The WGU Challenge - Finish in 1 term

joshmadakor · March 2012

Using real equipment really helps...a LOT. Making my own cables, setting everything up, configuring real equipment, etc has really made the learning fun, it also helps with retention. I don't know if you want to bother with it though if youre just trying to power through it. It takes a little bit of time to obtain all the gear unless you can manage to find most of it in the same place.

Like ERP said, eBay is very good. If you can buy from sellers with a small warranty using "buy it now" that's even better. I've found a lot of semi-cheap good things on eBay.

swild · March 2012

About a year ago I bought 2 3600 routers and 3 2950 switches off of eBay (for $180 including shipping) and have been playing with them off and on. I have a pretty good feeling for the hardware, just need to learn the administration. Just acquired an old 2500 router from my work as well. While I will be powering through, I do plan on actually learning this part and will be taking a little extra time.

swild · April 2012

It's been one week since my last confession. er, uh, I mean update.

I just submitted KFT1 Task4. That thing was a beast. I believe that was the most time spent on any class thusfar. Just when you think you have your program ready to turn in, you have to type out your UML diagrams and the Test Case documents. I made a nice little GUI that interacted with the database quite well. 8 buttons, 3 combo boxes, hidden fields, 13 text fields and a whole bunch of labels.I would give myself a 95% based on the probram doing what it should. I had one crappy glitch that I just didn't even try to figure out. I had a previous and a next record button and they both ran off of the same code, one incrementing, the other decrementing. The next button worked flawlessly. The previous button would not display one of the combo box fields. Everything else pulled up and the hidden fields based off of that combobox worked perfectly.

I gotta say, starting from scratch and building a fully functioning program with an easy to use GUI is pretty rewarding in itself. However, that UML and Test Case sh*t totally sucks all the life out of it. I was going to say that I don't mind programming so much, but not anymore. And that wierd bug. whatever. I hope they accept it and I don't have to revise anything.

I wound up taking 3 days longer than anticipated on this class, so I am late starting my ICND1 studies, which probably means that I will have to push back my test by a week. However, now the fun starts!

I think that it is very strange that WGU gives you the Labsim designed for the single CCNA exam, but then requires you to take the individual ICND1 and ICND2 exams. I really think that wasn't very well thought out.

I have previously purchased by lab equipment, plus Odom's ICND1/2 set and Lammle's CCNA book. I just purchased and downloaded Boson's Ex-sim max for ICND1 and ICND2 for $189. Quite steep but I feel that it will be worth it. They have a combined 840-802 ex-sim max for $60 less, but this way I have their no pass, no pay gaurantee and I will be prepared for that actual material I will be tested on. I don't expect to use the labsim material unless I need further understanding past Odom and Lammle. I'm certain that this is the most money I have spent preparing for any exam so far. I'm up to about $600 without including WGU's fees or materials, but I also won't have to pay the exam fees either.

I have been studying about grad schools and I think I have my top choice figured out: Royal Holloway, University of London.

The program looks perfect, and the price is unbelievably low considering the international prestige of the program.
I think that I will probably apply this year, but depending on funds availability, I may have to put it off a year.

swild · April 2012

Alright, so, I have watched the first 5 or so hours (of 23) of the INE CCNA videos and I have my 2509 setup as a console server with all but one of my devices with a basic config. I seem to have locked myself out of one of my switches and can't seem to do the Ctrl-Break to stop to bootup. I set it up over a year ago and seem to have tossed my documentation. grr.

Anyway, getting it all together and (mostly) working is quite exciting.

LinuxRacr · April 2012

That's awesome. Last weekend I got my 3550 switch up and running. My old TrenNet 8-port switch had ran out of free ports, so I needed to get something else going. Learning IOS is truly exciting for me since I come from a server background. Now we get the other half of the story.

spiderjericho · April 2012

Swild, switches have different method to break passwords. Look it up.

It's usually hold yellow button on front, then rommon then rename startup_config, boot, etc.

Router is break, change conf reg then reset.

If you have a CCNA book, it should be there but Google will return results.

swild · April 2012

No wonder it wouldn't work. heh, got it now. Thanks.

swild · April 2012

I received notification that KFT1 task 4 was accepted. Another 100%. The grader also said that a GUI is "above-and-beyond the command-line interface approach typically attempted by students for this assessment." Now I sell those Java books and never look at it again, hopefully.

After doing the math, I decided to push back my ICND1 exam by a week. I would need to watch no less than 3 hours of the INE videos per day in order to finish in time to do any practice exams. Yesterday, I only got in one hour. So it's now scheduled for 4/20. If I didn't have to drive 2 hours to the testing center, I probably would have gone ahead with it but I really don't want to have to do that any more than necessary. I have to take a whole day off of work for each of the 3 Cisco exams so I really want to pass them on the first go.

swild · April 2012

I thought I would post a quick update to my CCNA studies.

