Intro - Passed with 850 - Update - Failed ICND

Apologies for my first post being a self congratulatory one but I passed the 640-821 with 850 about an hour ago

. The passing grade was 825 in this instance.

I had 42 questions and was graded as follows:

Design and Support 66%
Implementation and Operation 85%
Technology 73%

Right now I'm on cloud nine but ICND looms large on the horizon on Friday.....

Resources used:

Exam Cram 2nd Edition
Cisco Exam Certification library
CNAP 1& 2
CCNA portable command guide
Sybex (Lammle) 5th ed CCNA study guide

Hardware:

1604 Router x2
2950 Switch x2

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Comments

janmike

Congrats for passing!

Good luck on the completion!

kafifi13

Congrats man...i know what you mean about Cloud nine.

mikej412

Congratulations!

Remember -- the INTRO exam is just a run in the park

compared to the ICND exam.

mobri09

Did you struggle with the sims at all? CONGRATS on the pass -

congrats....

Congrats!

Congratulations

mikej412 wrote:

Remember -- the INTRO exam is just a run in the park compared to the ICND exam.

That would explain why yesterday's joy is tempered by trepidation for Friday

Mobri09 - The only issues I had with the sims was being very concious of time. I set myself a limit of 12 minutes for the inevitable sim and lo and behold it popped up as my first question! Fortunately once I had composed myself it was relatively straight forward.

Thanks for all the congrats - I know this is only the first step on the Cisco cert ladder but it is a step upwards.......

mobri09

I am taking the same route (2 part test). I want to pace myself as well on those sims.
Congrats again!

iproute

hommedepoire wrote:

mikej412 wrote:

Remember -- the INTRO exam is just a run in the park compared to the ICND exam.

That would explain why yesterday's joy is tempered by trepidation for Friday

Mobri09 - The only issues I had with the sims was being very concious of time. I set myself a limit of 12 minutes for the inevitable sim and lo and behold it popped up as my first question! Fortunately once I had composed myself it was relatively straight forward.

Thanks for all the congrats - I know this is only the first step on the Cisco cert ladder but it is a step upwards.......

I blew 25 minutes on the one sim (blasphemy, I know), but it was near the end of the test and I had about 45 minutes left so I wasn't in a hurry. I kinda started to freeze up when I saw the complexity of the problem, but once I came back to earth, re-read the problem it was gravy. The thing that most prepared me for this question was the work I did in my real test lab. I'm a supporter of the real lab vs simulated

seraphus

Congrats!

Cucumber

congratulations!

hommedepoire

As foretold by some of the more learned members of the forum the INTRO exam was substanstially easier (for me at least) than the ICND exam that I failed on Friday.

I managed 804 and the passing grade was 849.

Obviously I'm disappointed but in retrospect what annoys me more is that the exam summary printout does very little to indicate where your weaker areas of knowledge are - yes you receive the percentage grades for the broad areas of the curriculum but are these weighted so that one takes precedence?

For example given that each question may not carry equal marks, the 45 marks I was lacking could have belonged to 10 or 2 questions!

I have some Uni exams to finish up this month but then I intend to get back into the Cisco study and nail this one.

iproute

hommedepoire wrote:

As foretold by some of the more learned members of the forum the INTRO exam was substanstially easier (for me at least) than the ICND exam that I failed on Friday.

I managed 804 and the passing grade was 849.

Obviously I'm disappointed but in retrospect what annoys me more is that the exam summary printout does very little to indicate where your weaker areas of knowledge are - yes you receive the percentage grades for the broad areas of the curriculum but are these weighted so that one takes precedence?

For example given that each question may not carry equal marks, the 45 marks I was lacking could have belonged to 10 or 2 questions!

I have some Uni exams to finish up this month but then I intend to get back into the Cisco study and nail this one.

I'm glad you're sticking with it. I'd say to hit some practice tests to identify your weak areas. The practice tests tell me that my weakest area on ICND material is the WAN (ISDN, FR, etc) stuff. I think that's a common weakness as the material is pretty complex and the ability to practice this stuff is, well, limited. I've been through the Sybex book's WAN chapter 3 times and still have trouble here. I'm currently reading the WAN sections of "Exam Prep: CCNA" from Que Certification to try and shore up these rough areas.

Develop a strategy to reinforce your weak areas and you shall prevail.

hommedepoire

Thanks for the encouragement IP.

I'm using a real variety of sources for my info, including the official Cisco press offerings and the CBT nuggets.

I've purchased the Boson test engine in order to follow what you've suggested about using that to highlight my problem areas.

Incidentally in this test my scores were as follows:

Planning and deployment 60%
Implementation and Operation 72%
Troubleshooting 69%
Technology 78%

malcybood

hommedepoire wrote:

Thanks for the encouragement IP.

I'm using a real variety of sources for my info, including the official Cisco press offerings and the CBT Nuggets.

I've purchased the Boson test engine in order to follow what you've suggested about using that to highlight my problem areas.

Incidentally in this test my scores were as follows:

Planning and deployment 60%
Implementation and Operation 72%
Troubleshooting 69%
Technology 78%

Hey man keep at it, judging from your score break down you should make sure you cover the detail involved in WAN, routing protocols (detail as well as commands), IP addressing & switching.

Also ensure you can implement access lists given many different scenarios standard and extended and make sure you can determine how to find a root bridge for a specific VLAN and extract other such information to do with VLANs and STP.

If you nail the above then judging on your last score you'll be a CCNA after the next time you sit it.

Good luck