CCNA 200-120 in ONE WEEK

Dedline

Hey all;

I'll be taking the CCNA 200-120 on October 10th @ 12:30PM CST.

My background:
Been messing with the internet since I was very young
Lengthy internships as a junior engineer and database systems analyst.
Recently graduated with degrees in Management Information Systems & Supply Chain Management
Currently working in a large technology company as an IT Architect

Why I decided to take the CCNA:
I deal in Enterprise IT Architecture and I'll be needing a solid background in networking moving forward. CCNA holds water when you're trying to sell yourself to at a young age.

Materials that I will be using:
CCNA - Routing and Switching Study Guide (Todd Lammle) [My Primary Study Material]
CBTNuggets [Plan on using this to hammer home topics]
PacketTracer [Using this instead of purchasing hardware]

How are you going to do this in a week?:
First of all, I'd like to believe that I know enough about networking to be dangerous. I passed my networking class in college with flying colors and I've got a lot of technical context to draw from. I decided to only give myself a week because if I did it any other way, I would half-ass it until the last week anyway. I live for the pressure and I think it would be an awesome personal accomplishment.

I'm going to keep a log so anyone who cares can follow my great feat or complete train-wreck of an experience:

Journal;
Day 1:
- Read & Completed 150 pages of Tom Lammele today (including labs)
Day 2:
- Will update EOD.


Words of encouragement are appreciated; words of dissuasion will fuel my fire.

Cheers everyone!

ccnxjr

Are you going through this chapter by chapter? or topic by topic ?
I'm guessing that the book and the CBT nuggets videos aren't lock & step in sync.
Also, are you grinding through as much as you can, or committing to mastering certain topics in a day before moving on?

Best of luck!
Looking forward to hearing you passed with at least 990/1000!

datacomboss

Good Luck!

Jon_Cisco

Packet tracer is fine for CCNA. Taking it in a week it would not make sense to gather equipment.

With a tight deadline I don't know that I would even use CBT Nuggets. Unless they are playing in the background while you lab anyway. Hopefully everything is review anyway or you have a great memory and it really does not matter.

Good Luck!

Heero

If you actually pass without using **** I will be very impressed. Good luck.

Bloogen

You shouldn't attempt this in short a short amount of time. Great people have attempted this and have fallen to the task. If someone were to actually accomplish this they would truly be admired by both their friends and enemies, but the price of defeat is not worth it...

Good luck!

emaz

Good luck to you. I think its pushing it doing that soon. Cisco exams aren't easy.

thatguy67

I am interested to see how you do, mainly because I was in a somewhat similar situation. This thread helped me look at myself in retrospect and perhaps there can be some advice that will be helpful to you.

I took the NetAcad courses and finished in June, then screwed off during the summer and forgot a good amount of material. I got down to studying seriously about 10 days before my exam date.

I took the 200-120 last week, and failed by a minimal amount of points...I gave myself 15 minutes for each lab sim, and I got one early on (the first 10 minutes) that was a disaster troubleshooted for 15 minutes then I just had to skip it to keep on schedule. I got a little psyched out knowing I lost a bunch of points, which probably set a negative mood for the remainder of the exam.

The multiple choice stuff is easy if you read the book a couple of times. I would suggest practice exams if they're included in the Lammle book. During your readings, I suggest you write down subnet/IPv6 address **** sheets after each chapter so it stays fresh in your mind. The labs are what can make or break you, though you've probably heard that. You can afford to do marginally bad on one labsim, anything else and you're likely to fail.

I hope you do better than me on my first attempt. I don't see any certifications on your profile so I'm not sure if you've taken an industry exam before. It's easy to let your confidence from doing well in classes give you ambition. If you fail, at least you had the balls to pursue an exam that is designed for renewing veteran CCNA's with only a week of studying. If you pass, remember that you passed an exam designed for renewing veteran CCNA's with only a week of studying. I wouldn't suggest commenting on that on your resume though

Looking back on this, I would have taken the ICND1 and ICND2 separately. In the unfortunate case you fail, give yourself a week for the ICND1 and then a week for the ICND2 exams while the material is still fresh in your mind. I know how time can be an important factor, and another couple of weeks really isn't that long, especially when you're gunning for the CCNA.

Dedline

On a phone break so I'll throw in some replies;

I'm going through chapter by chapter, making sure that I have a comprehensive understanding of what I need to learn before moving on with the exception of subnetting which I will allocate more time to after my run-through of the book.

I am going through the book first and then CBTNuggets to subsidize areas where I feel I could gain better understanding.

Thus far, the majority of the book has been review of what I learned exactly one year ago. Conceptually, I'm moving right along. I hit a small roadblock this morning when I hit summarizing but I logically worked through it and am now heading into CLI stuff.

Thank you all for the support. Back to the grindstone!

thatguy67

What might help with the CBTNuggets is to watch the videos at 2x the speed. Obviously you cut the time down in half, but it's a quicker review if you've already read the stuff. It forces you to process the commands he types more quickly and that may be of value to you.

My two cents

Dedline

thatguy67 wrote: »

I am interested to see how you do, mainly because I was in a somewhat similar situation. This thread helped me look at myself in retrospect and perhaps there can be some advice that will be helpful to you.

I took the NetAcad courses and finished in June, then screwed off during the summer and forgot a good amount of material. I got down to studying seriously about 10 days before my exam date.

I took the 200-120 last week, and failed by a minimal amount of points...I gave myself 15 minutes for each lab sim, and I got one early on (the first 10 minutes) that was a disaster troubleshooted for 15 minutes then I just had to skip it to keep on schedule. I got a little psyched out knowing I lost a bunch of points, which probably set a negative mood for the remainder of the exam.

The multiple choice stuff is easy if you read the book a couple of times. I would suggest practice exams if they're included in the Lammle book. During your readings, I suggest you write down subnet/IPv6 address **** sheets after each chapter so it stays fresh in your mind. The labs are what can make or break you, though you've probably heard that. You can afford to do marginally bad on one labsim, anything else and you're likely to fail.

I hope you do better than me on my first attempt. I don't see any certifications on your profile so I'm not sure if you've taken an industry exam before. It's easy to let your confidence from doing well in classes give you ambition. If you fail, at least you had the balls to pursue an exam that is designed for renewing veteran CCNA's with only a week of studying. If you pass, remember that you passed an exam designed for renewing veteran CCNA's with only a week of studying. I wouldn't suggest commenting on that on your resume though

Looking back on this, I would have taken the ICND1 and ICND2 separately. In the unfortunate case you fail, give yourself a week for the ICND1 and then a week for the ICND2 exams while the material is still fresh in your mind. I know how time can be an important factor, and another couple of weeks really isn't that long, especially when you're gunning for the CCNA.

You've really got me thinking on this one... Although I'm making good progress, I'm starting to think that the 200 - 120 might be a stretch in one week. I'm going to hit the driving range and think about this one.

Cider

How is your subnetting? If its not 100 % you are going to have an extremely hard time.

Kai123

Don't skip the Sims if your making progress. Better to get points from the sims and rush and get some of the multiple choices wrong.