Tips for Certification exam taking

New Horizons has an instructor who has began blogging with networkworld.com Chip Wenz. Since he has taken many more Certification exams than me I will allow him to give his insight on test taking.

"Chip Wenz has been an instructor for New Horizons for eight years where he teaches courses on Microsoft networking, messaging and .NET programming. He is an MCSE, MCSA+M, MCDBA, MCAD, MCSD, MCTS, MCPD and a MCT. Chip has been working in the IT industry for 30 years and has done many projects in both networking design as well as .NET programming."

How to Take a Test…

Submitted by Chip Wenz on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 8:58am.

Since I have been an instructor I have had to take a number of exams from different vendors to maintain my credentials and I have developed some guidelines on how to take a test that I thought that I might share with you. Now some of these should be taken with a large grain of salt (followed quickly with a shot of Tequila and a lime slice), but for the most part they can be used when all else fails and you either have to guess or skip that question getting it wrong anyway. So here they are in no specific order.

First, there are no official classes from any of the vendors that have a one-to-one correlation to any of the tests. With that being said, how do the classes help you to prepare for the exam? The answer to that is the classes teach you HOW things work. With that little tidbit of information, taking the test can be a breeze. If you know how the different pieces work then you can use that information to eliminate any of the answers that could not possibly be correct.

This leads me to the next item; on most of the tests that I have taken, I really only know 50% to 60% of the correct answers, but luckily I can spot most of the totally wrong answers as well. Now this may sound weird, why do I care what the wrong answers are when I am being graded on picking the correct answer? If you look at it from a purely statistical point of view (bear with me, not a real strong subject for me in college) if you have answers labeled A, B C and D, you have a 1 in 4 chance of choosing the right answer. If you can eliminate 2 of the answers because they could never work the way they are described you have increased you odds to 1 out of 2. If you could get odds like that in Vegas, it would probably still be a little town in the middle of the desert.

Okay so now you have your answers down to 2 choices and you think to yourself that both could work; now what do you do? The rule here is pick the answer that uses the ‘Least administrative effort’ as Microsoft would say. What this means is if you have a question that states that you need to issue IP addresses to 50 machines; would you A) statically assign the addresses or B) use a DHCP server, the DHCP server answer would be the least administrative effort over the long run.

Finally, if you have to take a total S.W.A.G. at the answer, remember the following:
· If it makes the vendor of the test look good, it is probably the right answer.
· If it makes the competitor of the test vendor look bad, it probably is the right answer.
· On networking tests the right answer is usually the longest (because it is more detailed) and on programming tests the shortest is usually the right answer (because it is more ‘elegant’).

Above all…relax, it’s only a test.

For even more test taking tips see http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29014 for steps to 'Guess your best'