640-802 Tomorrow (8/13/10)

Hello All, I joined the site in '07 while preparing for my A+, but have recently become active within the community so all in all I am pretty new to the forums.

I sit for my CCNA (640-802) tomorrow morning at 9:00AM PST. I have been reviewing with practice exams, hands on labs and various Cisco press books. I plan to power up my rack this evening after work and run through a config session covering the syllabus.

Do any CCNA holders have any advice for day 1 preparation?
(within the guidelines of the Cisco NDA of course)

Thanks and I will post results following my exam.

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Comments

JSK

My advice would be to not cram. Spend an hour or so reviewing but otherwise just take the evening off and relax. Get a good nights sleep so that you're fresh and ready to go in the morning.

mikej412

JaCkNiFe wrote: »

Do any CCNA holders have any advice for day 1 preparation?

Try not to drive yourself crazy

You can check out the Exam Demo and read the Cisco NDA tonight. Then you can use that time before the exam when you'd normally watch and do the demo and read (and agree to) the NDA to jot down notes on your dry erase sheets (or scratch paper if you're one of the lucky few that goes to an old school test center). Or you can end the misery of waiting for the exam that much sooner and skip the demo before the exam and just jump down to the I Agree section of the NDA and get to the exam that much sooner.

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For Day 0 keep an eye on the clock and watch the time management. If you've done lots of lab practice the SIMs should be easy, so don't spend more than 10 minutes or so on one. If something is flaky, get the proctor. If the SIM is strange and something you've never seen or heard about while studying, do you best and hope it's an ungraded "beta question."

Move steadily and firmly through the questions. Read the question. Read ALL the answers. The read then question AGAIN. If you had missed a word in the question or misunderstood the question when you initially read it, you may catch it on the second reading as you ponder why none of the answers seemed to match the question you initially thought they had asked.

Remember that there is NO mark and review option on the Cisco exams. Once you hit the next button, don't worry about that question anymore.

Good Luck!!

wirerat

Good luck tomorrow. Relax tonight for sure.

jjbrog

You do realize you scheduled an exam on friday the 13th right?

earweed

jjbrog wrote: »

You do realize you scheduled an exam on friday the 13th right?

He's gonna knock it out though!

ccnxjr

Best of Luck, don't think of passing or failing, focus on the questions!

garv221

JSK wrote: »

My advice would be to not cram. Spend an hour or so reviewing but otherwise just take the evening off and relax. Get a good nights sleep so that you're fresh and ready to go in the morning.

This....

JaCkNiFe

Thanks for all the advice everyone! I appreciate it.

I failed the exam today with a 770/1000. A tough pill to swallow indeed. However, I am going to review my troubled areas and retest asap.

Any advice for failing? lol!

phantasm

JaCkNiFe wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice everyone! I appreciate it.

I failed the exam today with a 770/1000. A tough pill to swallow indeed. However, I am going to review my troubled areas and retest asap.

Any advice for failing? lol!

Chock it up as a learning experience, an expensive one. But one none-the-less. Don't be too hard on yourself though, just study some more and do it again.

fly351

That sucks man. What did you not do to good on? Focus on those areas. What I do when I am reading the book is I take notes in a word doc. For my CCNA, my word doc was 53 pages long which included graphics, topologies, pictures, etc etc.

What was passing btw?

JaCkNiFe

I think my biggest problem was rushing through the sims and not carefully reading the questions. I will retest on Friday the 20th and post results.

rogue2shadow

phoeneous wrote: »

Yeah, take the two exam course. Do ICND1 then ICND2.

I am one of the biggest advocates of the two exam approach. It helps you focus on each objective in greater depth and you get to run through two designations

Bl8ckr0uter

phoeneous wrote: »

Yeah, take the two exam course. Do ICND1 then ICND2.

I think he came close enough that he could probably sit the 1 test route and be fine. Study up on the weak areas and do some labbing over the next week. Even if you take 2 weeks and study you will probably get it on the next go.

JaCkNiFe

I sat for the CCNA this morning and Passed! 885/1000

Thanks for all the kind words and suggestions.

mikej412

JaCkNiFe wrote: »

Passed!

Congratulations on the CCNA!!

peanutnoggin

jacknife wrote: »

i sat for the ccna this morning and passed! 885/1000

thanks for all the kind words and suggestions.

congrats!!!

wirerat

Congrats on the pass!

JSK

Congrats!

alan2308

Congrats!

jjbrog

fly351 wrote: »

That sucks man. What did you not do to good on? Focus on those areas. What I do when I am reading the book is I take notes in a word doc. For my CCNA, my word doc was 53 pages long which included graphics, topologies, pictures, etc etc.

What was passing btw?

Any chance you could upload it? that would be sweet and a lot of us would be greatful!

rogue2shadow

Congrats man!!!!

earweed

Congrats dude! Persistence pays off.

jojopramos

Congrats. I am also tempted to do the 1 exam course CCNA. Im thinking to take it this coming September.