70-680 Passed! What a relief.

Darthn3ss

Got an 825, mind=blown.

I hardly labbed at all, had to cram until the last minute, but, somehow I got it done.... Got 100% on both deploying and installing/upgrading, did not do so well on the monitoring/maintaining section.


My primary study guide was the Don Poulton book, it is very good. For anyone taking the exam in the future, you definitely need to have some understanding of the command line stuff. Not so much that you need to memorize every switch, but you at the very least need to be able to identify what commands are used in what situations. On most questions it was very easy to immediately disqualify two of the answers.



Has anyone ever gotten an exam that had typos all over the place? I had a few questions where words ran together (likethis, including possibleanswers,) and one with a pretty bizarre grammar error.. I'm not going to violate the NDA and type the whole deal out, but it was something to the effect of "Ensure data is transmission in ........."

All in all, I don't know if it's a prometric thing, or a micro soft thing, but the overall exam experience was pretty busch league compared to the Cisco, CIW, and CompTia exams I've taken at the same facility.

sratakhin

Congratulations!
How long did it take you to prepare?

I'm taking this exam in about two weeks. I finished reading the MS Press book a week ago and just started the Poulton book. While it lacks in details, it's much more interesting to read.

Darthn3ss

Realistically? about a two weeks. I've had since late December to prepare, but work got *really* stressful in January and I let it carry over into home life. I'm just glad despite that I managed to get a pass here. Definitely not letting that happen again.

Also, this may be unrelated, but I wore the same clothes for the last 4 cert exams; I'm pretty sure that means they're officially lucky clothes.

sratakhin

Two weeks?
Wow. I guess I'm over-preparing again just like I did for 290 and 291.

N2IT

2 weeks seems like a short period of time to study for 680. A lot of people fail this exam and study for 2 - 3 months.

I wonder what you did different to give you such quick results and such a fine passing grade.

Darthn3ss

The bulk of it was in roughly two weeks. I started studying in January, but I didn't put a whole lot into it. I watched a few professor messor vids and did a handful of labs. I worked through the WileyPlus course from WGU earlier this month, then slacked off for a week or so, and then from Sunday night to this morning I read the entire Don Poulton 70-680 book... I originally planned on having the book done tuesday night so I could get some labs and watch the rest of the vids... But i ended up trading that in for sleep a little bit of sleep. I guess it paid off, but probably would have done better if I had the book done earlier. Or you know, just studied consistently for two months instead of cramming.

-hype

Im surprised you thought this exam was easy. It seemed really hard to me even though I passed on my first try. Prior to taking the class I had taken a college class where we set up our own exam labs. This helped me barely pass :O I've taken the Comptia exams which I thought were cake walks.

Not that it matters, but how did you respond to the pre-exam survey?

Darthn3ss

-hype wrote: »

Not that it matters, but how did you respond to the pre-exam survey?

For the survey think i went mostly on the low end (ie limited knowledge in all the domains) and I have no experience with Windows 7 outside of labs and personal use.. My confidence going into the exam was pretty low, and I wasn't really expecting to pass.. It wasn't until about 40 questions in when I felt I had a chance. For the first 25 or so multi-choice questions, I could quickly eliminate two choices, but on a lot of them I was torn between the other two options. It definitely does not seem like the boogeyman a lot of people make it out to be.

-hype

Ok next time, I'm answering low

N2IT

Regardless Congrats Darth on the fine pass!

earweed

Congrats on the pass

Psoasman

Congrats on passing!

btw: the pre-exam survey doesn't affect the exam in any way.

About7Narwhal

Congrats! This exam has been giving me trouble but I honestly cannot tell if there is a significant level of difficulty or if I am just a bad student. (lol) I hope to say the same thing as you here in about a month as I do not intend to fail it again.

Falcon56

You scored 25 points higher than I did and I went thru the TestOut, Skillsoft and ITFreetraining packages. In fact, the ITFreeTraining videos I reviewed were pretty much the scenarios I had on the exam. Impressive score and good luck on your next exam!

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!