Study Materials / Study Methods for the 291

neathneathneath

I've recently passed 70-271/272 / 270 / 290 using Exam Cram / MS Press Training Kit and www.vtc.com - Its taken me from January this year until now.

70-291 is a different animal and I'm struggling finding best plan of attack.

Do you folks tend to concentrate on one topic at a time e.g. DHCP or DNS

Some books like Exam Cram (which i've found very helpful) - you can read cover to cover.

MS Press Books are not exactly novels but I presume that section by section from front to back is the way forward. (also doing the Labs would be useful)

Main question is:
If you are reading more than one book at a time do you do say one topic at a time from several books e.g. DHCP then move onto the next topic.

I've passed each of the above allowing about 4 or 5 weeks study for each - I'm allowing 3 or 4 months for this beast as many of the topics are new to me like IPSec and RRAS etc

Any ideas please?

meadIT

I used the MS Press Book and the Self Test practice exam. I would concentrate on one section (DHCP, DNS, RRAS, IPSEC, etc) and then do the practice exams from only that section until I thought I had it down well enough, then go to the next one.

Once I was all the way through the book, I then used the Self Test for everything at once, and selected the option to not give me any questions that I had gotten right more than two times. I kept going through the test again and again until there were less than 25 questions left in the pool.

azjag

So far in my studies I have used MS Press 70-291, CBT Nuggets, transcenders, DNS on w2k3 by Cricket Liu, and Learntosubnet.com. Planning my test for mid month of September.

I read through the MS Press books, Watched the associated videos on CBT nuggets, did some practice tests and found that i was weak on DNS and Subnetting and used DNS on w2k3 and learntosubnet.com

dales

thats exactly the same path im taking, im on the 291 as well. I started learning DNS as I understand that is a heavily tested subject in the exam. My plan is to get that down and then study the other sections whilst going back into dns every once in a while so that at the end hopefully I'll have dns down to a tea.

Other than that it is a different exam and studying is rather slow at the moment. Good luck and I'll see you on the other side!

Psoasman

I would focus on doing as much hands-on study as I could. Hit DNS, DHCP, RRAS, IPSec. Know how to set them up, troubleshoot, know the options. The 291 exam is wordy, so you need to be able to pick out the key words to find the answer.
It helps if you have an exta computer to load the software on to practice. You will probably see some SIMs on the exam, so the hands-on practice will help.

neathneathneath

Started on the lonesome trail of The Beast.................

thanks for your advice chaps, this forum inspires confidence

bertieb

Psoasman wrote:

I would focus on doing as much hands-on study as I could. Hit DNS, DHCP, RRAS, IPSec. Know how to set them up, troubleshoot, know the options. The 291 exam is wordy, so you need to be able to pick out the key words to find the answer

This is good advice. The exam is difficult because there are a lot of topics that you need to study indepth, and combined with the MS exam wording you'll need to be at the top of your game. Don't worry or be phased by this exam though, take your time, do lots of labs and relax in the exam - making sure you read the questions thoroughly - and you'll be OK.

Good luck.