Completed 1 MCSE :D

elaverick1981

Well I finished 70-298 yesterday marking the end of my MCSE. It's been 5 and 1/2 months and almost £1000 to get me this far, but I think it's been worth it (and probably a lot better than anything else I'd be likely to do with a spare £1000).

I self studied throughout the MCSE, using a combination of the Exam Cram books, Technet articles, home lab & general work experience from the last 3 years of running my own business.
70-290 was my favourite exam, it's straightforward with very few trick questions and there is a ton of material for it.
70-291 & 70-293 (they are essentially a continuation of each other)taught me the most, while I had basic experience of all the topics contained within there were bits I'd never been in the position to try out in the real world.
70-299 was by far the hardest exam I'd had to do, however that may have been something to do with having taking it before having done 70-293, which provides a much more gentle introduction to PKI. 70-299 had a lot of indepth scenarios with some quite intricate configurations to follow.
70-294 was the only one I had to re-take coming as it did 2 days after hearing of the death of my Granddad (not a good time to try and exam, very hard to concentrate). An interesting exam though none the less, more based around reading comprehension than knowledge of the subject area. Definatly one to take easy and to really concentrate hard on what you're reading. Especially as I suspect some of the topics contained within are likely to be things that most people will only expereience once in a career (company networking merges etc).

Anyway I'm really pleased to have the MCSE under my belt, I'll be moving on to the MCITP:EA in the next couple of days. Might have some time off first... but I doubt it

undomiel

Congratulations! That must feel great. Don't forget to update your profile. So you aren't going to do one more exam to get that security designation?

NetAdmin2436

Congrats!

That's good time to complete all that in less than 6 months.

nel

Congrats

nielpeel

Great result, I'm happy for you! Did you spend all the £1000 on text books?

elaverick1981

nielpeel wrote: »

Great result, I'm happy for you! Did you spend all the £1000 on text books?

No, it's a combination of exam fees (£616), books (£175), travel and a few little bits to help get my home lab up and running.

Essendon

Congratulations. To do them all in under 6 months is pretty good pace. Good luck with the MCITP:EA.
Only out of curiosity, you intend sticking with your own gig or would you look for a job, now that you have the MCSE.

bertieb

Congrats!

elaverick1981

Essendon wrote: »

Only out of curiosity, you intend sticking with your own gig or would you look for a job, now that you have the MCSE.

I'm looking into getting a job elsewhere, the way the ecomony is right now I'd rather let someone else take the risky descisions and get a guarrenteed income for a while. I'm going to use the next few years to try and experiment a bit more and see if there are any specific fields of IT I can look to specialise in, being a programmer and an MCSE gives me a fair bit of freedom, so we'll just have to see.

Essendon

Fair call mate. Good luck with the job hunt.