Taking my BSCI on Saturday.... - UPDATE (FAILED: 655)

Not really sure what to expect. I thought the CCNA test wasn't too bad - a lot of theory mainly, not so much getting your hands dirty as I seem to do on a daily basis.

Anyway - first post on here, just feeling the waters. Maybe someone can shoot over a few last minute tips before walking into the exam room. I'll let you know how it goes!

Update:

Well that didn't quite go as planned. I thought that I was prepared - I did really well on all 4 sim's that they threw at me, but somehow I got bound up on all the questions.... got slaughtered on the multicasting questions and the IPV6 questions. Back to the drawing board and time for round #2 in a few weeks.

FYI - The practice tests that come with Cisco Press SUCK. They're HORRIBLE. While they offer good insight for the questions in the book, as far as applying it to what's on the test, don't waste your time. I think that's a majority of the reason why I got caught up on everything. If I didn't do this kind of stuff on an almost daily basis, I would've failed even more miserably than I already did.

What other study materials has everybody else been using??

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Comments

kryolla

Good Luck it is a tough exam

mikej412

Good Luck!

Based on some of the "Passed BSCI" threads it does sound like everything in the BSCI exam blueprint is in play. Some of the "Failed BSCI" threads may also be worth looking at to see what topics people admitted they needed more study on.

I remember a couple mentions of Multicasting, and looking at the 2 Implement multicast forwarding tasks, I can see how someone could overlook the "etc" in the first one.

A lot of people have never seen IS-IS out in the wild (and probably never will) so it smacks a few people around who aren't prepared for it. The IPv6 sounds straight forward to me, but I had done IPv6 projects back in the 90's and have kept up to date.

You didn't mention what you used to study, but some people who didn't use the Self Study Guide and only used the Exam Certification Guide came up short on the exam -- we usually recommend both books here.

And same for Lab time -- the more lab time people have studying for this exam, the better they seem to do. You've got a bunch of reading to do for this exam, but you can also try out most of it hands on. And that helps your understanding and retention of the knowledge.

wat08

mikej412 wrote:

You didn't mention what you used to study, but some people who didn't use the Self Study Guide and only used the Exam Certification Guide came up short on the exam -- we usually recommend both books here.

Yeah, the Exam Certification Guide is nearly adequate and should be accompanied with another resource.

Slowhand

Sounds like you either had plenty of existing knowledge going into the CCNA, or you studied very thoroughly. As long as you hit the BSCI material hard, learned everything on the exam blueprint, you should be just fine. Good luck, let us know how you did.

ethan98ta

Great feedback from eveyone. I have a lot of experience as far as the CCNA topics were concerned - I've worked with OSPF/EIGRP quite a bit as well as a few other technologies, just not BGP/IS-IS, and multicasting. So, I'm having to spend a lot of time visiting those pieces of it.

As far as study materials are concerned, I fortunately have access to a relatively decent amount of equipment so needing to purchase a lab hasn't really been necessary; however, it would be nice. I'll go that route when I go for my CCIE.

The only study materials I've used was the Cisco Press CCNP v5 Library (I believe thats what it's called) and just hammering the entire BSCI book. For the CCNA all I used was the 640-802 ExamCram2 book for a review, and luckily that worked out really well.

I'll definitely take a look at the BSCI exam blueprint and see what helpful topics are in there. I was wondering if I even made a good decision doing this exam first but I guess it doesn't really matter since you eventually have to do all of them.

I have to admit I've probably spent about 6 hours or so a day knocking out as many chapters in the book as possible, I believe I have about 4 left before Saturday which I should be able to cover in an afternoon, then allow a day and a half for review / practice exams. Props to Cisco for really making this difficult to achieve though, I'm really enjoying the challenge!

jamesp1983

good luck man!! if you can get even just a few routers and mess around in the IOS it will help. Get really comfortable with all of the commands related to this test. The quick reference and portable command line guides are really good tools as well. I remember I was slammed with multicast related questions. Have you checked out cbtnuggets?

Plazma

good luck!

Mrock4

Hang in there. You sound just like me a week ago. You will get it..those long study sessions will pay off. Just be sure to give yourself plenty of time to retain the material and not just memorize it for a day or two. I made that mistake, and it cost me a test attempt. I went back prepared properly and it made a world of difference. You'll get it man. It'll just be that much sweeter when you pass...

redwarrior

I gotta agree on the practice exams that come with the exam guides...not a good gauge of readiness, in my opinion. I'm trying to scrape up the cash to purchase the Transcender practice exams, but dang they are pricey!!! My Trainsignal package I used for ONT had a great set of practice exams included that I thought was a lot better than the exam guide's, but I don't have them for ISCW.

If I can't afford the Transcenders, I'm guessing I'll just have to study like crazy until the material just "feels" comfortable and hope for the best!

I'm sorry to hear about the fail...I think everyone gets surprised by at least one exam, but now you know where to concentrate your efforts and what to expect!

jamesp1983

good luck on round 2!!