CCVP Time and Effort – Peer Survey

Somehow, there never seems to be enough time to study for that next exam that you sorta want to get, but don't have your boss yelling at you to finish it. For me, working out of the house most of the time, you'd think I'd have more time than the average person. Instead of getting interrupted by co-workers, or having to commute for hours, I might get interrupted by my wife's ever growing Christmas "honey-do" list, or the opportunity to play with my daughter. It never seems that the day ends up with an extra hour here or there to study for an exam, unless you have a really good reason to pass it - all of which brings me back to this latest thread on how much time and effort does it really take for the CCVP exams.

In the last post, I gave some time estimates for the QoS exam, which ranged from 37 hours (skill level 3, self study) to 135 (skill level 0, self study). Today, I'll do the same for the CIPT exam, and then offer four surveys that can help us all learn more about what our peers think about the time and effort required. (If you didn't see my post about skill levels, which will make this post make more sense, look here.)

For CIPT, as compared to QoS, realize that the exam covers two Cisco authorized courses: CIPT1 and CIPT2, which are 5 and 4 days in length normally. (Many learning partners deliver both in a 1-week bootcamp with long days.) The other consideration is that Cisco Press currently publishes a CIPT Self-study Guide, based on Call Manager 4.0 - with around 850 pages of text to read. (They don't publish a CIPT Exam Certification Guide, by the way.) I'll assume that if you go to class, you'd take a bootcamp that covers both courses in the same long week. I'll again assume 10 hours to collect lab gear for further study. All those items considered, here's my considered, educated guess at the study time for CIPT:

Feel free to tell me where you think I'm off, or right on, either from what you've experienced or from what you expect to take to get ready for the exam. However, we usually get a lot of input from surveys, so I've listed a few here. What I'd like to hear is if you are skill level 1 or 2, for either the QoS or CIPT exams, give us your opinion as to the time range you did take/would take to prepare well enough to pass the respective exams. (I didn't do all skill levels and exams just because of how I can structure the surveys.) When answering, assume that you used the self-study path as well.

I'm going to buy a practice test for CIPT in the next day or so, and time how long it takes me to go though the questions. I'm going to draw straws regarding which test vendor I pick, but if you have any suggestions, fire away. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about the time estimates as well!

• Careers
• Cisco
• CCVP
• Cisco
• CiscoPress