WOOT! Im so excited. I took my Net+ exam yesterday and scored 875. Man I was a nervous wreck but it went good. I have the 2 A+ exams to take next Monday so hopefully those will go good as well. Yes I know in the grand scheme of certs the Net+ and A+ aint really shit but I feel good anyway. Now I have to decide whether I want to pursue CCNA or the Microsoft side. Im taking the CCNA 1 class right now but that stuff is no joke!
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Passed my NET+
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Destonomos
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for me speaking personally the CCNA was the hardest exam I have taken in my entire life (I'm 24). I passed, but barely... If I had missed 2 more questions I would have failed. I went in not knowing one thing, route summarization. My thinking was, man, thats just one thing. There can not possibly be enough questions to fail me on that one subject...
Then I had something like 12 questions on it
Just to give you a background I read through the official study guides that cisco produces and it took me around 3 months of studying to prep for it. The 2 weeks before the actual test I was spending upwards of 4 to 5 hours a day cramming on subjects, using GNS3, and reading brain dumps.
At the time I had the cisco IOS memorized. I can't use it as well as back then now because it has been a year since I got it and I haven't touched a cisco product in that year but I could probably pick it back up easily.
http://www.sadikhov.com/forum/
best forum for helping you get your ccna.
You barely passed while using brain dumps? You and your cert are worthless. Shame on you.
Also, you don't know if those route summarization questions were even counted towards your score, so it's impossible to say what knocked your score down.
To the OP: DO NOT USE BRAIN DUMPS.
Destonomos
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The dumps didn't help, they changed the test the week before I took it. Just gave me an idea of the type of questions I would be seeing.
grats on passing the net+ it'll provide a decent foundation towards either route you take.
CCNA tests are no joke. i self studied, sims, etc etc read my book cover to cover twice. I took the combined test, mainly because i hate cert tests(tricky lil bastards they are) so instead of doing ICND1 then ICND2, i was done in one outing.
one piece of advice for any cisco test though. dont EVER think you're ready. there is no such thing as being over prepared. as hardcore as it may sound, you really need to be able to recall or use the knowledge on the fly. know subnetting like 2+2=4. i didnt know subnetting to that extent during my test, so i wasted a precious minute or two each time subnetting came up. finished with only 2 minutes to spare. I've been a pretty good test taker my entire life, thru high school and college i'd roll in relaxed, knock out the test and usually be top 3 being done first and normally top 5 in scores. cisco tests make me sweat like a whore in church lol. don't know why, maybe since i'm older now and put more pressure on myself to do well, since these tests essentially are my job/career.
grats again on the pass...never stop learning if you plan to stick with IT as your career!
CCNA tests are no joke. i self studied, sims, etc etc read my book cover to cover twice. I took the combined test, mainly because i hate cert tests(tricky lil bastards they are) so instead of doing ICND1 then ICND2, i was done in one outing.
one piece of advice for any cisco test though. dont EVER think you're ready. there is no such thing as being over prepared. as hardcore as it may sound, you really need to be able to recall or use the knowledge on the fly. know subnetting like 2+2=4. i didnt know subnetting to that extent during my test, so i wasted a precious minute or two each time subnetting came up. finished with only 2 minutes to spare. I've been a pretty good test taker my entire life, thru high school and college i'd roll in relaxed, knock out the test and usually be top 3 being done first and normally top 5 in scores. cisco tests make me sweat like a whore in church lol. don't know why, maybe since i'm older now and put more pressure on myself to do well, since these tests essentially are my job/career.
grats again on the pass...never stop learning if you plan to stick with IT as your career!
The Exam cram book for CCNA has a CDROM that has questions that are along the same lines and not dumps. Sure they're not exact questions but they do give you a much better understanding. I'd recommend those over dumps even if the questions change any day of the week.
You have to start somewhere, don't worry what other people think about CompTIA exams, most of the time HR won't know a Net+ from a CCIE anyway.
Cisco and Microsoft tracks are two completely different fields so go with which ever one you like to play with the most.
When Cisco stops asking stupid questions like describe the click by click menu structure of a software app you can't possibly have access to unless you already have the job the cert is for (wireless for example) I will support this.
Besides, boot camps generally teach the tests anyway which is in essence the same as using a dump. It just isn't word for word...
