Test tips

The No. 7 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Not Knowing What Microsoft Is Looking For

Ron Colonna — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:36:02 -0500

So we have arrived at my last reason for failure and I think it is sometimes the most difficult one to deal with. So difficult in fact, that over the next few columns I will be trying to address examples so that you can better understand this problem. Many people fail because they simply don't understand what Microsoft is looking for.

Read more

The No. 6 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Second Guessing Themselves

Ron Colonna — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:15:18 -0500

Continuing on my theme that we can "make our own luck" to a certain extent, I want to touch on one of my main weaknesses when it comes to taking any type of standardized test including Microsoft exams. I am a big victim of second guessing. I look at a question, I get a gut instinct answer and I should be happy. I'm not. I look at it. I read more into it. I assume that they might have meant something different than I originally thought.

Read more

The No. 5 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Nerves

Ron Colonna — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:53:52 -0500

Last entry we talked about bad luck being your downfall in an exam. While I think that is a problem, I tend to believe that we make our own luck. My next two entries will be dealing with things that we do, that some people look at as "bad luck" but really are just our own lack of preparation or belief in our own potential. The first is nerves.

I have taken around 30 Microsoft exams. I have studied for and passed most of them the first time. Guess what?

Read more

The No. 4 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Bad Luck

Ron Colonna — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:51:56 -0500

There are a lot of things that can derail your success in an exam. A lot of them you can prepare for but there are going to be times when all of you preparations fail and things just go poorly for you. In other words, you are a victim of bad luck.

Read more

The No. 3 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Too Much Experience

Ron Colonna — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:41:07 -0500

So if you read my last entry, you know that I feel that not having enough practical experience (I have never liked the phrase "real world"...it sounds too philosophical) is a possible reason for failing an exam. The funny thing is the opposite is also true. In other words, too much experience and not enough book knowledge is a prescription for failure too!

Read more

The No. 2 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: Applied Knowledge

Ron Colonna — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:02:14 -0500

How else can you fail a Certification Exam? It is time for reason number two. I think a big weakness that people run into is too much "book" knowledge and not enough "applied understanding" of the technologies involved.

I get plenty of students that have never run a network or never written their own programs in my classes. I am happy to try to get them to understand as much as possible about the subject at hand but only so much can be done in five days. I can teach someone how DNS works or how to write and read from a file in VB code but the theory isn't enough. There has to be some practice work or you can be easily fooled by some of Microsoft's questions.

Read more

The No. 1 reason smart IT professionals fail certification exams: time management

Ron Colonna — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:33:48 -0500

I think it is time to start looking at how to get you to be able to pass your exams. I think the best way to do that is to give you a list of things that can cause you to fail. I am going to be looking at each thing in a different entry so we can spend a few paragraphs talking about how it happens, why it happens and how to prevent/deal with it. As of now, I have thought of seven things that can happen to anyone while taking any certification test. If I think of more (or have more suggested) we will tackle them too.

So, the No. 1 reason why people fail -- one I see all the time -- poor time management.

Read more

Trick Answers

Ron Colonna — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:10:22 -0500

What makes the question from yesterday a trick question? A trick question is one that can be interpreted in more than one way. The answer to it can be very different depending on just a few words. Let me show you what I mean.

As written, the correct answer is b...6g. The problem is there are two ways to get the same answer. I tried to make it a bit simpler because I didn't want the example to be a math question. The thing you have to think about though is what if instead of 2g on the first drive, we only had 1g. What would the answer be then?

Read more

Trick Questions?

Ron Colonna — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:02:08 -0500

Over the years I have heard it said many times that some people feel that Microsoft uses trick questions in its exams. For the most part I think this isn't true. I think that their questions are tough and take a bit of thought to get the right answer sometimes but if you really know the subject in question, there shouldn't be a problem (except in case of taking the exam in a non native language, always try to take it in your language whenever possible). There is one example where I think Microsoft can be unfair in the wording of their question. That is what we will look at today.

In one or two exams in my past, there has been a question related to striped volumes that I feel can be worded in such a way as to be misleading. It goes something like this....

Read more

What is an exception?

Ron Colonna — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:27:50 -0500

I wanted to expand a bit on my last post where I mentioned that Microsoft asks questions about the exceptions. I don't just mean errors or things crashing. While they do want you to be able to handle those issues, there are other concerns. There are known problems (more commonly called "features") that crop up in day to day operations that can cause endless frustration when trying to support a network UNLESS you already know them. That is the topic for today.

Read more

Testing one...two...three

Ron Colonna — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:35:15 -0500

The most powerful tool in the arsenal of trying to pass any certification test is knowing what is going to be asked. There are three main ways to do this. The easy way is to just go to Microsoft's web site and look up the exam. You can do that here. You can check by number or by certification. The different exam skills that are being tested are listed there.

Read more