Advice before the exam

chinaman

Man, I am very glad that on sunday I wil be taking my first 801 exam after last 2 months failing the intro and not stoping pursing my goal to become one of the CCNA, I would like to ask some advice before the exam.

Thanks for the help.

sleemie

I would say don't overextend yourself the evening before, that means no heavy studying, just some light review to go over areas you might be sketchy on, and no reviewing the day of. keep your mind clear. get a good night's rest and eat a light breakfast. nothing heavy, but don't skip it.

skaeight

sleemie wrote:

I would say don't overextend yourself the evening before, that means no heavy studying, just some light review to go over areas you might be sketchy on, and no reviewing the day of. keep your mind clear. get a good night's rest and eat a light breakfast. nothing heavy, but don't skip it.

Great advice. That exact regiment has worked for each of the exams I've taken so far.

mwill

Hi chinaman,

Heres my advice on what to do. Study the morning before the exam, like the post says dont over do it though. Before the test during the survey part of the exam, brainddump all your little notes that you need.

Such as a subnetting chart!!!! Very important to do! Most people like myself cant subnet in their heads very well or fast enough and you dont have enough time to write everything out and do binary math etc. So if you have a subnet chart write this down so you can view this chart to take shortcuts with subnetting questions.

If you dont have one visit this site: http://www.techtutorials.net/tutorials/networking/subnetting123.shtml

Nice chart to keep. I used this during my exam.

Also any other notes you need to write down during this survey do so.

About 60% of the questions on the CCNA are indrect subnetting questions. Meaning if you cant subnet well or at all, you cant answer a simple question even if you know 99% of the problem. That one subnet part will throw you off, and you cant answer it because of subnetting. You may get questions like "do so and so, and your like yes I know that then at the very end it will say, place these networks in the last avaiable subnet on the forth useable subnet" Ok so if you cant subnet fast or at all, your screwed.

Time if VERY important here! - I took the one test approach so i dont know about the other two but still time matters!

When i took my exam, i answered almost all questions within a minute or less, and took about 8-10 mins on my sim. (i took too long) But even with this time, i thought i was rocking! At the end of my questions, i only had 3 mins left on the last question. I was shocked :O. Even after flying through this i almost ran out of time! So watch the time but dont panic, and try not to stay too long on one question if you do, your toast.

Most important stay calm "easier said than done" and stay postive. Go in there with the attiude that you are going to pass this exam. If you go in there with a negative attiude your results will reflect this.


HINT: make sure you know VTP well, and VLANs well and Frame realy well

Good luck!

mikej412

Good Luck!

Yeah -- you should be in review mode now. You don't want to lose points on things you already know trying to guess if you should learn something "new."

I try and review the morning of the exam.... and out in the parking lot of the test center -- since I get there early to allow for road construction, accidents, car trouble, and meteor strikes. That's my test day method of not going crazy worring about the exam.... or it used to be before taking all these exams just became boring. Now I try not to take a nap and miss the test.

chinaman

Thanks for all the advice, this is my last day tommorow is my exam. I hope I can pass the test.

I 'll update you as soon I pass the test.

Trailerisf

mikej412 wrote:

Now I try not to take a nap and miss the test.

Same, I get myself to the point a few days before the exam where I can't even look at the book because I know all the answers before... Most times I stop studying 2-3 days before the exam and wont even open the book again. I usually write the exams in 20-25% of the time required and am maintaining ~ 900/1000 averages