People who have passed on first attempt.

Eightn9ne

Hi All,

First time poster here but long time lurker!

For those who passed their exams first go, I was wondering how long did it take for you guys to study? And for those who have had to re-attempt, how long did it take for you to pass it on your second, third etc. attempt?

I just recently passed the 70-410 first go but I started studying 'seriously' just before Christmas last year so it took me roughly 3+ months just to feel 100% confident. 'Seriously' meant actually building VM's/labs, tearing them down, rebuilding etc. and understanding the concepts and why I was doing what I was doing in the labs. Prior to that, I'd used to just watch CBT Nuggets and read the exam reference book on the commute to and from work.

I'd like to think works helped played a significant part as well being a System Admin and having the resources available to me (colleagues and environment) and spending as much free time I could playing around in my VM environment.

I only just had a poke through 70-411 and yep, this is going to take me roughly a few months at the very least (the Christmas break helped me a lot with the 410).

While I'm at it...I might as well ask this as well while I'm at it too! (lol) for those who already have their MCSA 2012, how long were the gaps roughly in between the 3 exams you took?

UncleB

I found it takes one week of spare time to read the material and highlight relevant facts, another week to work on practice questions, re-read the highlighted notes and catch up on some technet articles.

I never found the need to actually use the technology with Microsoft exams - they are very predictable with the question techniques and style of questions so after about 10 exams, they became fairly straightforward.

Most technologies become like this with enough exposure, but it can take a long time to build this up.