Hi,
Finally I cleared the exam with 88% yesterday. It was great experience
Started my preparation on
23rd December 2006 and ended up just giving a first time reading to HFSJ by 1st Jan. After that relaxing for 5-6 days seriously started the
second reading with the full notes preparation and finished reading that by the end of January month plus along with practicing the concepts like EL and listener invocation
Then started with the
Third Reading which literally was to brush up what all I have made notes in the second revision that ended till 15th feb. After that decided to read from
Miklai Notes and completed that in 3.5 days flat. Then I started out with studying some topics from
Servlet Specs like
RequestDispatcher, Listeners and Deployment Descriptor various elements .Then I again started to read HFSJ for the
fourth time with a superfast reading just along with the things I read from Servlet specs.
Then at the end of the February month I started reading some topics like
EL Evaluation, Custom Tags from the ranch and from sources on net since I did not find JSP Specs interesting. And along with that read the
core tags from JSTL docs Bought the voucher on 2nd march 2007 and registered for the exam on 12th march and then started giving Mock Exams. Gave Exams like Sun e-exam, Javaranch mock exams, jiris exam-1 only, jdiscuss exam, deshmukh book questions at the end of every chapter, javabeat.net, Marcus Green Exams Summary Quizzes{closest to the exam thanks marcus},j2eecertificate.com, Whizlabs Simulator,HFSJ Mock Exam.
During all the times i gave exams I read the HFSJ book almost 2 times (Total
6 times) with just skimming through the pages and remembering the topics.Plus starting analyzing my mistakes in a notebook. I gave HFSJ exam earlier just to feel like what is the real exam and scored 50/62 in that .But on 9th march I seriously sat down and gave the exam for the final time and got around 73% marks (I would have loved if that 20+ rule would have applied to me but anyways I am happy with what I have achieved ).On 10 and 11th march I recollected all the points noted down in the notebook and plus some
word docs I have created for myself .
On the D-Day (12th march) , I woke up at around 7:30 and started getting ready to go to exam center I felt like revising but did not (that might have costed me 5% score may be) .
Now Finally about the exam The exam started with 7-8 Design
Pattern Questions (Seriously Thanks to Marc Peaboy Notes on Design Patterns which I got only 3 days earlier from javaranch only, helped me a lot on this topic),then some request/response API stuff was there,Some questions on filters and some DD questions ,But the questions on Tag Files were confusing since I was always too less prepared on Tag Files. Question on custom tags were tough but HFSJ explains them the BEST. Questions on Security were very easy 5 of them were there. I got 1 question on Dynamic Attributes (Go through Bryan Basham Tutorial here on ranch) and finally I ended the
test and wow I managed to get 88% was very happy
My Advice :
1) Go through the Bible HFSJ.Thanks Kathy Sierra Bert Bates and Bryan
2) Go through the Specs I prefer to say Servlet and JSTL for core tags
JSP Specs are boring not well written i gues with no offence to anyone
3) Come here and read what people have to say to get motivated and learn something.
4) Just remain cool and go with your own pace.
5) And personally with no offence on anyone here
�A PASS IS A PASS�
is the worst statement people make here(sorry everyone if I hurt anyone on that )
My Sincere Thanks To
�Kathy Sierra Bert Bates Bryan Basham for wonderful books you write and Please continue doing the good work.
�Miklai for his Detailed yet Concise Notes,Fredric for his Nice Compilation of HSFJ
�Everybody on ranch
. Whizlab Simulator,Marcus Green for the free summary quizzes
Proud to be SCWCD . Thanks
Java Ranch for my two certifications
SCJP,SCWCD
Regards
Rishi Chopra
