Pre-Exam Survey

Claymoore

My old friend, the pre-exam survey, has returned. Back when I was taking my NT4 MCSE exams, every exam had a survey at the beginning that asked questions like 'what is your experience level' and 'how did you prepare'. The urban legend at the time was that your answers to the survey determined the difficuly of the questions. The only survey I answered honestly was attached to the only test I failed, so after that I answered every survey as if I had no experience or training (which was mostly true anyway).

I took 70-236 on Friday and there was a pre-exam survey. This time I answered honestly and the only area I ranked as a relative strength was backup and recovery. I wrote the Exchange backup and recovery procedure for my current client and I thought that was my strongest area. It may only be coincidence or just perception, but I felt that I had an inordinate amount of backup and recovery questions on the actual exam. Microsoft has unscored items on their exams, but I don't know why. I thought they were either as control questions for identifying braindumpers or beta testing new questions for the pool. I think most of my unscored questions were DR related, so I may have been beta testing some questions.

What are your thoughts on both pre and post exam surveys? Do you answer them honestly or take the time to provide feedback on the exams?

undomiel

I don't think I've ever run across a pre-exam survey, but if I did I'd answer it honestly. I've filled out all except one of the post-exam surveys (really needed to get to the men's room swiftly!) but I've been bad about giving feed back on the actual questions. I started doing that with the 2008 exams though. I felt them to be poor enough quality that they could use whatever feedback they could get.

dynamik

I think they're both irritating. I'd be happy to provide feedback after they gave me my score, but I just skip the one at the end because I'm impatient