One fail no passes

Well I haven't said too much on the ol blog for a bit, partly because I've been neglecting it a little bit, but also because I've been really busy with alot of studying.  As at the end of August I started another IT course the Windows 7 Configuration course out at Routes to work south in Cambuslang,  The exam involves the overall picture of configuring Windows 7 Enterprise, looking at things such as sharing resources, deploying windows, working with hard disks and partitions, faffing about with system settings, networking etc.

So this is the focus of what this post will be about, and today I sat the exam for it (70-680 exam as stated above) and for the first time in ages I failed an exam.  So I'm a bit disappointed by it, but at the same time I'm not surprised as this course only lasts 14 weeks, and we have had to cover a great deal in such a short space of time.  The exam itself was pretty difficult and again I found that it covered a lot of information that wasn't in our study materials, and it was full of a lot of command line parameters which I had no idea about.  I also found that in the past with Microsoft, as I had previously sat the Microsoft Certified Professional for XP Pro 6 years ago, which I did pass but we were given some sample questions from one of the "brain dumps" websites.  But if you use the official Microsoft study guides, you most likely will not pass, how about that??!

And this is a really frustrating thing with Microsoft's exams, quite often a fair bit of the course detail doesn't tally with what will be in the exam.  Today I found myself largely stumped by the questions I was given and it really was a case of taking a wild stab in the dark, which isn't good.  So I do think if we were given more time to revise for the exam there might have been a better chance of getting a pass, but the format of the course is too rushed.  I was also annoyed at the Microsoft exam structure in that it gives you 2 hours overall, but that includes time taken to read their license agreement and do the survey, which leaves you less time for the actual exam, as I had only about 1 hour and 20 minutes left by the time I started the exam!!

Thankfully (well in a way) I wasn't the only person who failed the exam today, in fact only one of us passed it, so I'm relieved that it was just me.  But overall the exam was very difficult and that's the thing with Microsoft, you can never guarantee you can get a pass based on the study books you use, you have to look further afield.  Its different with the CompTIA exams, as you can read your study guides, materials, etc, and you will get a pass.  But Microsoft in their benevolance quite often like to stump and baffle you with vague questions (not to mention difficult) which makes it that bit tougher to get a handle on.

But anyway, from here as a group we can discuss where it all went wrong and try and gear ourselves up for another resit soon (although hopefully not too soon!).