The Truth About Certification Exams

Johnny Johnson

Microsoft will be holding a Live Meeting event to discuss this topic. It sounds interesting. Supposedly they will discuss how they determine what questions to ask on the exams, and how they set the passing score. Unforunately I won't be able to view the event. Does anyone know if they will have it archived for later viewing?

The Truth about Certification Exams

Zartanasaurus

I want to know if you get partial credit in simulations.

Piers

This meeting is on now, if anyone is interested

Claymoore

I attended the event last night which was a replay of the earlier session. If you pay attention to some of the topics on TE or you read the Born to Learn blog you probably already know what was covered in the session. However, there were a couple of intersting pieces I thought I would share.

The only approved practice test vendors are MeasureUp and SelfTest software which is why they are linked on the exam prep guides over on MS Learning. No mention of Transcender at all, even though opinion seems to be they are the best. Could just be a licensing thing, who knows.

700 does not equal 70%. Questions are weighted and the scores are normalized so there is consistency across exams and versions of exams. The 700 mark on some exams may be as low as 50% or as high as 80% correct answers. The scoring graph at the end is only an estimate and has no direct relation to the number of questions answered correctly on any given section.

RobertKaucher

Claymoore wrote: »

The only approved practice test vendors are MeasureUp and SelfTest software which is why they are linked on the exam prep guides over on MS Learning. No mention of Transcender at all, even though opinion seems to be they are the best. Could just be a licensing thing, who knows.

Transcender and SelfTest are both owned by Kaplan IT Learning so I imagine it is a licensing issue. Transcender has the strong brand, SelfTest is relatively unknown... Why have both as approved vendors when Transcender is so strong by itself? I have found the question quality to be simalar for both.

SrSysAdmin

I wish I would have seen this earlier.

If anybody knows where I can catch a replay, I'd really appreciate it!