Dear all,
after passing CCNA today with 933 I would like to share my experience with everybody interested as I have received a lot of great infomration from this forum.
After reading the CCNA Guide from Sybex (by Lammle, a must have !) I initially planed to take the 2-exam approach. However, the more I thought about it and looking at the prices I thought that it might be worth trying the one-shot-exam. I really recommend to take the preparation test on the Cisco website to find out if you are ready for the one-exam path if you want to go that way.
After having finished the book (reading 1-2 chapters a day) I worked through the **** documents which are a waste of time and money.
I decided to swith to Boson which is a pretty good software. I worked through all the 400+ questions until i reached 90%+. However, you should be warned, that the difficulty level on the real exam is a little bit higher than the Boson questions (I would say 10-15% more difficult). As a final preparation I took the tests on this website again scoring around 90%. This made me feel very confident so I decided to shedule the test even a little earlier (today instead of monday).
I recommend that everybody takes the tutorial that you can go trough before starting the actual exam. It will help you to understand how to answer the different types of questions so you don't waste any time during the exam. Talking about time, I received 55 questions with a time limit of 120 minutes. I finished with roughly 30 minutes left on the clock and reread all questions and answers at least once. Remeber that there is no way to go back in the exam once you answered a question so make sure that you double-check both question and answer before moving on.
I was faced with a lot of multi-choice questions and quite a few drag&drops. All multiple-choiche questions provide the number of correct answers which can be a big help when eliminating false answers. The drag&drop questions where quite easy to handle, but again, double-check everything ! After reading a lot about the router sims here are some facts I discovered today: TAB does not work. The sims don't behave like real routers as they have a limited command set with limited help. You should really take your time on the router sim, don't rush or quit them as they make a significant impact on the score.
When I finished the last question I wasn't really sure if it was enough to pass (I made a small list of sure and unsure answers during the exam to get an overview) but I was happily relieved when I saw the 933
So for everybody who is working on CCNA or INTRO/ICND I wish you the best of luck. If I can do it you can probably too
Best regards,
Lordy