LOL that question does seem suspect.
As for me, I just bought the CCNA study books too, hopefully to be able to study in 4months and pass them. Recommended someone studying part time, or rather while doing other school work, to do the full CCNA or just take the part1-part2 test?
Congrats on the pass man.
Microsoft currently has the 2nd shot offer available until the end of June. That might be pushing it for you since you're taking other classes.
I have not taken any Cisco tests, but I have taken the A+ and N+, and 5 Microsoft tests. I'm less than a week away from finishing the MCSE. The thing that aggravates me more than anything with these tests is not being able to know why I missed something. I would love to know what some questions were trying to get at. And I love the questions that are 3 paragraphs and then the last sentence asks you a question that has nothing to do with what you just read.
Good luck to you with your future tests.
Microsoft currently has the 2nd shot offer available until the end of June. That might be pushing it for you since you're taking other classes.
I have not taken any Cisco tests, but I have taken the A+ and N+, and 5 Microsoft tests. I'm less than a week away from finishing the MCSE. The thing that aggravates me more than anything with these tests is not being able to know why I missed something. I would love to know what some questions were trying to get at. And I love the questions that are 3 paragraphs and then the last sentence asks you a question that has nothing to do with what you just read.
Good luck to you with your future tests.
And what questions were those? I passed my CCNA Wireless less than a month ago. Once again, it is impossible to know what was counted towards and against your score, so you have no idea what knocked your score down. Also, missing one or two WCS questions shouldn't have you fail if you were still pretty good on the rest of the material.
It wasn't an "Associate" level test and I can't tell you the question because of the NDA obviously. You do get a percentage score break down by topic however so some clever deduction can be used to figure out what you answered wrong.
That's really just one example of stupid questions... anyone that has taken more than a couple tests can attest there are a LOT of vaguely worded questions in the question banks for each exam, which can be hundreds of questions. If you get an unlucky draw you're hosed whether you know the material or not.
Cisco has also doubled the cost of the tests since I first started taking them, go figure.
Destonomos
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if your not grinding away at it then do them in 2 parts. I was litterally a zombie for 3 months before I took it. Unless on and off studying to you is 5+ hours daily.
Yes, you are correct about the score break down and that you can deduce which questions you missed. What you cannot say, with 100% certainty, is if those questions were even counted towards your score. Or if they were, you still couldn't say by how much. As you already know, one question may be worth 1 point while another could be worth 5 (not in those exact amounts, but you get the drift).
And if you failed the test, then its likely you missed more than a handful of questions, thus exponentially increasing the combination of the weight for each question, thus making it almost impossible to deduce exactly what a question was worth.
As for it not being an associate level exam, I highly disagree. I thought both ICND1 and ICND2 were harder than the IUWNE.
The tests you mentioned above are "associate" level. The test I was referring to was "professional" level, but I digress. While I am not advocating studying dumps only and becoming a "paper CCxx" the fact of the matter is that unless you have unlimited funds for retaking exams it's a good idea to use every bit of information available.
"Back-in-the-day" some of the bootcamps I attended actually taught only the test because they assumed you already had studied the material thoroughly and were just using the course as exam prep. They didn't hand you a copy of the exam, but they certainly covered all the material and types of questions that might be on it over 4-5 days of ~12-14 hour sessions. That information, plus your own studying to fill in the blanks, ensures that a couple new, odd, or obscure questions won't lead to a fail. Besides, memorizing piles of mundane details about technology that is pretty rare (PPPoA, VoFR, etc) isn't really productive if they probably are only going to ask you maybe one question on it and after the test you'll never see it again. Odds are if you work with it, you won't need to focus much time on it anyway.
Ultimately, no one should ever walk into any exam unless they feel 100% prepared for it. I've taken 23 separate certification exams in the last 10 years which is enough to come to the realization that there is no "wrong way" to prep and after the fact no one cares if you used some exam-cram tools in addition to reading the material cover-to-cover and sitting through hours of instructor led training.
A former co-worker of mine a long time ago (who had much more experience than me) actually took I think 4 tries to pass the CCNA composite because he would get test anxiety. He had mad skills but was "scared" of tests. Dumps/bootcamp/whatever is what he needed to pass. He could run circles around me on the command-line but I could pass the test and he couldn't, so what does that say about the tests?
