Passed CCDA (640-864), but disappointed

Well, I passed the new CCDA exam on Friday and boy was I disappointed.

It's not that it was difficult, just that whole exam felt of rather low quality. I suspect that Cisco has probably outsourced the job of exam composition to a non-English speaking country. Quite a few of the questions seemed to have issues with ambiguity and grammar which seemed a bit silly. I'm almost embarrassed for Cisco.

This definitely comes as a shock after taking the Boson practice tests (apparently produced by SelfTest Software), which were more challenging but clearly written.

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SteveO86

The Boson tests are usually more challenging then the actual certification in most cases

nel

Ive heard mixed reviews about the CCDA in general.

But anyway, congrats on the pass! another one down mate! ive heard the DP is far more interesting!

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!

DPG

Perhaps Cisco is using the "International Engrish" that Check Point has on their exams?

Devilry

well, on a good note, Congrats on the pass!

advanex1

Congrats! I'm actually looking forward to studying/taking this exam as I would like to get more into the implementation and designing portion of networking.

chrisone

Congrats on the pass! I didnt really get any misspelled word or poor grammar when i took it. Maybe it has something to do with the site you take tests at? perhaps they downloaded a poor version from cisco? i dunno , seems like there is a lot of variables to the problem you had. Anyways are you going for the CCDP? CCDA was such a tease , all the real designs and meat are in the ARCH exam! Good luck!

Zentraedi

Thanks for the congrats everyone!

SteveO86 wrote: »

The Boson tests are usually more challenging then the actual certification in most cases

Come to think of it, I guess that was the case with my ICND1 and 2.

Anyway, he interesting thing that I noticed was that when I went to print out my results, it "SelfTestSoftware" at the bottom. Do you Boson just outsourcing all their exams to Kaplan?

That would suck if true. I'd like to have as many options as possible when taking these practice tests.

nel wrote: »

Ive heard mixed reviews about the CCDA in general.

But anyway, congrats on the pass! another one down mate! ive heard the DP is far more interesting!

Looking forward to that next year, but need to concentrate on some Virtualization studies first.

DPG wrote: »

Perhaps Cisco is using the "International Engrish" that Check Point has on their exams?

Is CheckPoint really that bad? I was toying with the idea of getting their entry level cert since we have quite a few of their devices at work.

advanex1 wrote: »

Congrats! I'm actually looking forward to studying/taking this exam as I would like to get more into the implementation and designing portion of networking.

Well, good luck! The actual exam isn't terribly difficult and I say just make sure you know your basics pretty well. Don't worry about obscure stuff from large memorization tables.

chrisone wrote: »

Congrats on the pass! I didnt really get any misspelled word or poor grammar when i took it. Maybe it has something to do with the site you take tests at? perhaps they downloaded a poor version from cisco? i dunno , seems like there is a lot of variables to the problem you had. Anyways are you going for the CCDP? CCDA was such a tease , all the real designs and meat are in the ARCH exam! Good luck!

I don't think there were misspelled words, just poor grammar, sentence structure, and ambiguity. I've seen some of that on other vendor's entry level exams. It's especially frustrating when proper comma placement can complete the meaning of the sentence, yet the sentence has no commas! The other thing that really bothered me was noun-adjective agreement and order. Seriously, use English order if you are writing in English.

As for the site I took it at, I really have a hard time imagining that to be much of an issue.

But yeah, I'm pretty sure that I'll be taking the ARCH exam next year. That might get interrupted though if my employer asks me to switch focus to something else.

Still, it'll probably be relevant no matter which direction go since the design series looks at the datacenter as a whole. OMG, it feels like there are so many problems, which result in way too many meetings simply because peoples' knowledge(or concern) of datacenter is too compartmentalized.

SteveO86

I had used the Boson test during my CCNP exams and they were great. (Tougher then the actual exam in my opinion at least for the old ONT & ISCW, and CCNA Wireless)

I may pick up the Boson exams for the CCIP exams.

But that's just what I've seen from Boson exams.

cxzar20

Zentraedi wrote: »

Well, I passed the new CCDA exam on Friday and boy was I disappointed.

It's not that it was difficult, just that whole exam felt of rather low quality. I suspect that Cisco has probably outsourced the job of exam composition to a non-English speaking country. Quite a few of the questions seemed to have issues with ambiguity and grammar which seemed a bit silly. I'm almost embarrassed for Cisco.

This definitely comes as a shock after taking the Boson practice tests (apparently produced by SelfTest Software), which were more challenging but clearly written.

I know what you mean by that. The quality of the questions asked on other Cisco exams are better, but you haven't seen anything until you take a CompTIA test. Many times their questions are so poorly written with multiple "correct" answers that it leaves you searching for the "CompTIA" answer. Good thing I passed my Sec+ when it was lifetime, I couldn't imagine taking it every 3 years.

sieff

so is the CCDA low lying fruit? i have the new Cisco Press book and I was thinking about reading through it and knocking it out before the end of the year. is the CCDA worth having? my thoughts were that the CCDA/CCDP would be good for Presales Engineer type positions.

Hypersonik

sieff wrote: »

so is the CCDA low lying fruit? i have the new Cisco Press book and I was thinking about reading through it and knocking it out before the end of the year. is the CCDA worth having? my thoughts were that the CCDA/CCDP would be good for Presales Engineer type positions.

That is where I am too.

My company is going to pay for me to do a CCNP course which is fantastic.

However, my CCNA expires at the beginning of March and my CCNA routing skills are ropey to say the least (I mainly deal with switching and ASAs rather than routing) so I was thinking that if I knocked out the CCDA, it'd be a bit of a refresher and a chance to get another cert.

Consensus?

SteveO86

CCDA more or less skims the water of routing. (Not as in-depth as CCNA or Route) You'd be better off reading some ROUTE/BCSI or reviewing your CCNA material for a better refresher.

CCDA would be a bit easier after CCNP if you don't mind waiting.

Just my 2 cents.. Either way you win