Mock exams, how soon & how often?

[Brock Barnes]

For those of you who are taking the Mock exams like Marcus Green's and Val's...are you waiting 'till you think you have studied enough and want to know if you are ready for the exam, or are you taking the mock exams, and then retaking and retaking and retaking them until you get a good score on them? I haven't done or seen the mock exams yet, thinking obviously the more I do the exams, the more I will commit to memory thus I'll get a false sense of comfort before going into the real exam. I guess my question is, do most people use the exams as a memorization/study tool, or as a guage of knowledge?

[nupur dhawan]

personally, i take mock exams as a guage for knowledge.....though i have taken a few of the easier mock exams (as per the ratings) , to measure the level of knowledge i have acquired ....and then retake them , after a while to see if i have achieved anything in that period of time. i have decided to try and take up the tougher mock exams towards the end of my preparation , when i feel confident enough !
i would appreciate it if you could give me the url to val's mock exam .

[Corey McGlone]

Do some up front to get a guage of where you are. But, be sure to save a few (Val's for sure) to take a week or two before the exam. Then, you'll get a good idea of how far you've come and, more importantly, which areas to hit hard prior to the exam.
Corey

[Brock Barnes]

Here ya go! http://www.valoxo.ch/jr/mocks/mock01a.html

[nupur dhawan]

Originally posted by Brock Barnes:
Here ya go! http://www.valoxo.ch/jr/mocks/mock01a.html

Thanks Brock ! Appreciate it .

[Brock Barnes]

No prob!

[Paul Villangca]

Personally, I first took mock exams just after reading a Java cert book, R&H. And I was foolish enough to think that Valentin's mock exams were 'not that hard.'
Anyway, after all the codes, mock exams, and discussions here at this forum, I managed to pull up my scores to within the 80-90% range. That's when I though I was good enough to take on the real thing.

[Valentin Crettaz]

From the disclaimer of my mock exam:

Please be advised that the questions are deliberately not easy so don't take it until you think you are ready

no comment...
[ June 28, 2002: Message edited by: Valentin Crettaz ]

[Paul Villangca]

Lol, how right that is! I got 37% on my first take (88.1% on the next, though)

[Alan Chong]

Hi Brock,
You must do at least 10 mock exams before your
real battle. The most important thing of doing
mock exams is getting used to analyzing questions
and the options they give, especially analyzing
code. If you are not fast enough to understand
the code you will run out of time. One of my book
said that 120 minutes are enough for the exam
unless you fall to sleep. But that is not true.
120 minutes are hardly enough. I did more than
2000 questions. My experience told me that if I
did not read the questions very carefully, I will often pick the wrong options even if I had
all the necessary knowledge to answer the question right. And when I started giving more time to read the questions very very very very very carefully, I spent about 110 minutes for each mock exam. And the result was that I still felt I did not read the questions carefully enough when I read the explanations for the questions I answerd wrong. After I did a mock
exam, I always wondered why I picked those wrong
options.