Another 70-680 Passed!!!

Hi everyone, new member here. I just passed the 70-680 yesterday, with it being my first certification. I kept reading a ton of posts about how hard this exam is, and how many people fail it. I was almost positive that I was going to fail it because of this. I also didn't study all the objectives as much as I should have. But I'm starting a new job on Monday, so I just decided to take it here at the end of the week with my student discount (which will be expiring soon as I literally just graduated) and see what happens. I was really looking at it as a practice run to get a feel for Microsoft exams and to see what my biggest weaknesses were. But to my surprise I passed with a 740 on my first try! Even though the score isn't the greatest, I feel the exam was a lot easier than I was expecting. I think I got lucky on the set of questions. I also don't recall any random questions that didn't apply to the certification objectives. So I'm hoping my experience will help some other people build up their confidence and take a shot at it.

I mainly used a combination of Technet, the 70-680 CBT Nuggets and Professor Messer videos, and Darril Gibson's Windows 7 Portable Command Guide: MCTS 70-680, 70-685 and 70-686 (great study tool and extremely useful resource in general). I also read the MCTS 70-680 Exam Cram by Patrick Regan, which I later found out is awful for the exam (had a feeling while reading through it). I was planning on buying Don Poulton's 70-680 book if I failed at my first attempt, even if it were just for the practice exam that comes with it. Since I didn't have that practice test at my disposal, I did use Techulator.com's randomly generated 70-680 practice tests. They seemed pretty difficult to me, as I was only getting 17-20 answers correct out of 25 each time I went through it. This definitely didn't help my confidence too much. But no matter what resources you end up using to study, make sure you LAB, LAB, LAB!!!

I think my next move is to pass the 70-686 and get my MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator on Windows 7. I'm also thinking about getting MCITP: Server Administrator on Windows Server 2008, but might just wait until the newer Server 2012 certs come out (I'm just doing desktop support for now). Anyways, sorry for the long post, and I look forward to being on the site a lot in the future.

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Comments

Vik210

Congratulations and welcome to TE!! Party time - your last weekend as student and first as MCP;)
All the best for your new job!

ITMonkey

Well said. Congradulations too.

Psoasman

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your pass!

Dr IT

Well Done Congrats

Ivanjam

Congratulations on passing 70-680!

biggene

Congrats on the pass. Good luck on your future certifications.

Gene

neathneathneath

Well done

I too had a 740 on this exam last Monday

_Marauder

Congratulations!

whatthehell

Congratz on your pass and thanks for posting all the helpful info!

EV42TMAN

Congrats on the pass, I'd start with server administrator and then do enterprise administrator its the easier router to take if you're going to do both.

aj6065

Thanks a lot guys. I decided I'm going to take the 70-686 within the next couple months because of the Second Shot offer. I'm going to hold off on the Server 2008 certs and wait for the new MCSA/MCSE Server 2012 stuff instead. I don't want to have to pass all the 2008 tests within the 10 months or so that remain on them and then go and take more tests to upgrade the cert ontop of that. So after passing the 70-686 I'll probably get my CCENT and eventually CCNA. Does that sound like a good plan? Im curious as to what paths others have taken after the 70-680.

pizzaboy

FYI the MSCA:2008 exams have no scheduled date for expiration.

aj6065

pizzaboy wrote: »

FYI the MSCA:2008 exams have no scheduled date for expiration.

I just took another look at the certifications page. It looks like the MCSA: Server 2008 is the same exact thing as MCITP: Server Administrator (both require the 640, 642, 646). That's nice that the MCITP directly rolls over to the new MCSA once it expires (according to Microsoft).

Regardless, if I pass my 70-686 and get MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator, it looks like I can just pass one upgrade exam (the 417) to bump up to MCSA: Server 2012. That seems like the quickest path.

sizeon

Which material helped you the most>

aj6065

sizeon wrote: »

Which material helped you the most>

I'd probably say the Prof. Messer and CBT Nuggets videos, along with Darril Gibson's MCTS Portable Command Guide. I also used Technet to fill in some gaps and missing details on the covered topics. I did a lot of labbing with the command line programs in Gibson's book.

4_lom

Congrats!

adfabus

Congratulations !

aj6065 wrote: »

Hi everyone, new member here. I just passed the 70-680 yesterday, with it being my first certification. I kept reading a ton of posts about how hard this exam is, and how many people fail it. I was almost positive that I was going to fail it because of this. I also didn't study all the objectives as much as I should have. But I'm starting a new job on Monday, so I just decided to take it here at the end of the week with my student discount (which will be expiring soon as I literally just graduated) and see what happens. I was really looking at it as a practice run to get a feel for Microsoft exams and to see what my biggest weaknesses were. But to my surprise I passed with a 740 on my first try! Even though the score isn't the greatest, I feel the exam was a lot easier than I was expecting. I think I got lucky on the set of questions. I also don't recall any random questions that didn't apply to the certification objectives. So I'm hoping my experience will help some other people build up their confidence and take a shot at it.

I mainly used a combination of Technet, the 70-680 CBT Nuggets and Professor Messer videos, and Darril Gibson's Windows 7 Portable Command Guide: MCTS 70-680, 70-685 and 70-686 (great study tool and extremely useful resource in general). I also read the MCTS 70-680 Exam Cram by Patrick Regan, which I later found out is awful for the exam (had a feeling while reading through it). I was planning on buying Don Poulton's 70-680 book if I failed at my first attempt, even if it were just for the practice exam that comes with it. Since I didn't have that practice test at my disposal, I did use Techulator.com's randomly generated 70-680 practice tests. They seemed pretty difficult to me, as I was only getting 17-20 answers correct out of 25 each time I went through it. This definitely didn't help my confidence too much. But no matter what resources you end up using to study, make sure you LAB, LAB, LAB!!!

I think my next move is to pass the 70-686 and get my MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator on Windows 7. I'm also thinking about getting MCITP: Server Administrator on Windows Server 2008, but might just wait until the newer Server 2012 certs come out (I'm just doing desktop support for now). Anyways, sorry for the long post, and I look forward to being on the site a lot in the future.