Scheduled to take 293 on 7/21

Technito

I just scheduled to take this exam this coming Wednesday. I've been labbing, hitting the self test simulator, and reviewing chapters in the MS Press book like crazy these past few weeks. So I guess I am about as ready I'll ever be for this exam. I feel strong in most of the areas, except WINS I feel kinda iffy on. Everything else I feel I got a pretty good grasp of. This will be my first attempt at this exam, so any last minute advice from anyone would be appreciated. Thanks.

tbgree00

I'm taking it a week after you. I just took my first assessment on measureup and didn't do so hot. I noticed the practice test has a lot on DNS, RRAS, and PKI. I'm going in assuming that it takes everything on the beast, kicks it up to 11, and adds PKI and Clustering.

I used the nuggets and even if you don't I would thinking looking at the list of videos on their site and making sure you have a grasp on every topic there would be a good way to make sure you know everything you need to.

Devilsbane

@technito It sounds like you will do ok. Good luck!

@tbgree00 Don't let measureup kill your confidence. I was studying for the 290 and doing pretty good. Getting decent scores on my Transcender tests, felt pretty confident with the information. Then I took a full Transcender test the night before my exam. For one reason or another, I scored like 63%... It almost ripped the floor out from under me. Here I am, nearly 300 miles from home in a hotel room about 12 hours before my test, and it looks like I'm going to fail.

I didn't let it get to me too much. I went back through the questions and noticed several stupid mistakes. I went to bed, and reviewed the next morning. Walked into the test and scored 775. Wasn't pretty, (although there were only like 2 questions that I really guessed on) but a pass is a pass and I was able to drive home happy.

Technito

Thanks to the both of you. And good luck on your exam too tbgree00.

tbgree00

Good luck tomorrow and be sure to send me all the questions and answers!!!!

Just kidding. Well about that last part, not the wishing you luck part.

motogpman

Good luck on the test and don't forget to post the results!!!!

tbgree00

So how did it go? Was it tricky?

Devilsbane

tbgree00 wrote: »

So how did it go? Was it tricky?

As you can tell, he didn't make it back alive... Good luck on your try!

Technito

Well the results are................Neutral.


As I was taking my exam, I get to question 38 of a total of 45 questions and the PC displays an error and then shuts down. The testing center said the issue was on the Prometric side, so Prometric is going to let me retake it again for free. Now it's kind of unfortunate that I wasted my time and travel on my off day to have something bad like this happen on my exam. But I also see it as fortunate because I must admit I was having a tough time with this exam. It was tricky was definitely a lot more difficult than 291 imo. Most of the questions were short and the scenarios and implementations were easy to understand (which makes you think, oh I'm gonna know this answer!) but then when you see the list of possible answers, you notice they are really manipulative. A lot of the questions I knew the answer, but due to the extra tricky details they added in the possible correct answers, made me only able to narrow them down to 50/50. This left me unsure of a lot of my answers. And of the 38 questions I took, there was about 10 sims, which were mostly PKI. A couple RRAS and IPSec sims as well.

So to be quite honest, I'm not sure if I would've passed this exam even if everything had went smoothly. But since they're giving me a free retake I think I'm gonna re-schedule for next Wednesday. This will give me another week to brush up on some of these tricky details.

Technito

Devilsbane wrote: »

As you can tell, he didn't make it back alive... Good luck on your try!

Well I just got home from taking the exam literally less than an hour ago

Devilsbane

Oh good, I had feared the worst!

It sounds like the error worked out well for you. You got a free peak at the questions, and you can use that to hit some of the areas again. Good luck

Technito

Thanks. Yeah I really think it worked out to my advantage. Otherwise I'd be pretty upset right now if I felt positive I was passing the exam. So....Back to the labs and self test.


And by the way, have you taken this exam already @Devilsbane?

Devilsbane

Nope. This one is next on the list after Security+. I wanted to ensure I got the lifetime security+ so I pushed back my MCSE a little bit.

I'll start work on this in early August.

tbgree00

I was also starting to fear the worst!

I'm glad that you had a fortunate misfortune. We're taking the test on the same day now. Hopefully we'll have two success stories this time next week.

Good luck in your studies!

Technito

Yeah good old misfortune . But I'm definitely gonna get this exam knocked out next week now that I know what I need to do. And yes, I'm looking forward to us each have a success story by this time next week! Good luck to you again

tbgree00

How'd it go? Did Devilsbane's laptop ghost cause problems with the computer again?

Devilsbane

tbgree00 wrote: »

How'd it go? Did Devilsbane's laptop ghost cause problems with the computer again?

Nope, laptops fine now. I'm wondering if my remote control had something sitting on top of it that pushed buttons from time to time. Either that or a scheduled task was mucking things up.

Technito

I passed! I got a 858. This particular exam was completely different from the one last week. This time I had lots of IPSec, Security Templates, and IP addressing type questions. Which I am really strong in these areas. I only had about 7 or so questions on PKI this time and a few RRAS which were in forms of sims. I had some clustering questions as well, which were pretty easy. But what was really stunning is I had at least 5 questions on types of backups lol. They were too easy to be on this exam in my opinion. But I won't complain, just glad this exam is behind me now. But what's annoying is I scored a lot lower on 291


So how did your exam go tbgree00?

tbgree00

It sounds like we had very similar tests. I got a 770 which isn't great but is better than I thought when I hit end exam. 858 is very impressive, good job. Are you immediately going on to 294? I'm probably going to give it a week and then start on it.

Technito

Yeah thanks. 770 is a great score as well. See my post about 294 on your thread.

Devilsbane

Congrats to both of you!

smg1138

Congrats to you guys on the pass. Tomorrow it will be my turn. Did you guys get any questions on subnetting?

Technito

Thanks to both of you.

@smg1138, yes the exam I took today did have a fair amount of questions on IP Addressing, mostly relating to DHCP. It doesn't go too deep into subnetting but as long you understand what a subnet mask is based on a given CIDR notation and how many hosts it will support, then you should be fine.


Edit: And good luck

motogpman

Congrats on the passes you guys!!!!!!

Technito

Thanks motogpman