CCNA Difficulty? (vs Microsoft)

ssnyderu2

I know that the Cisco exams are not a walk in the park, but are they as ridiculous as the Microsoft exams?

Example: I sat for the Windows 7 70-680 a couple of years ago and royally failed. I had studied hard for it, but there was a lot of questions that were not covered in the book I had or the CBT's I used. Will i have the same type of issue with the Cisco CCENT and CCNA?

theodoxa

Cisco is a LOT better than Microsoft. I took classes, read the books, did practice exams, etc... and still only [barely] passed half of my Microsoft tests. The Books and Classes don't cover everything you need to know and the MeasureUp practice exams are just plain worthless in my experience.

On one of my MS exams, I remember something like 80% of the test being on 2 topics, with only a few questions on some topics, and several topics [from the exam topics list] (some of which I studied really hard for and which were tested heavily on the practice exams) not even showing up on the exam at all. That said, hearing from others who took the same exam, they received tests completely different than mine. One stated that his tested heavily on a topic that I didn't receive a single question on. It seems that every test (at least for the ones with a lot of topics) is completely different. You might get tested heavily on one or two topics that someone else might not even get tested on at all.

Microsoft also only uses (or at least when I took the tests), Multiple Choice [and I don't remember for sure, possibly DnD) questions. There are no Simulations or Simlets. Cisco mixes things up better in my experience. I didn't feel like there was any topic really left off my CCENT/CCNA and the books and Boson practice tests more than prepared me for anything that I ran into, excepting for a couple of questions (1 wireless question that took a worldview vs. the books which are American-centric and 1 WAN simulation where it wouldn't let me use the command I needed).

d4nz1g

Personal experience: in a scale from 1 to 10, MS tests are like 3 and for Cisco certs I would give a 7.

MS questions are more like to be misinterpreted(?), whereas Cisco questions are way more objective.

Cisco tests are more difficult because of the amount of technologies covered, in my humble opinion.