Test Vendors

PStefanov

Hello,

I was wondering if somebody knows of any good test vendors. I am looking for some good tests for the CCIE R&S written exam that will help me prepare better but I don't want to use ****. So vendors such as TK, ****, etc. are no good.

Regards,
Pavel

Turgon

littlegrave wrote:

Hello,

I was wondering if somebody knows of any good test vendors. I am looking for some good tests for the CCIE R&S written exam that will help me prepare better but I don't want to use ****. So vendors such as "abbreviated version of XXXXXX", "products to **** my way through exams because I'm too darn lazy to actually study for it", etc. are no good.

Regards,
Pavel

Hello again Pavel,

First of all congratulations on the right attitude. You could have passed the written easily by now with ****, but then so could the guy who sells me my groceries.

The time you are investing now in that formidable reading list will really help you when you prepare for the lab with workbooks further down the line once you pass the written test. Once you get onto workbooks you will be doing technology specific scenarios before any multiprotocol scenarios if you want to increase your chances of passing the lab.

Netmaster do a decent written test tool which you have to subscribe to. Try that one. It randomises questions and records your score.

Also the end of chapter questions and the final exam that comes on the CD in Wendall Odoms CCIE Routing and Switching book is very useful if used after you have carefully read each chapter.

I also procured a written guide from a well known CCIE vendor just a few days before the test and attempted their questions for variety. The technical material in the guide was fairly comprehensive but with two days to go I was done reading and just wanted to press on with some final test prep questions to catch anything I had missed. They had about 400 questions in the product. Im sorry to say that a few of these did come up on the real test say 9 or 10 out of 100 on the day but not the involved scenario type questions. Kind of disappointing as I did my best to avoid this in my preparation.

In both cases (netmaster and Wendall Odom) just be sure to not repeat the same test or same end of chapter questions too quickly or you will just remember the answers. I tried to leave at least 48 hours inbetween repeat tests but ideally 5 days to a week.

Don't be afraid to take a shot at the written once you are doing very well on both of these sets of practice questions.

You may need to resit the written but that's not a bad thing. It took me three goes even though I did a lot of reading. It's working the material you read that is key and being able to apply all that theory to the types of scenarios you get in the actual test.


After my first fail I studied again using the netmaster practice tool while reading all the recommended whitepapers again for the CCIE written test. I found that helped me improve my understanding of the material I had covered but I still missed out on my second attempt at the written. Having said that, I did better in the second attempt because I didn't run out of time and attempted all the questions. I felt better prepared on the day than my first attempt, when I knew I was in hot water after 10 questions and spent the test gamely answering what I could but I knew early on it wasn't going to be my day so I simply concentrated to try and answer as many questions as I could correctly.

I didn't have time to complete the last 20 questions before the clock ran out. There is serious time pressure in the written test unless you are really on top of your theory and protocol mechanisms.

The third attempt I passed. It was only after using Odom's book that I got the extra marks I needed. The scenario type questions in that book help a lot for the test. I found really reading Odom carefully from cover to cover helped me understand some important things a little better.

PStefanov

Hello Turgon,

Thank you very much for everything you shared and all the advice you gave me for the exam! I really appreciate your help!

As concerns to the ****, yes, I do not want to use them. Otherwise, I would have passed the v2 of the exam and wouldn't have gone through so many new topics for more than nine months. I just think that passing the exam on my own can save me a lot of money. This will show me if I don't know a certain topic well and I won't go to the lab unprepared and give Cisco $1400 for that. Everybody knows that a decent amount of the questions do not test your knowledge at all, but test if you can memorize some Cisco-specific stuff. Nevertheless, I decided that if I am going to something big, I am going to do it right and the hard way if I have to.

I will check out the netmaster test engine and probably subscribe to their service.

As for the lack of time, I have heard from a lot of people complaining about that and will spend some time working on my time management. Fortunately, I will get 30 minutes added to my exam time for non-English speaking countries. As I read some advice from S. Vermillion from groupstudy, I will try to first answer the easy questions because scenario questions take a lot of time to read and think.

Regards,
Pavel