291 Exam Results - PASSED! 760 [Review & Recommendations

The battle with the beast has finally come to an end...

I had the exam today and passed with a 760!

My past with The Beast;
I took this exam for the first time last year. I used TestOut and MS Press 1st Edition to study. I ended up failing with a score of 679. I ended up concentrating on finishing up school (graduated last May) and ended up getting a new job, in a new city. So that derailed my quest for a little bit.

For the exam I passed today, I used MS Press 2nd Edition, CBT Nuggets, and Transcender for practice exams. The Transcenders were a great gauge for the real test -- some of the questions were spot on with difficulty and topic distribution.

Stats of my exam;
46 Questions total, 3 sims
3h:30m window to complete the exam
NO SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR! -- just a Standard calculator
Tested heavily on WSUS, IPSec, DNS
[Edit by moderator - please do not post SIM topics]

There was actually some questions dedicated to subnetting - know how to subnet without the aid of a scientific calculator!

I was able to complete the exam, and review all the questions and my answers with 1hr45min's remaining.

My Recommendations for studying for this exam
I would highly recommend investing in these products;

Microsoft Press 70-291 2nd Edition
CBT Nuggets
Transcender

The way I studied was to skim through a chapter in the MS Press book, and then watch the corresponding topic in CBT Nuggets. After watching a section of the CBT Nuggets, I would read through the chapter, and highlight important facts or information that I did not know. Once at the end of the chapter, I would copy over all the highlighted sections into a notebook. I would review these handwritten notes daily (usually on the ride home from work). One benefit of public transit is having time to read every day

At the end of each MS Press chapter, do the labs/exercised in a VM environment.

Once I repeated this process for the entire MS Press book, I used Transcender to take practice exams. I was scoring around 70-80%. Also using the Transcender Flash Card mode was hard but helpful. The explanations in Transcender for the answers are GREAT -- much better than testing software that comes with the MS Press book.

Thanks to everyone on the forum that have helped me out! Hopefully I can return the favor!

I think I'm going to move to 293, hope to see everyone there

And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US

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Comments

sprkymrk

Big congrats JdotQ. Looks like you had some good strategy for studying.

Vogon Poet

Congrats and thanks for the advice!

jbaello

Big congrats and thanks for giving advice...

JdotQ

Thanks everyone! Hope the review and study recommendations helps other people pass this exam!

My apologies to the moderator who edited my post for the topics of the sims -- definitely noted

eltoro

Good job!! and thanks for the advice. I will be taking the exam next month and I think I should buy the transcender for practice questions.

sjmatthews

Well Done!

I'm studying this one at the moment, but the more I look on this Forum and others for advice and tips, all I see is -- "The Beast", "this was bad", "horrible" etc. etc.

To be honest it's putting the wind up me and scarying me s**tless right now, I've been at it for 4 weeks and have only just moved on to DNS, and to be honest, not finding it too easy, but i won't use a B**** **** becasue i want to say that I passed my exam the right way, plus i've heard these things can be upto 30% wrong !!!!!

Does anyone know if there are any Microsoft Webcasts which are good and worth downloading to help with this exam cos i'm going to try to stick to Microsoft sources to see if it makes it easier, and also to try and get into there way of thinking!!!!

:P

Thanks for all your help!

Steve

dynamik

sjmatthews wrote:

Well Done!

I'm studying this one at the moment, but the more I look on this Forum and others for advice and tips, all I see is -- "The Beast", "this was bad", "horrible" etc. etc.

To be honest it's putting the wind up me and scarying me s**tless right now, I've been at it for 4 weeks and have only just moved on to DNS, and to be honest, not finding it too easy, but i won't use a B**** **** becasue i want to say that I passed my exam the right way, plus i've heard these things can be upto 30% wrong !!!!!

Does anyone know if there are any Microsoft Webcasts which are good and worth downloading to help with this exam cos i'm going to try to stick to Microsoft sources to see if it makes it easier, and also to try and get into there way of thinking!!!! :P

Thanks for all your help!

Steve

I'm working on this now, and it's really not that bad. The exam is difficult mostly because of its breadth (though some may find tasks like subnetting somewhat complex). If you study to actually learn the material because you know you're going to have to perform those tasks and work with that knowledge on a daily basis, you will have no problem passing the exam. Focus on the big picture, not just the exam.

Microsoft Technet does have a podcast. I have them all downloaded, but I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet. MS is a good resource, but adding other resources is always a good idea. It never hurts to view things from another perspective. I use the same resources as the thread author for all my exams, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

cbriant

Hi,

I can see that Prometric don't include a scientific calculator, but do they include an erasable pad and pen so I can write down the addresses in binary and then convert them to decimal using pen and paper?

Chris.

Soulreaver

cbriant wrote:

Hi,

I can see that Prometric don't include a scientific calculator, but do they include an erasable pad and pen so I can write down the addresses in binary and then convert them to decimal using pen and paper?

Chris.

yea prometric gives you one of those erasable pads, i got one for every exam i took there

nel

congrats man. have a good few beers on me!

Obi-LAN-Kenobi

sjmatthews wrote:

... but i won't use a B**** **** becasue i want to say that I passed my exam the right way, plus i've heard these things can be upto 30% wrong !!!!!

Steve

Good for you for not using a B********! I work with a Systems Engineer that has heavily relied on these methods for certs and when he ran IPCONFIG /ALL on a server and saw a 169.254.xxx.xxx IP address, he thought that was DHCP?!?!

He did not recognize this as an APIPA address. Needless to say, the other engineers had a really good laugh at his expense.

JdotQ

Soulreaver wrote:

cbriant wrote:

Hi,

I can see that Prometric don't include a scientific calculator, but do they include an erasable pad and pen so I can write down the addresses in binary and then convert them to decimal using pen and paper?

Chris.

yea prometric gives you one of those erasable pads, i got one for every exam i took there

I also got a dry erase sheet, it was standard paper size (8.5" x 11") and you could write on both sides if you wanted.

Sanger80

Obi-LAN-Kenobi wrote:

I work with a Systems Engineer that has heavily relied on these methods for certs and when he ran IPCONFIG /ALL on a server and saw a 169.254.xxx.xxx IP address, he thought that was DHCP?!?! He did not recognize this as an APIPA address. Needless to say, the other engineers had a really good laugh at his expense.

OMG, that is funny.......