Passed Route 300-101

shaun5263

I took the route exam for the first time at Cisco Live this last week and am glad to say that I passed!  I skated by with a 790 but a pass is a pass.  I have been off and on with studying over the last few years and really started into it full force over the last 4 months or so.  I also have working experience with Cisco routers and switches in my current role which was also very helpful for applying real world usage to some of the exam topics.  30 minutes after I passed the exam, they announced the new exams coming out in February of this next year so I am going to try to get Switch and Tshoot out of the way before then.  I was all over the place with this exam as far as materials go:

Books:
OCG - Read this through a couple of times, taking notes the 2nd time through.  Like everyone else has pointed out, this is lacking on certain topics.
FLG - This one was a good read, easier to follow than the OCG but still lacking.
Chris Bryant - Skimmed through this one and never really finished it.

Videos:
CBT Nuggets - Good for a high level overview on the training that Jeremy presents.  Keith's hands on video set is good to run through for sure.
INE - Great quality content IMO.  Definitely gets into the weeds on a lot of things but helps with understanding how things function.

Practice Tests:
Kaplan (formerly Transcender) - These are ok I guess to get you thinking about some of the topics.   
Premium Ebook (OCG) tests - Good for some of the trivia stuff but not that great overall.
Boson - The best out there that I have found.  They have some pretty poor reviews on their website but I found their ExSim test to be a very helpful study tool and most similar to the real exam.  Harder than the real exam if you ask me.
INE - This was a difficult exam for sure.  Pretty BGP heavy and way out in the weeds on a lot of network principals.  Good for mental exercise but not really anything like the real exam.

I also spent a great deal of time labbing in GNS3 and reading numerous Cisco whitepapers.  Good luck to anyone else who is trying to get this out of the way before the deadline!

Mr.Robot255

Congrats Shaun well done 

CryptoQue

Congrats! I was in the same situation 5 years ago. I passed my last exam (642-832 TSHOOT) a month before the January 2015 retirement. Good luck on your journey to obtaining your CCNP! 

Spiegel

Congrats!

Unfortunately by the time I attempt at the CCNP level exams it'll be the new version. Would have liked to have taken a stab at the current exams.

shaun5263

Thanks everyone!