Failed for a second time today

Failed for a second time today! Dire score of 632. Exactly the same as last month.

Never thought that I would fail this exam twice, but I have to say it is MUCH harder than anticipated.

My biggest complaint about this exam is the sheer length of the questions. At least 80% of the questions stretch to 3 or 4 paragraphs, which to me is way too long for a question. In fact, as the questions are so long, I can’t really call them questions, but scenarios.

This is the main reason for the failure I would think. Because there is so much to read for each question/scenario, I keep having to read it over and over again, which doesn’t help matters and just wastes time as well as making it incredibly stressful. But I am the sort of person who can sit there reading a question for ages and just switch off.

There was a guy at the computer next to me doing a totally different exam and I looked over at his screen several times and saw that he had questions that were just one sentence long. If only I had the same. In fact I didn’t have a single one sentence question at all.

As for the content of the exam itself, if you haven’t already taken this exam, what I would concentrate on learning very well is:

1. Permissions – Learn these to the point of being an expert – Share permissions, NTFS permissions and effective permissions. Had quite a few questions on this.

2. Read number 1 again. Make sure you master permissions before even considering to take this exam.

3. Authentication protocols and VPN’s – EAP, MS-CHAPv2, etc… Practice learning these with all kinds of scenarios.

4. ICS and ICF – Some of this can tie in with things such as VPN’s. Again practice learning these with all kinds of scenarios.

5. Remote Assistance – Practice this with various scenarios, using it locally, over VPN’s and through ICF.

6. IIS and Web Publishing – questions such as the local user can access the web site that he has been developing locally on his PC, but the other users in the department can’t access it.

I’m not sure if I will ever bother with a 3rd attempt. At £100 a go, it really is way too expensive as well. And I could do without that sort of stress as well.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

bighornsheep

hey~
welcome to the site!

Would you like to share a little about your background? What your experience is, why are you doing this test, just for the MCP, or MCSA/E?

What did you use to prepare?

MS exams are known for their lengthy questions. The reason is because I think they want to better hide what they are asking, and to make the right answer less obvious.

certain topics relate with each other, and you have to understand the concept and relations before you can properly identify the answer.

I can't tell you exactly what I mean by this, but from my experience with MS exams, they really are looking for you to understand the question, as oppose to understand the material asked in the question.

A question about permissions is not necessarily testing your in depth knowledge of permissions, but how you can apply your knowledge of permissions in the question they are presenting to you.

I failed 291 3 times because I wasnt prepared to apply the knowledge, so I definitely know how you feel about the stress and cost of a failure.

If you really want it, you just gotta work hard and give it your effort.

Good luck.

SWM

Hi
I also failed this exam (once). It was my first Microsoft exam on my way to being an MCSE. It was a real kick in the guts (and wake up call), as I guess like most of us we all think we are pretty competent with XP.

Review your study methods and source and dont give up.

GoodLuck

MCSAorBUST

hey tough luck... how were your study habits, man? Your post is wake up call enough for me. Don't give up though, try again. Atleast you know what youre up against...

Slowhand

It's tough, seeing that "Sorry, but you have not passed this exam" message at the end of the test. Don't worry though, I'm sure you'll have the test on the ropes in no time. If you're feeling frustrated, maybe you could take a break from this exam and study for something else in the meantime? You could take a look at something like Security+, or maybe even the 70-290 exam. You'd come back after you're finished with one of those with fresh eyes and a new perspective, ready to knock the 70-270 out of the park.

Orion82698

Damn dude, sorry about the fail again.

1. Change your name. Keeping your head up is a must. Remember, it's just a test. The certification doesn't define you.

2. Take a deep breath. Don't stress over this. It's over now, put it behind you. You need to focus on studying again, but first, take a week off. Clear your head, have some fun.

3. List your study materials and practice exams used. How long did you study for this test? Have you had any experience working and supporting an XP enviornment?

4. Get over how long the questions are. Yes, they are scenarios. How are you going to act when you get a job and a ticket comes in like it? You're not always going to have questions like "My mouse doesn't work, Help!". I have 2-3 paragraph questions in tickets all day long. It's only going to get worse with the other MS exams. You need to learn to read the question slowly, and find the material needed in it. MS sometimes likes to throw you off by putting crap in there that doesn't matter to the answer...... (No... not microsoft

)

Relax, study up, perhaps change your ways of studying, and knock it out.

