About to take my GCWN Exam in 1.5 Hours....

I feel as nervous as I did taking my first IT exam 11 years ago. I took my last practice test last night and didn't do as well I would've liked, but I also had not finished my index of the books either and wanted to see where my struggles were going to be.

The questions (although they did seem to be word for word in the books) were REALLY obscure ones and in small paragraphs and a lot of times were about something so small it's as if they wanted to make sure you combed over every single inch of these books instead of the what is really important. Could be my nervousness though.

I redid my index to try and cover as much as possible and not just the major topics like before. At this point, I am not interested in the score, I just want enough to pass so I can put this one behind me and move on to the CISSP and MCITP exams before they expire.

Thanks everyone for the tips. Hopefully, I will return with good news.

BreadFan

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Zorodzai

Good luck...

I2Secure

best of luck bro and update ur score

Breadfan

I PASSED!!! I didn't get the score I had hoped for, but a pass is a pass.

I will rest a few days, watch the Bristol Night race with some Beer, then start on either 70-640 or 70-642 (don't know which one to go with yet)

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the tips (and JDMurray, I REALLY wished I had brought a sticky for the timer at the top of the screen. Damn that was annoying.

Have a good weekend,

BreadFan

cyberguypr

Congrats! Did you take the 505 course or did you go the self-study route?

Breadfan

Thanks. I did the 505 On-Demand course.

cyberguypr

How did you like it? I have one training pending before the end of the year and this is one of my top 3.

whatthehell

Congratz on your pass!

Breadfan

Well, It definitely opened my eyes to area of Windows (and other devices) security that I didn't get in MS training. You already have the EA/SA so you might learn a little more.
Jason Fossen, the instructor, ROCKS in my opinion. I have used a lot of CBTs in the past and live instructors but they were either boring to listen to, went off on too many tangents, etc. but Jason is very easy to listen to and learn from in my opinion.
The On-Demand video player is quirky, especially with Firefox, so be prepared for that.
If this is your first SANS/GIAC course, make sure you get that index going early and often. I didn't do mine till the end and I regret that now as well as the quizzes.

Good luck

BreadFan

Thanks WhatTheHell

ChooseLife

Congrats!

JDMurray

Congratulation!

I just took my second GSEC practice exam (93% in 259 minutes). The clock and the score didn't seem to bother me, so I was gonna forgo the sticky notes on the screen for my real exam next week, but now you have convinced me otherwise.

docrice

Breadfan wrote: »

The On-Demand video player is quirky, especially with Firefox, so be prepared for that.

If you're on OS X, I recommend using Safari since the Java operation seems much more fluid with it compared to Chrome or Firefox and SANS probably does QA a lot more with it given that it's the native browser on a Mac. On Windows, I'm guessing IE will provide the best experience, although it's been a while since I've done OnDemand via a Windows machine.

505 is one of those courses that's on my to-do list one day, but since I don't deal with the Microsoft aspect of things as much as I used to, it's a lower priority for me. It sounds like something any Windows admin should take if they're going beyond just basic administration duties.