(That's what she said)
What a relief! I finally wrapped up my MCSE:S today.
299 was 30 questions, and I wrapped that up in about 45 minutes for an 871. It looks like I missed about four questions. I felt pretty confident when I submitted it, so I wasn't too surprised. You'll be in pretty good shape for this if you've gone through 291 and 293. I watched CBT Nuggets, skimmed the MS Press book, and made a pathetic attempt at Transcender (I only did about 2.5/4 sections). This was a pretty balanced exam, so just review the exam objectives to see what you have to focus on.
298 was 5 testlets which each consisted of 5-9 questions and ran 15-30 minutes. There were 34 questions total. Each testlet is timed individually, and you can't go back and review after you've gone on to the next testlet. I've seen people complain about the lack of time, but I wasn't anticipating any problems because I have good reading comprehension and felt like I knew the material well. Unfortunately, I was mistaken. You can take the difficulty of a typical MS question and multiply it by about 20 (19.7 to be exact) for a testlet.
I thought you'd just read a page or two of info for the case study and answer a few questions. There's probably a dozen or more sections where you review the existing infrastructure, problem statements, statements by C-level execs, business plans, security plans, lan and wan diagrams, etc. There is a ton of info to get through (most of it is irrelevant to the questions), and that 15-30 minutes disappears pretty damn quick. My biggest problem was not remembering where some information was discussed and having to spend a lot of time digging through the various sections looking for it. I probably should have used my little whiteboard to make some notes, but I hadn't used it thus far, so why start now, right?
I felt really shaky on this one. I had no problems with the material from a technical standpoint, but I was rarely 100% sure on an answer. They through everything (i.e. legacy OSes) at you, and while an answer can seem right, there's always a nagging doubt that you missed some obscure piece of information that would drastically change their requirements. There were probably 5 or 6 questions I went back and changed when I came across other information while doing a different question. I spent as much time as I reasonably could going back through all the information. Every testlet fell into less than five minutes remaining, and a couple went under one.
This was nerve-racking. I was begging for a 700 when I submitted that last question. I really wasn't optimistic at all. I ended up getting a 946. It wasn't the 700 I was hoping for, but I guess I'll take it
Same thing for this one. This was all over the place, so be sure to follow the exam objectives closely. I watched CBT Nuggets, skimmed the MS Press book, and made an even less serious attempt at this Transcender test (I only did 4/12 case studies). I did this both in a little over two weeks, so I was really burned out. I didn't even bother reviewing yesterday. The MS Press book is really hard to read (it'd make a great reference though). It's pretty much hundreds of pages of lists, and most of it is common sense (at least if you've been paying attention thus far). Don't worry about remembering every little piece of information, and focus on the broader issues.
Now I'm going to focus on
Ninja Gaiden II and 71-652.
