I've got a bit of a dilemma. I apologize in advance for how wordy this will be. Bear with me. I have high hopes that someone here can provide some insight.
I've been studying Cisco material for about a year and a half now. I've passed the CCNA, BSCI, and BCMSN. Based on these two facts, I feel I have a decent level of familiarity with the Cisco learning and testing process. Recently, I've been changing the way I study. I spent roughly 250 dedicated, focused study hours on the ISCW. In that time, used the following sources: CBT Nuggets Videos (watched all) Cisco Press Official Exam Certification Guide (read front to back, while taking notes) Cisco Press Student Guides (initially used as a supplement, then started reading thoroughly) Based on those resources, I typed 70 pages of notes and created over a thousand flash cards. I made sure I understood things before moving on. Additionally, I purchased a half rack and populated it with 2 switches, 2 multilayer switches, and 9 routers, all current enough. I did labs and reviewed my notes and flash cards a decent bit. Feeling like I was over prepared, I went into the test and promptly failed by 10 or 20 points. I went back home and reviewed all of my notes and flash cards until I felt I knew all of it (about three hours a night for a week, and an eight hour day). I went back in and tested. I failed again by 10 or 20 points. This left me somewhat confused as to how to move forward. Despite significant review time over exactly what material Cisco provides to prepare for the test, I still did not do any better. I got to the point where I felt reviewing the same material again simply would not provide me with any more information. I knew what was in the book. While this was going on, work needed me to come up with a new security strategy and put in some ASAs. I had maintained their ASAs for a while, but I had not configured any from scratch so I did not feel my knowledge level was sufficient to come up with a corporate wide network security plan. I decided to speed up the process of learning security by putting money into it. I ended up going to a CCSP boot camp with a Cisco Learning Partner. I thought going to the boot camp would be a great opportunity for me, not only to gain a lot of direct knowledge about security, but also to learn better ways to study. By two days into the boot camp, I really felt like it was way too easy to get me where I needed to be to pass. I already knew 80% of the material that was being taught based on previous experience maintaining the ASAs. I communicated this concern to the teacher on several occasions. He felt that everything would be fine though. During the boot camp they passed out practice test material from TestKeys (testkeys.com). Based on what I was hearing from my peers, this material *very* closely mimicked the real test. Since just getting a piece of paper was not my goal and I felt I had come into the class with more knowledge than most of my class mates, I decided not use the material. I took the SNAF and failed. While taking the test, I found that the labs in the test were inappropriately close to the labs we had done in class. Even most of the arbitrary names (ACL names, etc.) were exactly the same. My peers agreed that TestKeys *very* closely mimicked the real test. I went home and looked at about five or six of the TestKeys questions and found that many of the questions were almost word for word what I had seen on my real test. At that point, I left the boot camp. I felt that it was simply cheating. If I had wanted to do that, I wouldn't have spent thousands of dollars on training. This was indeed a Cisco Learning Partner though and they assured me that Cisco explicitly approved the practice test material. Seeking clarification, I called Cisco's certification support. After 30 minutes on the phone asking them simply, "what practice test material is approved for use" I got no answer. I was eventually transferred to the Cisco Learning Partner support channel. I really didn't want to get the boot camp involved since I was already in a financial dispute with them. After a great deal of time (read: two weeks), I finally made it 100% clear what my question was to the CLP support group. Again, simply "what practice test material is approved for use". Or if they can't provide that, can they at least confirm TestKeys is approved? Despite constant badgering, I have not received a reply to my question in over 5 weeks. During that time it has become painfully clear that the majority (if not vast majority) of people who pass Cisco certifications use these types of "advanced study aids". Next, I tried to escalate through Cisco. As it turned out, I was already speaking to the boss of the boss of the first line Cisco Learning Partner support rep. The person I was speaking with basically wasn't generating any progress. I went to our Cisco sales rep next, who said despite him selling lots of Cisco training, he has never had a conversation like this and he feels it just doesn't matter. I spoke to some of the people I know that have been in networking for much longer than me and the consensus seems to be that everyone does it and it doesn't matter. My problem now is that it appears to pass a test I must spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on materials (learning materials and hardware) and something like 400 or 500 hours to pass a single test. The vast majority of other people who are getting certified seem to be passing the test in 150 hours or significantly less. Professional training doesn't help. The consensus around me is that I should not be such a stickler. On top of all this, even the manufacturer of the tests won't tell me what is and is not fair after a total of seven weeks of badgering. I'm starting to feel like I'm playing hockey without a hockey stick, and not even the referee is willing to tell me if I'm allowed to have a hockey stick or not. I'm stuck. I don't want to cheat. I also don't want to have to work three or four times harder to achieve the same results as someone else. Moreover, if even the moderator won't tell me what is fair and what is not, why am I spending all of this extra effort? My questions to the group are: -Am I completely out of line here? If so, please tell me how. -What is an appropriate time to study for a single Cisco test (not expert level)? I understand there is a great amount of variance, but ballpark figures are what? 100 hours? 500 hours? 1000 hours? -What practice test material do YOU think is or is not fair for preparation for a Cisco certification test? Again, sorry for being so wordy. Thanks in advance for any insight you may be able to share. -Chris _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