I am going through the INE videos while simultaneously labbing out all of his examples on my physical devices. I am loving this method. Videos + home lab = full of win. I just finished the section on RIP(which is 3 hours long, i'm so sick of RIP). I think I have about 10 hours of videos to go through before I crack open the Boson tests. I hoping to be done by Friday as long as work doesn't kill me too badly this week. So far it really isn't as bad as I was expecting. I decided that since I am studying for the combined exam, I will be taking both ICND1 and ICND2 on the same day, back to back. It's gonna be brutal, but I sat through the CISSP, it can't be worse than that. Plus if I fail one or both I can take them again without it costing me anything. I really don't expect to fail ICND1, but we will have to see about ICND2. I have until next Wednesday to reschedule the exams if I chicken out.

I am loving Cisco just as much as I expected. I can see a CCNP lab in my near future.

LayOffPayOff · April 2012

Hello everyone, just wanted to update that I passed ICND2 today. Unfortunately there was some family related "excitement" and my studies were postponed for about a week. All I can say is IM GLAD THATS OVER. Today was not an "ideal" testing environment and i had a lot of trouble concentrating, but I must have done well because I know for certain I made really dumb mistakes on 2 sims but still passed. ICND2 covers less topics than ICND1, but goes deeper on each topic. I had WAY more sim type questions than I did for ICND1, so make sure you know your commands. I gotta say, the Cisco material is pretty interesting stuff and I plan to move on to CCNP after im done with WGU.

Next up is BNC1-Organizational Behavior and Leadership. Does anyone have any pointers for that? Im pretty out of my element for all the non-tech courses.

p.s. swild is the man. good luck taking both tests in 1 day, no way i could have done that.

Psoasman · April 2012

LayOffPayOff wrote: »

Next up is BNC1-Organizational Behavior and Leadership. Does anyone have any pointers for that? Im pretty out of my element for all the non-tech courses.

It's not too hard, especially if you've worked in a corporate environment. I bought the book, read through it taking notes. Take the pre-assessment and use the results to gauge your knowledge and what to work on. I think it took me about 9 days from start to finish and that was with the 5-day waiting period for the online proctoring. MGC1 is much the same, you'll see a lot of the same terms / concepts. That will help with TPV1 later on.

petedude · April 2012

LayOffPayOff wrote: »

Next up is BNC1-Organizational Behavior and Leadership. Does anyone have any pointers for that? Im pretty out of my element for all the non-tech courses.

Other folks give good advice about this one, but let me add--
The publishers of the recommended book have a website with chapter exams. If you want to be thorough, read as much of the book as you can and do the practice tests for those chapters. I would say if you're hitting 70% or higher on 70% of the chapters, you're probably more than ready.

onesaint · April 2012

swild wrote: »

I think that it is very strange that WGU gives you the Labsim designed for the single CCNA exam, but then requires you to take the individual ICND1 and ICND2 exams. I really think that wasn't very well thought out.

The CCCNA composite course was the only one offered from Labsim for a while. My JC had it as course material for their ICND1 class. The ICND1/2 courses have only come out recently. I found the books from Sybex & Odom along with the cbt nuggets jeremy cioara videos to be a lot more helpful.

swild wrote: »

I have been studying about grad schools and I think I have my top choice figured out: Royal Holloway, University of London.

The program looks perfect, and the price is unbelievably low considering the international prestige of the program.
I think that I will probably apply this year, but depending on funds availability, I may have to put it off a year.

Can you link some of your research on the program?

swild · April 2012

Here is a pretty good summary of everything: Royal Holloway, University of London - Complete University Guide

Also, ranked as 88 in the Times top 200 world universities: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

Info about the program is found on the site previously linked.

There were other sites, but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

onesaint · April 2012

Thanks for the information!

erpadmin · April 2012

Have you looked into how to write papers in British (English)? Apart from their spellings, I am sure syntax and structure are quite different.

I'm no anglophile or nothing but I've been watching some British and Irish movies on Netflix (because really...what else is on....lol) I even watched Luther on Netflix before it became cool (reminds me of Law and Order:Criminal Intent, specifically the Goren episodes)....had no idea that show would ever be up for an Emmy.

In any event, I'm curious how Americans would make that transition to a school like that.

swild · April 2012

I am very interested in how I will do in respect to the dialectical differences. I have always been a fan of British television, so I know a lot of the slang differences, but I'm not sure how much of that will be relevant in a professional paper. I also took several classes on linguistics while at my other school, so I understand the underlying structures in dialects.

