About essay exam, be ALERT!

[Terry Wang]

i just found out what happened to my scjd exam after 4 weeks frustrating waiting.
apparently, the communication between prometric and sun is poor. after you take your essay exam, prometric expects a pass/fail result from sun, like for scjp. but since sun will only grade your essay after they receive your code, so prometric gets nothing back. then sometimes they assume you "failed" the exam and they are NEVER going to send the essay. this becomes a dead block thread and you'll wait in the dark forever. prometric has the essay and sun has the code, you have no result.
email sun to ask for status? they'll ask you to wait for 4 weeks first. you'll have no idea what's going on.
so after you take your essay exam, the most important thing is to ask them to send your essay to sun immediately. they DO have careless people who keep forgetting things.
did sun or prometric ever make a mistake and forget to ask you for paying the expensive voucher?
remember, this didn't only happen to me and may happen to you!!!

[Krishna Varma Adluru]

An,
Thanks very much for the info. I should be careful
Regards,
Krishna

[Siddharth Mehrotra]

hi An Wang ,
well that was a dreadful story, as such everyone puts so much effort in the exam and on top of that there is so much money invested.
anhow now that the case has been settled, whats your result, or are you still waiting for it

[Terry Wang]

i'm still waiting...

[Andre Tow]

The SCJD assignment entry process if FULL of potential problems and annoyances.
Heres an outline of what has happened to me.
-Jan 22nd: try to upload, but of course i dont have permissions.Email Monica Green, for help.
-Jan 23rd: get message saying permissions have been fixed, try to upload but there is some network error, i get a failure message.Of course now, my permissions are blown, i cant try and resubmit. Email monica green for help
-Jan 25th: she tells me to email her the assignment, shell enter it for me. I do so.
-Jan 30th: i take the essay exam
**time passes** no score..
**more time passes** no score..
sent about 10 emails to monica green asking for information, no response.
MARCH 5th: IM PISSED, i call up suned, they say they'll get back to me.
March 6th: i get email from monica saying they just recieved my essay from prometric. Is this BS? i dont know. Fine, i ask her if its being graded, she says yes.
March 16th: i see somethign on galton, it says that my assignment is CORRUPT, THANKS MONICA!
I can resubmit for no charge etc...blah blah
So i email monica for her to reset my permissions
to be able to upload again. I PASTED the info from the grader saying i dont have to pay or wait or anything.
March 17th: Monica emails me back saying i have to wait 2weeks and pay resubmission fee.
DOES THIS PERSON READ ?!!? I send her back another msg WITH THE TEXT HIGHLIGHTED SO SHE CAN UNDERSTAND. finally she does..stupid..and i upload my assignment.
March 22nd: I'm still waiting...
WHAT A GODDAM NIGHTMARE.
=/

[Donald Wedding]

EXACTLY THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME !!!
This really made me mad! For the kind of money we are paying, they ought to have the bugs ironed out by now!

[calvin zhu]

Maybe we can try to complain to some other department in Sun. :roll:

[Terry Wang]

Andre, "DOES THIS PERSON READ ?!!? "
here's part of the emails between monica and me:
-------------------------------------------------
Hello,
I will contact Prometric and have them send us your essay exam.
You just uploaded yesterday. What exactly have you been waiting for?
You
uploaded yesterday. I do not understand the statement "I have been
waiting for
too long without any idea." Please clarify what you are waiting for?
Regards,
Monica
> Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:27:25 -0800 (PST)
> From: An Wang<[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: URGENT !!!
> To: Monica Green <[e-mail]>
>
>
> Hi,
> I uploaded my code (aXXXXXXXXX.jar) on 02/20/2002, the same day I
took my
essay exam.
>
> I called Prometric before people told me this thing happened before.
Prometric
told me I failed my exam and asked me to call Sun again. This is
exactly what
happened to another tester I know. Either Prometric didnt' send in the
essay or
Sun lost the code.
>
> Please let me know what happened because I have been waiting for too
long
without any idea. Thanks!
> An Wang(xxx-xx-xxxx)
> Monica Green <[e-mail]> wrote: Hello,
>
> We have yet to grade part II of your assignment as we have yet to
receive your
> essay exam. Please explain why you feel that you have failed part II.
>
> REgards,
>
> Monica
>
--------------------------------------------------
my god, it's 03/20/2002, not 02/20/2002, god tells me what i'm waiting for???
actually i emailed her 2 weeks ago and asked if my essay and code were properly matched. she told me nothing and asked to wait till 4 weeks passed. damn, if she had done a simple check, this thing wouldn't have happaned at all!!! sun edu is only interested in our hard earned cash, not our time. 4 weeks, like nothing to them. till now, i don't even get a "sorry" from them.
[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: An Wang ]

[Reshma Das]

i think we should take some serious steps either by calling or mailing guys from other department or letting the media know about this. we pay a huge amount & we put our efforts to take the exam and still has to suffer. this is too much of pain and irritation.
we should do some thing seriously to let higher authorities of SUN to know our problems.

[Reshma Das]

after sending tons of emails to sun, someone finally responded asking me name of the exam i took. it is rediculous. everything is clear in the mails still they seem to act like innocent. i feel so irritated

[Donald Wedding]

EXACTLY THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME !!!
DEJA VU !!!
1) I emailed Monica Greene and asked her if she had received *BOTH* my upload and my exam.
2) She emailed me back and said I could take the exam any time I wanted.
3) I emailed her back and told her that I had *ALREADY* taken my essay and uploaded the assignment. I asked her if they had received my essay or not.
4) She emailed me back and said that she reset my account so that I could *UPLOAD* the assignment any time I was ready. I had already done that!!!
That's when I hit the roof. I emailed her back a rather nasty letter explaining that for $400 I expect her to at least *READ* my email before *RESPONDING* to it.
Eventually the problem got fixed, but it took
well over 6 weeks to get my grade while others were getting their results in 2. I think if I had not been as dilligent about contacting Sun to fix the problem, I would still be waiting. It seemed that they couldn't care less about my problem.
At the time, I tought about posting all the emails to this group, but figured that my situation was just a fluke. I also thought it was so crazy that nobody would believe it really happened. Now it appears that this is becoming standard procedure.
A word to the wise. I got jerked around with this exact situtation for so long, I started making several phone calls a day and sending out numerous emails. I got the problem fixed by keeping all over SUN to fix the problem. However, when I got my grade, I got a 135 (which was 20 points less than I had expected). I hope that the two events are unrelated.