Open for Questions about the Exam Prep book

[William Brogden]

I want to thank Javaranch for giving me the opportunity. For the second edition, Marcus and I made some improvements and adjusted the coverage to match the current objectives and cover areas that people have trouble with. I will be hanging around to field questions.
Bill

[Jason Kretzer]

Do mock exams come with/in the book? What is your opinion on how well the book prepares one for the test as compared to JQ+ or even other books?

Thanks,

[Kezia Matthews]

Hi Bill,
Are there any mock exams available on the web which would help to prepare for the certification exams, keeping in mind the current objectives of the exam?
Kindly reply,
Kezia.

[William Brogden]

The CD has an exam simulation engine with two complete tests, and there is a separate text version sample test also. Of course, each chapter has a section of mock exam questions.
One thing that distinquishes this book is a large number of program exercises - I am a big believer in writing lots of code in preparation for the exam.
If you don't want to do a lot of code examples and just need to brush up on the basic before taking the exam, then my Java 2 Exam Cram book is the one you want.
Marcus and I figure we covered the test objectives quite well - anybody who takes in the entire book and does well on the mock exams should do well on the real test.
Bill

[William Brogden]

The web is loaded with mock exams and other free resources. Marcus' site at:
http://www.jchq.net/
has exams and tutorials. My site at:
http://www.lanw.com/java/javacert/
has a one partial test, and the dreaded "Hardest questions" set of 19 questions that have given people the most difficulty over the more than 2 years I have been running the online test.
Bill

[Jason Kretzer]

William,
Thanks for the reply. Also, I forgot to mention this in my previous post, thanks for being here to answer our questions. I, like other people here, really get a lot out of the times when authors come in.
I know you were already a member but thanks all the same.

I am with you on one thing in your last post--coding this stuff really makes a difference. Having been a chemistry teacher, I know that people learn best through repitition of challenging problems. I am looking forward to reading the book--even if I don't win it.

[Kezia Matthews]

Thankyou Bill for your great and immediate response. The sites would be of great help to me to prepare for the exam.
Thanks once again.
Kezia.

[Dave Vick]

Kezia
In addition to the two sites Bill mentioned there is also a mock exams list here at the Ranch.

[Jason Kretzer]

Any ideas on the pass/fail ratio for people who have used this book?
Also, I am planning on taking the exam this summer, do you guys have any insight on whether the objectives are going to be changed between now and the end of July? I would hate to study a book now and then the content of the test change.
I would not ask the second question but this happened to me when I took my A+. It changed while I was not looking.

Thanks,

[Marcus Green]

One of the things I worked on with Bill was to tighten in the focus of the book so it keeps closely to the exam objectives and where it covers topics not on the exam it makes it clear.
I can't tell you stats from the book itself, but there has been a very close match between the scores people got on the real thing and the scores people get on my mocks on my web site. When I worked on the book I had two years worth of feedback from the web site material to guide me with the new stuff created for the book.
Note that the book being given away is the big fat Exam Prep book, this is the larger hardback book than the Exam Cram book. Exam cram has been updated as well.
Marcus

[William Brogden]

Given that the objective of the exam is to test you on the basics of the language, I don't see how they could make a major change. There was an interesting rumour that they might go to an adaptive test style but I have not heard any more about that.
Bill

[Fei Ng]

William Brogden and Marcus Green,
any plan for SWCD or the Developer or even
the Architect? Everyone once awhile people ask if there is a guide for them.
FEI

[William Brogden]

As far as the developer and architect exams are concerned, in my view those topics are covered by any number of books on application development.
For the Web Component developer, I have suggested to the publisher that my book on Servlets and JSP could be updated to the newest APIs and supplemented with example questions to make a great study guide. However, it looks like my next book will be on the Cocoon project, the Apache organization's XML based web publishing system.
Bill