You CAN do it

phil2006

Hi, yes failing exams sucks i know i know. Many times i thought about throwing in the towel but if you get your study environment/routine right you can achieve alot.

Personally, I had alot of distractions like my friends ringing me up to do stuff but I just had to tell them bluntly that I wont be drinking Jack Daniels until I pass this dam thing... and when I did pass.. I drank Jack Daniels and his cousin Johnnie Walker.

so far ive sat 270 and 290 and i failed 1st time on each... but on both occassions i studied harder and passed next time.

physicskid

Hello totalfailure and everybody that has responded,

This is my first time posting here on the forums but I have been following a lot of the various topics here in the Microsoft forums and A+ forums.

To totalfailure: I agree with the previous poster about your name. It's not wrong to fail an exam numerous times before finally passing. In fact, in about an hour, I too will be taking my XP exam too and this will also be my second time taking it too. I will aim to do the best I can, of course

Your exam is done. Take a break from it and re-evaluate how you prepared. Maybe you need another resource to consult? Perhaps, a course to prepare?

Some of the concepts are really tricky in XP, unlike A+ which I completed last month. However, with the various problems that people encounter with XP, the questions seem to aim to help us MCPs (and hopefully soon-to-be MCP

) to be better equipped to approach these problems more carefully and with more success.

Taking these exams can be expensive. I hear there are exam vouchers available that can cut some of the costs of these exams. Also, I believe Microsoft has a retake policy the exam fee is slashed by a certain percentage. I believe it's on the Microsoft website. I forgot to consider this when I was registering, I used my voucher from the Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows XP Professional Self-paced Training Kit.

I'm gonna do a little more light review before my exam. I'll let you know how I do this second time

physicskid

I never looked to the original posting thread, so I figured it would be better to create my own thread to talk about my experience yesterday.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=119264#119264

ITdude

Hang in there man! You have successfully passed the CCNA, so you must have something on the ball there. You just need to get familliar with Microsoft centric type questions. What works in the real world does not often apply to the "correct" Microsoft answer on their exams. Look for key words in the scenario presented and then rule out the incorrect answers and get to the correct one/ones by deduction, rather than looking for the correct answer/s.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

zebra-3

Dude, I would really like to see the figures of people passing or failing this test ! I was doing the 290 last friday and there were 3 other guys all doing the 270, they all failed !

Does microsoft publish these figures ?

I have to agree, questions are way too long for the 270.
looking for short questions ? do the A+, still a challenging exam though.

Also remember there is the correct answer, and Microsoft's correct answer !!!

rhelt100

zebra-3 wrote:

Also remember there is the correct answer, and Microsoft's correct answer !!!

OMG, that is so true. While studying for the 70-290, one of my main problems was that I have been working in a data center on the operations team for several years and was recently promoted to systems administrator. My company has a certain way that they do things and often the correct answer from experience was different than the correct answer from the book. I studied very hard to try to overcome this and did to a certain extent. Now, though, one of my coworkers gave me the nickname "pedant' because I'm able to spew in depth details on pretty much anything in the 70-291 MS Press book. I'll be honest, I didn't even know what it meant until I looked it up

"A Pedant is a person who overrates or overuses book learning or pure technical knowledge. Such a person values simple knowledge, (in the form of often obscure facts and rules) over common sense and more general knowledge."

dojo

Damm...Sorry to hear that,

But I know what you mean, I failed at 70-270 too, I got 677. Mostly because of the questions. So I went home and work through the MS Press 70-270 once again. This time I work on all the question. Set up a few Virtual PC's and trained on the permissions and such.
One week later I passed the exam with a score of 794.

Don't give up man, sooner or later you will kick butt.

taktsoi

maybe you gotta tell us about how you reading skill is. Then we can guide you to a right direction.

ms test not only does it test you the knowledge but also the reading skill. If you can't understand the questions, you are not able to find a correct answer at all.

Altho the questions are long, you have to find a way to eliminate the fake words.