Counting study hours

TranceSoulBrother

As I'm getting more serious about certing up whilst as I progress in my "IT career", I'm noticing many people posting here or on blogs about the amount of time, hours or months that they study for particular certs. Averages start to appear (i.e. 250 hours for CCNA, 450 hours for CCNP and 1000 hours for CCIE).
My question is why should people care or count? Is it to calculate any opportunity cost for particular certs or such endeavors? Everyone's life situation is different, and if someone says that it took him 300 hours to study for his CCNA or 3-4 months to obtain his CISSP, where's the newsworthiness in this?
Help me understand.

srabiee

I suppose other people in similar situations can use it as a reference for their own exam preparation. For example, if I'm planning on studying for the MCSA Server 2012 cert and hoping to take the exam in 1 month, but I then discover that many others are utilizing 3 ~ 6 months to successfully study and pass the exam, then perhaps I need to allow myself several more months of study before attempting the exam. :

Other than that, idk. As you stated, everyone is different. Take it with a grain of salt.

thomas_

I only count study hours, so people have an accurate amount of hours I studied for a particular exam. For me, saying that you studied for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year for exam is absolutely worthless. It makes a difference to know whether someone studied for an exam 8 hours a day for 1 month or if they studied 8 hours a day for a year.

If I say I studied, for say, 60 hours or 100 hours for an exam then it allows other people to estimate how long it's going to take them to prepare for an exam based on the amount of free time they have to study per day.

Obviously, people take longer to pick different things up, but I still feel stating the amount of time you studied in hours is way better than stating it in vague terms such as months.

docrice

Those numbers tend to be very ballpark-ish and can vary greatly depending on the subject, an individual's comfort with the concepts, previous experience with similar domains, and many other factors. They do provide a starting point to gauge required effort, but that's probably about it.