The classes look great, but the testing is scary. There is pretty much one exam/paper that tells if you pass the entire class or not. Also, the grading scale is not even similar to ours. Passing is a 50% while an honors is a 70% to 75%. For the paper, there is a set time and day that you have to go to a local testing center and write a paper on an unknown topic in 2 hours. That is scary: 8 months of studying summed up into a 2 hour paper.

I received my prospectus in the mail yesterday from Royal Holloway. There isn't any more information in the booklet than you can find on the website, but it is nice to see it in print. I'm torn on what to do first: this Master's program or a CCIE. I plan on doing both eventually. The best I can think of for now is to go for the Master's because I need more work experience before going for a high level Cisco cert.

As far as my studies are going, I am excited to take my ICND1/2 exams on Friday. I know I will be able to pass the ICND1 exam without a problem. I have been averaging 85% to 90% on the Boson Ex-Sim Max practice test. I went through 200+ test questions yesterday. Today I will continue on with the ICND1 practice test. Today or tomorrow I will start on the ICND2 practice questions. I know that I am pushing it with my timeline, but if I don't pass the ICND2 exam, I will be able to get a refund for the Boson test and it will not cost me any more to take it one more time. Although, I am so happy with the Boson test, that if I don't pass, it isn't their fault and I don't think I would apply for a refund.

I have to say that; so far, these practice questions have been totally worth their price for one reason alone: experience on the simlet type questions. The very first one I was given I froze up on, and it wasn't that difficult. I'm extremely happy to not have had that happen during the actual exam. Now, every simlet that I pass on the first try, I do a little happy dance in my chair.

This is an excellent way to test real world knowledge, along with book knowledge, with an exam format. This quality of testing makes me happy to have chosen this as my specialty.

Krones · April 2012

Are you taking the composite exam or do you have to take ICND1/2 separately? I was wondering if WGU allows students to take the compsite exam or not. Good luck! What do you feel are the hardest areas and feel that you need to devote some extra time before the big test? Everything does not count! haha.

petedude · April 2012

erpadmin wrote: »

In any event, I'm curious how Americans would make that transition to a school like that.

You'd be surprised how many people have done it.

I don't hear much about the transition other than some cultural issues. What I've heard is that British university employees might seem a bit more cold and distant over the phone than their American/Australian counterparts.

swild · April 2012

Unfortunately, I have to take the ICND1 and ICND2 exams. As my mentor says, "It's not about getting a certification. It's about passing the test required for the class."

I will be spending more time on NAT configuration for sure. I already know NAT concepts and terms pretty well so I skimmed it, but after being asked some questions on configuration, it needs a little more of a read.

I need to memorize the 224.0.0.x mulitcast addresses.

I will probably cram a few things right before the test to remind myself of things like the differences in routing protocols, specifically between RIPv1 and RIPv2. I will do a little binary math and subnetting to get in the right frame of mind. I do most of the binary math in my head, but I am forcing myself to write it down so I don't make stupid mistakes.

My test is at 9am after an hour drive. I am planning on getting there an hour early so I can relax and think about Cisco.

swild · April 2012

Alright, finally home after this long day.

Results:

ICND1: Pass: 874/1000, passing is 804.

ICND2: Fail: 748/1000, passing is 825.

I went into the exam expecting this result. I didn't feel good enough about the ICND2 to think I would pass. I actually thought I would score closer to a 500. Also, with 6 questions to go, I was really about to wet myself and just clicked through them. I guess I shouldn't have had all that coffee this morning. I may have actually passed if I wasn't so distracted.

The only reason I didn't reschedule the exam was because I had to drive 75 minutes to get to the testing center and might as well take a stab at it while I was there. Also, it didn't cost me anything since I can take each exam twice without having to pay for it myself and I had to take a full day off work. All in all, I am happy. I know since I got so close, I will be able to pass it next time without any problem. I also know my weakest points and will be able to put extra effort into those areas.

Now I will be able to start on the IINS book. I am hoping to retake this test and the IINS test in 3 weeks. It really looks like I will be finished about a month ahead of schedule.

** I cannot stress enough how awesome the Boson Ex-Sim Max practice tests are. Buy them.**

powerfool · April 2012

Well, it looks like you are making good progress. Are you on schedule to complete in one term? I would think now would be the time to figure out if you are going to need to try and get this one month term extension that I keep hearing about, and what would be required to get it, if you need it.

erpadmin · April 2012

powerfool wrote: »

Well, it looks like you are making good progress. Are you on schedule to complete in one term? I would think now would be the time to figure out if you are going to need to try and get this one month term extension that I keep hearing about, and what would be required to get it, if you need it.

