Passed today, and I've got some gripes

SrAtechie

Well, I passed this thing, but just barely with a 715. I have a few gripes though, and I'm not sure who to point the fingers at so I'll just list them. Gripe #1: What was up with the repeat questions? I had at least 5 questions that were repeats. And worse yet, three of them were back to back. So my questions 34 & 35, 44 & 45 and 55 & 56 were the same exact questions back to back. Oh and #18 and #29 were the same question, as well as #3 and #17. Gripe #2: Where did some of these questions come from? Some of these questions, to me, were essentially server questions requiring an answer relating to a server. About the only thing that made them XP questions was the line in the beginning that said "the network has X XP clients." I went back through my books to see if maybe I was going crazy and the material was covered but I can assure you it wasn't (I'd love to state an example, but I'm pretty sure I'll violate the NDA thing) But I'm angriest about - Gripe #3: Who the hell takes a test with a massive head cold? That idiot decides even though he couldn't breathe through his nose and his head felt like a boulder dropped on it decided to go on with the exam and not reschedule. He goes in and barely passes because he was having a hard time reading and breathing, then he has the gall to go on forum and gripe! Some people just have no sense. (I hope you all know #3 is sarcasm directed to myself )

royal

Congrats! Also, the repeat questions is odd. I've never seen the same question repeated on an exam. As for the person taking the exam with a cold, I had a similar experience. This one guy next to me seemed to be pretty frustrated with his exam. He was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. He'd occasionally bang his fists on the keyboard as well. Was quite annoying when I was trying to concentrate on my exam.

dalia.fayad

congrats

i will take this exam next thursday

needing ur advices , please.

sprkymrk

Congrats!

I took my NT4 server exam many years ago while ill. I was actually at a vacation resort about 100 miles from home (family reunion), and the plan was to return home by myself Thurday night, take the exam Friday morning and get back to the resort to finish out the vacation over the weekend.

Well Thursday I started to get symptoms of a sore throat and body aches/pains, but figured it was just from all the walking/boating I had been doing. Well, that night I ended up with fever/chills and slept maybe 3-4 hours in a cold sweat. Friday morning I still had the fever and I could barely swallow my throat hurt so bad. Well it was too late to cancel the exam, so I went anyway (it was an 8AM appointment). I missed passing by like 7 points. I went to a walk-in clinic then and was diagnosed with strep throat. I got the antibiotics, returned to the resort 100 miles away barely staying awake for the drive, and slept the rest of the day and night. By the next morning the antibiotics had kicked in so except for a mild/medium sore throat I was good to go.

I rescheduled the exam and passed it a week later by a wide margin. I actually forgot about that whole experience until I read your post.

manic

My next cert is gonna be the MCP, any tips? I love testout and cbtnuggets and i also have the mcse ms press library lol, but i read slow and was thinkign of trying the 70-270 after i finish with the video based training...

SrAtechie

lol royal. Hope you know I was talking about myself I'm sicker than sick right now. I actually went through the same symptoms you did sprkymrk. See, at work the AC vent blows against the wall my terminal faces. So all that cold air bounces off the wall into my face and it always aggravates my sinuses so I have to constantly blow my nose. No big deal except for the fact that it masked the fact that my kids brought a cold home to the house. So what I mistook as normal sinuses turned out to be the warning signs of this cold/fever/flu/whatever the heck this is. I'm just glad that I passed so now I can take the entire weekend to sleep this darn thing off and jump right back into 290 come Monday.

As for the advice for the guys sitting, let me start with my study guides. I read the sybex book, the exam cram, the microsoft training kit, and the exam prep book. I also had a copy of the testout cbt and the transcenders tests. Having said that, I can honestly say that my test encompassed more material than I found even in my little horde of 270 resources. Of course, I may have had that one in a million weird and dysfunctional tests, so my opinion may not be the best one to draw from. I will tell you this, though. The sybex book was probably the least helpful of all the resources I had. I blew through it in a week and it basically contained material that was more than covered between the exam prep and microsoft training kit so save yourself some money there. Also the testout was very helpful as it had material that I didn't find in any of the books. I wish I had the cbtnuggets to compare but I've had friends who bought both that and testout and said the cbtnuggets packed in more info. So I'll try it out for the 290 exam. Anyway, my last bit of advice is the exam cram is a great test of your knowledge. They don't go in any terrible detail in the cram, but if you can go through it and can understand what they're talking about, then you probably have a good understanding of the topics it covers. Oh, oh and DO THE EXERCISES/LABS!!! Best way to remember the switches is by banging away at CMD, hands down.

jasonboche

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking of taking this exam sometime since I'm real short on client exams right now. The last client exam I took was Windows NT 4 Workstation. Before that, Windows 95.

sprkymrk

jasonboche wrote:

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking of taking this exam sometime since I'm real short on client exams right now. The last client exam I took was Windows NT 4 Workstation. Before that, Windows 95.

Are you sure? How did you get your MCSA/MCSA 2000/2003 then? All upgrade exams?

jasonboche

sprkymrk wrote:

jasonboche wrote:

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking of taking this exam sometime since I'm real short on client exams right now. The last client exam I took was Windows NT 4 Workstation. Before that, Windows 95.

Are you sure? How did you get your MCSA/MCSA 2000/2003 then? All upgrade exams?

Positive.

snadam

i took 270 in december, and I distinctively remember at least 2-3 sets of repeat questions. It was ticking me off because I thought that the test was the "adaptive kind" and I thought I kept getting those wrong, so they kept pounding me with them. they were simple though, and I know I was getting them right.

The things you think about when youre nervous as hell in the middle of your first exam


congrats on your pass!!!

janmike

Congraulations!

It seems that I have had 1 or 2 repeated questions on any cert exam I have ever taken, but I don't think as many as 5. Pretty common!

sprkymrk

jasonboche wrote:

sprkymrk wrote:

jasonboche wrote:

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking of taking this exam sometime since I'm real short on client exams right now. The last client exam I took was Windows NT 4 Workstation. Before that, Windows 95.

Are you sure? How did you get your MCSA/MCSA 2000/2003 then? All upgrade exams?

Positive.

I actually posted, then saw you had your MCSE all the way back to NT4 and remembered there was an upgrade path. That's when I added the last question about upgrades (before anyone else posted, so you can't tell I edited my post). I wasn't doubting you, just that you did the upgrades all the way from back then. If I recall, the NT4-2K (240) upgrade was a and very few were able to pass it.

You have my respect!

jasonboche

sprkymrk wrote:

jasonboche wrote:

sprkymrk wrote:

jasonboche wrote:

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking of taking this exam sometime since I'm real short on client exams right now. The last client exam I took was Windows NT 4 Workstation. Before that, Windows 95.

Are you sure? How did you get your MCSA/MCSA 2000/2003 then? All upgrade exams?

Positive.

If I recall, the NT4-2K (240) upgrade was a and very few were able to pass it.

You have my respect!

Yes 70-240 was abominable.

And Thanks

7255carl

congrats