"Back-in-the-day" some of the bootcamps I attended actually taught only the test because they assumed you already had studied the material thoroughly and were just using the course as exam prep. They didn't hand you a copy of the exam, but they certainly covered all the material and types of questions that might be on it over 4-5 days of ~12-14 hour sessions. That information, plus your own studying to fill in the blanks, ensures that a couple new, odd, or obscure questions won't lead to a fail. Besides, memorizing piles of mundane details about technology that is pretty rare (PPPoA, VoFR, etc) isn't really productive if they probably are only going to ask you maybe one question on it and after the test you'll never see it again. Odds are if you work with it, you won't need to focus much time on it anyway.
Ultimately, no one should ever walk into any exam unless they feel 100% prepared for it. I've taken 23 separate certification exams in the last 10 years which is enough to come to the realization that there is no "wrong way" to prep and after the fact no one cares if you used some exam-cram tools in addition to reading the material cover-to-cover and sitting through hours of instructor led training.
A former co-worker of mine a long time ago (who had much more experience than me) actually took I think 4 tries to pass the CCNA composite because he would get test anxiety. He had mad skills but was "scared" of tests. Dumps/bootcamp/whatever is what he needed to pass. He could run circles around me on the command-line but I could pass the test and he couldn't, so what does that say about the tests?
Shalafi
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while you two continue your pissing match, I'm gonna take this opportunity to say CONGRATULATIONS LUCASTA!!!
you've taken one step but it's an important first step, once you get the ball rolling and that first exam done, you feel really good and feel ready to crush some more. Congratulations man!!!
CCNA isn't as hard as you think, semester 1 is really basically everything you've already learned for Network+, honest to God, you're just relearning everything you learned in Network+, only Cisco's way of doing Network+.
Now, CCNA 2 covers Routing, CCNA 3 covers Switching, and CCNA 4 covers WAN technologies.
If i can make a recommendation, I recommend you take CCNA 2 and 3 in the same semester because they are easy to learn put together and you do not have to have taken CCNA 2 to take CCNA 3, but you must have 1, 2, and 3 done before you can take 4.
I say take 2 and 3 together because when you look at the technology and how things are implemented you will see a lot of similiarities between switching and routing. and it will accelerate your education.
When I look back on these past 2 years, I wish I had taken Routing and Switching together instead of seperately
you've taken one step but it's an important first step, once you get the ball rolling and that first exam done, you feel really good and feel ready to crush some more. Congratulations man!!!
CCNA isn't as hard as you think, semester 1 is really basically everything you've already learned for Network+, honest to God, you're just relearning everything you learned in Network+, only Cisco's way of doing Network+.
Now, CCNA 2 covers Routing, CCNA 3 covers Switching, and CCNA 4 covers WAN technologies.
If i can make a recommendation, I recommend you take CCNA 2 and 3 in the same semester because they are easy to learn put together and you do not have to have taken CCNA 2 to take CCNA 3, but you must have 1, 2, and 3 done before you can take 4.
I say take 2 and 3 together because when you look at the technology and how things are implemented you will see a lot of similiarities between switching and routing. and it will accelerate your education.
When I look back on these past 2 years, I wish I had taken Routing and Switching together instead of seperately
The school I go to won't let you take 2 CCNA courses in the same semester as I had thought of that already. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but having the A+ and Net+ will allow me to exempt 1 MS exam if I wanted to go for the MCSA or MCSE right? Should I bother with trying to get the MCSA or is it not really worth it in the end? Oh and thanks to those who did congratulate me
Getting my degree and 2 certs is a nice way to start this year off, and being a single dad and working full time plus going to school full time has been the most stress I think I've ever been under, but it is finally paying off and it feels great
Getting my degree and 2 certs is a nice way to start this year off, and being a single dad and working full time plus going to school full time has been the most stress I think I've ever been under, but it is finally paying off and it feels great
Shalafi
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i sent you a PM, you will be learning semesters 2 and 3 at the same time if you look at my PM
who cares if you don't get credit for it in the same semester, you will have the knowledge, that cannot be taken away
who cares if you don't get credit for it in the same semester, you will have the knowledge, that cannot be taken away