A Kinda Desperate Situation: 3 Exams in 35 days.

I paid for 3 exams back in june in order to make myself study, take and pass 3 microsoft exams, most likely the ones for the MCITP: Server Administrator certification.

The long story short is that I havent taken any exam. And I'm preparing some material for a course I will start teaching and have a lot of work. And I'm currently doing my MBA.

What I'll do is go and take the three exams to get an idea of how they go. I even get the chance to take them twice!!

I have studied a lot of the material, especially the Network Infraestructure part. I am a network admin for a small, server 2008 domain with about 80 users.

I got the Official MS PRESS R2 books and so far the book for the 70-642 is good.

Can anyone suggest a good crash course that you think could help me?

Mega Guides maybe??

I honestly dont have much expectations about passing any exam. But anything that could enhance the odds is welcome.

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Comments

nel

If you have studied for them and have a wealth of experience then go for it but it sounds like your just going to take them for the sake of it and more t avoid the vouchers expiring.

From what you have said you are way to busy for certifications. I have no idea how you can do a MBA, course material etc but kudos if you can and the best of luck.

In my opinion you should concentrate on your mba and sell on your vouchers if you can. You can easily come back to the certs at another time. Plus i bet your MBA is costing alot more

....so dont screw that up!

Turgon

AlexMR wrote: »

I paid for 3 exams back in june in order to make myself study, take and pass 3 microsoft exams, most likely the ones for the MCITP: Server Administrator certification.

The long story short is that I havent taken any exam. And I'm preparing some material for a course I will start teaching and have a lot of work. And I'm currently doing my MBA.

What I'll do is go and take the three exams to get an idea of how they go. I even get the chance to take them twice!!

I have studied a lot of the material, especially the Network Infraestructure part. I am a network admin for a small, server 2008 domain with about 80 users.

I got the Official MS PRESS R2 books and so far the book for the 70-642 is good.

Can anyone suggest a good crash course that you think could help me?

Mega Guides maybe??

I honestly dont have much expectations about passing any exam. But anything that could enhance the odds is welcome.

I have been is a similar situation once. The deadline to become an MCNE was expiring and I was forced to study for and take 5 exams in about 8 weeks. I didnt make MCNE before the deadline expired but I did make CNE passing Advanced Administration (2 goes) , Networking with TCP/IP (1st time) and Novell Border Manager (1st time). I was two exams off making MCNE...Project+ which I could have passed and Groupwise which I really didnt have sufficient time to prepare for with only one book and no experience only a couple of weeks. I failed that by about 25% and had only 5 days left to try again. I could have passed it with a **** but Im more noble than that so let the MCNE go as 5 days really wasnt enough time to become bone up for a second attempt and become test proficient at groupwise. The Project + I think I had lined up for the following week but as I tanked groupwise I didn't bother with it. It was abit annoying because the groupwise **** that minted so many MCSEs was available. I wondered how many MCNEs out there had passed with **** and here was me trying valiantly to pass on merit by crash coursing a large book in a few days simply because Novell had an expiry date...but for that I would have studyed for the thing in the usual painstaking way but Novell gave me no time to prepare properly.

To have any chance you need to set aside as much study time as possible the next 35 days. Expect no labtime. Go for practice tests and digestable books for studying. Take the exams as soon as possible so that if you fail you have time to retake them.

AlexMR

Nel, actually I don't have the time for certifications!! That why I'm about to lose 260usd!!

I didn't know I could sell the vouchers! I only got one voucher that was supposed to be used for all 3 exams. Is this really possible? I'm going to find out!

Turgon, I hear ya! I'm there. I obviously dont want to **** these exams. I'm going to give it a try the right way as it should be. I will book the network infrastructure exam for next week. Maybe the AD inmediately afterwards.

What have you heard about the difficulty of these exams? I understand the application infrastructure is the hardest of all Server 2008R2 exams, right?

I understand the Server Administrator exam (70-646) is the easier of all. Maybe I should book that one. I'll see. Now, the first one is decided: Network Infrastructure.

Thank you both for you comments and suggestions. It's really appreciated!

Essendon

Whether an exam is easy or not depends on whether you have experience on the topics. I have an EA, and here's how I'd rate the exams from the easiest to the hardest, 640 > 642 > 643 > 647. The 647 was the real SOB, the 643 wasnt easy either but I liked studying for it the most.

AlexMR

Thank you for your rating, Essendon.

I've never understood that logic though. It's the equivalent of saying that quantum physics could be easier than Newtonian physics because of exposure.

It's simple: there are easier things and harder things to learn. When you cannot establish the difference is generally because their level of difficulty is close.

Thanks again!

ptilsen

I'm inclined to agree with that order, but I have not yet studied for 647. However, 70-680 seems to be missing entirely from this thread. My order would be 70-640 > 70-642 > 70-680 > 70-643 > 70-647.

I would say you should take 70-640, 70-642, and 70-680. Realistically, you can probably cram the first two and pass, but probably not 70-680.

AlexMR

We'll figure it out soon.

I'll keep you posted.

ChooseLife

AlexMR wrote: »

It's the equivalent of saying that quantum physics could be easier than Newtonian physics because of exposure.

It's more like saying that passing an exam on quantum physics is easier than passing one on Newtonian physics for a person who works with LHC all day long, but last studied dynamics 30 years ago in university...