Looking at his signature, he has until the end of June. If he can get over the Cisco hump within the next couple of weeks, he should be able to finish the tech writing and capstone.

In addition to that, he has to do CCNA:Security (that's his CNV1.) CQV1 is his ICND2. Cisco (CCNA + the CCNA:Security) is the last thing he has to do before he tackles the Tech Writing/Capstone. I would have personally done the TW/Capstone first (in fact, I did before the Microsoft) but he might have some time to pull that paper off.

So far, unless something goes berzerk for Mr. Swild, the smart money is on him actually finishing up his degree in one term.

http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/prog_guide/BS_IT_SECU.pdf

spiderjericho · April 2012

Wow, good luck Swild. ICND2, CCNA security, tech writing and Capstone in two months should be doable. I'm not sure what they revised in CCNA S but I as able to study for it in about a week an a half (course that didn't give me time to really lab, which was my weak area.)

swild · April 2012

I wavered about taking Cisco or the Capstone first. It really came down to the fact that I didn't know what I was going to write about.

From what I can figure out, the main change between IINSv1 and IINSv2 is the replacement of SDM with CCP. There a couple of other things as well, but thats the big one.

LayOffPayOff · April 2012

Sorry to hear about ICND2 Swild, I was rooting for you, but youll have it no problem next time.

Heres my update, long story short is that I took the MGC1 and BNC1 today and passed both. I more or less wasted a week but I learned something very important:
1. if theres a pre-assessment, take it
2. they require 5 days to schedule an assessment

So the next logical step is TPV1 (Project+). Im gonna try to crank this one out as quick as possible because frankly I couldnt care less about PM. Any pointers?

Also, I need to come up with a game plan for the rest of these classes. I have the web dev/java group and the server2k8 group. I have 0 experience with dev and see this set of courses as the biggest challenge. Im debating moving on to the MS server stuff first just to keep the momentum going. I have also read some posts where students have done their tech writing and capstone before finishing their classes. What do you guys thnk about all that?

sheckler · April 2012

Thanks for mentioning those INE Cisco videos, $100 is pretty nice compared to other places. CBTNuggets gives you a lot but it's so expensive.

Psoasman · April 2012

Congrats on passing the ICND1! Good luck on the ICND2.

erpadmin · April 2012

swild wrote: »

I wavered about taking Cisco or the Capstone first. It really came down to the fact that I didn't know what I was going to write about.

Ooooohhh....that is not good. I went into WGU knowing what I would write about (I am an ERP admin, after all.....) Knowing what you're going to write about is actually the hardest part.

If you were doing two terms, I'd say it is no big deal....but since you pretty much have two months (and I would NOT leave Tech Writing/Capstone at the last minute.....under any circumstances....you don't want to be at the mercy of Taskstream your last month...(I didn't.)

If you can, try to enroll in both tech writing and capstone as soon as possible. You want to enroll now rather than later so that you can submit the idea paper to the tw/cap course mentor. Once that's approved (and you get your hands on the sample paper) you can pretty much rip through the tw proposal. Remember, you need a security topic (find something technical in the realm of what a CISSP would implement and incorporate the Cisco knowledge [you have to anyway because of the domains...]) that will have case studies.This isn't a doctoral dissertation; you need case studies because they will validate your project.

Spend time trying to figure you what you're gonna write about...

swild · April 2012

LayOffPayOff wrote: »

... I learned something very important:
1. if theres a pre-assessment, take it
2. they require 5 days to schedule an assessment

So the next logical step is TPV1 (Project+). Im gonna try to crank this one out as quick as possible because frankly I couldnt care less about PM. Any pointers?

Yes, those are very good things to know. Scheduling the tests a week out was very tricky for me at first. Now I usually schedule the exam first and then start studying. You can always reschedule, but it's much harder to move a test up.

Project+ sucks. I used the Sybex book: Amazon.com: CompTIA Project+ Study Guide: Exam PK0-003 (9780470585924): Kim Heldman, William Heldman: Books Try and force yourself to read a chapter a day. I actually cranked that one out about a month before I started WGU so that I could transfer it in. The test isn't bad. For Comptia, it's one of my highest scores and I had zero interest. If you can make it all the way through the book, you can pass the test. I'm not sure about the text that WGU provides.

Erp, I now have a great idea for my writing assignment. Something that I have thought about and researched fairly heavily in the past. I told my wife I couldn't think of what to do it on and she brought it back up.

When I told my substitute mentor that I passed one test and failed the other by a small margin, he would add any other classes to my AAV. I can't reschedule for 2 weeks, so I will be starting on my writing assignment after I talk to my mentor on Tues.

The WGU Challenge - Finish in 1 term

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