfortable, I came back to "Big" ones.
If I tried to revisit a drag and drop question, I lost my previous answer. Did anyone face the same or I clicked some wrong button?
I wrote the exam at a promteric centre in Bombay. They had scheduled me for 10:00 in the morning but my turn came only at 12:30 at noon. There were several others waiting for their turn . Reconfirm your exam time maybe twice thrice so you dont have to wait before the exam.
The exam was not difficult. Time was sufficient.I guess I needed more preparation. All the best to others taking the exam.

[Paul Anilprem]

Congratulations!!!

[Satyajeet Kadam]

Congratulations,

How much duration you took to study SCJP?

[prashanth kumar]

Originally posted by amolpalekar kadolkar:
Congratulations,

How much duration you took to study SCJP?

"I had only 5 days to prepare for the exam"

[Deepak Bala]

Congrats !

[Sanjeev Singh]

Cheers

[Henry Wong]

Congrats for passing... moving this to the certification results forum.

Henry

[wise owen]

Congratulations!!!

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Congratz !!!

[Ram Kumar]

Congrats!

Yes, that's right I faced the same thing too when I revisited my marked questions that that included some drag and drop!. When you re-attempt drag and drop questions the exam warns you that you will lose the previous answer. So make sure you are just not revising but re-attempting a previously marked question that way you dont void your earlier answer to that question!.

If I tried to revisit a drag and drop question, I lost my previous answer. Did anyone face the same or I clicked some wrong button?

[pranay hira]

you must be incredibly smart to do it in five days :-).

Congratulations!

[Anamika Singh]

Thanks.
I guess previous coding experience helped a lot. I didnt have to spend much time (rather didnt have time ) on fundamentals, OOPS concepts etc when I was preparing for the exam. Just read through these chapters in K&B book and made sure I did mock questions on these. I concentrated more on new things like Autoboxing, Generics, var-args Enums etc. On these I worked out the examples in the book on the PC so I could burn them in. Mock tests were a must as thats were I discovered concepts where I was weak (but didnt know) so I did not do them on the exam. 5 days was really short so I had to dig into nights and ofcourse I was out of office. On the lighter side inability to sell the expiring voucher made me prepare for the exam in a short time .I am posting my experience on javaranch as I received a lot of help from here, starting from deciding which books to buy to people sharing their notes, mock exams and tutorials. Thanks again!!

[Rancy Chadha]

Congratulations Anamika!!!

[Bert Bates]

Congrats Anamika!

Efficiently done,

Bert

[anil kuchana]

congratulations

[Anamika Singh]

Thanks Bert!! The K&B book was very focussed. Just what you need for the exam.