Failed 293 miserably

6 sims, and 3 drag drops. I actually ran out of time and had to skim through about 10 questions due to how much time I had left. My score.....read for this....376

I am going to give it another shot in about three weeks. I thought I had a pretty good handle on this stuff until I started answering questions. There was A LOT of PKI, clustering and security/IPSec. Luckily I have a free second shot.

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ElwoodBlues

randsmountney wrote: »

6 sims, and 3 drag drops. I actually ran out of time and had to skim through about 10 questions due to how much time I had left. My score.....read for this....376 I am going to give it another shot in about three weeks. I thought I had a pretty good handle on this stuff until I started answering questions. There was A LOT of PKI, clustering and security/IPSec. Luckily I have a free second shot.

One of the requirements of this exam they never mention is "time management". There is enough time to answer the questions and you will be accustomed to this on your next attempt, however it hit me hard the first time too. Study up on those areas as they are crucial to this exam.

Good luck and knock it out next time.

motogpman

Seems to be the general consensus that time management is critical on this test. Good luck and sorry to hear about the fail. I am sure you will nail it next time!

Slowhand

That's rough, but having that Second Shot is a nice piece of insurance for cases exactly like this. You've got the experience of the exam down now, use the printout you got from the testing center to see where your weaknesses are, and make sure you study up on both those and a little bit of general review. Don't be afraid to push back your retry, you can always reschedule it if you feel unsure.

Good luck on the next attempt!

genXrcist

Definitely been there and done that bro....twice! My 3rd attempt is May 27th. Really know your Security Template's inside and out as well. Best wishes on your 2nd Shot!

FishOnAH

My 2nd attempt is also scheduled on the 27th genX. GL2U! If I had another 20 minutes or so I wouldn't have freaked out toward the end of my test, and likely would have passed, time management is important, it has just never been an issue for me, even on 291. 80% of the details are bull

anyways, part of the time management I suppose is being able to pick out what are key points of a question without having to pour over it 3 or 4 times. Watch out for the policy states users "MUST use" IPSec versus users "MUST use it whenever possible", etc. etc. Small 2-3 word details on these MS exams can change the answer completely. Request/Require security FTW

Sometimes you feel like you just read 2 paragraphs of info just to be asked how many eggs are in a dozen. One of my co-workers says he always jumps to the bottom and reads what they want to know before reading the entire question. I've found that's harder for me to do, but I could see it being valuable on the scenerio based tests later up the track. It may work for some of you.

genXrcist

Thanks for the well wishes Fish and Good luck to you too! I've heard of the "Read the bottom of the question 1st" technique before and it can be useful although it makes me paranoid that I might miss one of those "must" phrases that you're talking about.

The 2nd time I took the test I had 30 min's left over so time mgmt isn't my issue anymore. The issue had become, I must be misunderstanding a concept. I say that because I thought I was answering the vast majority of the questions correctly but since I scored relatively the same, I must have been answering a lot of questions incorrectly when I thought I was correct.

So I recalled as many of the questions as I could and did research on the technology and I think I understand where I went wrong. Specifically, Transcender helped clear a lot of that up as well because the questions are simailar enough that when I read the explanations, I realized where I had gone wrong.

Anyway, best of luck to you as well and here's to us PASSING on the 27th!

FishOnAH

Indeed Sir!

dynamik

Go big or go home. If you're going to fail, fail miserably!

You've gotten a lot of good advice. Ace that sucker next time! Good luck!

mikedisd2

FishOnAH wrote: »

One of my co-workers says he always jumps to the bottom and reads what they want to know before reading the entire question.

That's what I do for the scenario questions (most of them?), read from the bottom upwards. Sometimes you can tell what they want from the last sentence ("You need to...").
This also stops me tuning out and daydreaming.