COMPLAIN

karnivore

Hi guys,
I'm just studing to obtain my CCNP cert and at the moment I passed bsci scoring 976 points and the BCRAN with 850, the point of this topic is to know your opinion about BCRAN ciscopress book, when i tried BSCI i was sure to pass cos of this book is huge but almost perfect but no the BCRAN one, my personal is that this book doesn't cover the real topics for the exam, most of the commands are wrong or bad explained as i saw in my exam and maybe i'm wrong but i'm sure if you wanna pass the exam you should study some stuff out of this book as i did, I wanna complain to cisco about that, cos I'm studing for BCMSN right now and the book looks really good. If anyone had passed BCRAN with cisco book can tell me your opinion please???, maybe it's me who is wrong thank you guys and thank you averyone in this forum I'm sure I didn't pass my exams without you all. Thank you.

pizzafart

For a little bit I didn't realize that there were two Cisco Press titles per exam, one chunky one and then another smaller one titled as an "exam prep". Is it possible that you read only the exam prep? Even the exam preps are somewhat large and could give the illusion of being end-all be-all texts.

karnivore

I reckon you are right my man, i read the cisco cert guide with about 500 pages, do you think this is the small one?, anyway the point in say that is that i read these cert guides for other exams and those ones were really good to learn all the stuff and pass the exams as well, and then i don't understand that quality change from one book to another.

GUI-Man

Karnivore I don't think you're alone at all with having some complaints on the CCNP Self-Study Exam Cert Guide Series. I bought that boxed set for about $70 along with the individual Sybex books. I was able to get most of the Sybex books for $10 shipped from amazon marketplace sellers (they sell overstock brand new books). I've been using two books for every test I've taken for quite some time now. You never know when your trusted publisher is going to make a bomb of a book. The Sybex BCMSN is a good example of that; it's littered with CatOS commands and other out-dated material. Outside of that one example, I've found the Cisco and Sybex books to be A-OK for the CCNP series.

pizzafart

Yeah that's probably the exam prep book. In fact, I wonder if it's the same one I have on my lap right now: Author David Hucaby? Right now I'm planning to take the BSCI/BCMSN composite and intend to read 4 Cisco Press books. 2 general info texts and 2 exam preps. The general info texts both approach near or over 1000 pages (including index,etc..). The exam preps are more in the ball park of 2/3rds to 1/2 that. (I'm going by thickness here).

I intend to gve myself some time on all this... I'm finally working in the field and so I'm more interested in actually mastering this stuff on real equipment than getting the cert for now. Good work though, it sounds like you passed despite finniky Press titles. Wish me luck.

xman76

Actually, I think Karnivore is talking about the book that Brian Morgan and Craig Dennis wrote, and I have to agree, Foundation Summary for each chapter has just a few paragraphs, chapters of 6 pages... Come On!!!

Worst thing is that I think it is something generalized because the transcender test for BCRAN is the same... Everything is outdated.

Ten9t6

When it comes to Cisco tests, I have yet to find one book that covers it all. At a minimum, I use the Sybex and the Cisco Press book. I also like to look at CBTs. If it is a Cisco security exam, I throw in an Exam Cram II also. It is always good to get multiple looks at the material.

Kenny

karnivore

Hi guys!!! the book i'm talking about is the Brian Morgan & Craig Dennis one, i think like Kenny said it is a good choice to have some books to cover everything in the exam, anyway it's good to know that somebody else thinks in the same way, i'm taking the bcmsn exam next monday and i reckon this one is really good not like the bcran one. Many thaxs to you all guys, u r helping me a lot with my studies. Good luck to everyone, sure will pass!!!!

Karnivore