Passed 70-315 today

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Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 23:13:30 -0000

Yes, it's another one of those "yay! I passed" posts. But as I found sifting
through these posts in Google Groups rather reassuring when I had my
last-minute panic in the last few days, I hope this will help future
candidates too, even if it's a bit long. :)

The exam consisted of 43 questions to answer in 2 hours. It took me one hour
to run through all the questions once. I then used another half hour to
review questions I didn't feel confident about, and went through all the
questions again in the last half hour. I passed with 962 points (the passing
score is 700). Based on my score report and a quick check afterwards
(followed by a cry of "doh!"), I know I got at least one question wrong, but
there was no indication of what the maximum possible score might have been.

Since these questions get asked a lot around here, here's some stuff about
my background, and what study materials I used.

My last job was as a technical support engineer and systems administrator. I
have a lot of ASP experience from personal projects, and I was the web
master and SQL administrator for the company I worked for, so I did have a
good background in ASP, IIS and SQL to start with (which is why I've started
my MCAD/MCSD route with 70-315). I have also implemented and supported a
couple of ASP.NET applications in the past, though I never wrote any myself.
Aside from my ASP work, I've written some tiny, unambitious things in C++
and C# - just enough to convince me that this is an avenue I want to pursue
further.

I used the following resources to learn the material and prepare for the
exam:

Microsoft MCAD Self-Paced Training Kit
(see http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/6714.asp)
Having read through it twice before getting the Kalani book, I didn't find
this book massively useful. It gives a high-level overview of the topics
covered by the exam, but the exercises aren't very helpful, and the
explanations aren't always very clear either. After completing it, I didn't
feel I had a good grasp on some of the topics at all. However, I did find
the practice exam on the CD quite useful. It is very difficult (though
partly because of the hideous interface! :), and provides feedback on the
areas where you have weaknesses, much as the real exam does. It's like a
sadistic version of the real exam, only you get half the time to do it. So
if you pass that, you're probably ready for the real thing. However, I can't
recommend actually spending money on this book if your budget is tight. I
couldn't pass its practice test after working through the book, and I doubt
I would have passed the real exam either.

Que 70-315 Training Guide by Amit Kalani
(see http://tinyurl.com/4rhh7)
Anyone who hangs around this group for any length of time will have noticed
the amount of praise heaped upon this book. Let me heap some more. The
author's command of the English language might be dubious at times, but his
command of the subject matter, and how to impart that knowledge to his
readers, is excellent. I did all the exercises and all the practice
questions, and it really did teach me the essentials of ASP.NET and the
related concepts. The practice test in the book doesn't bear much
resemblance to the real exam, but it does check that you've learned the
material. I also found the PrepLogic preview exam on the CD quite a
challenge and a good encouragement to research some of my weak points
(though unfortunately, part of the challenge was provided by poorly-worded
questions).

Once I'd worked my way through the whole of Kalani's book, I was confident I
knew enough about the subject matter to attempt the exam. So that's when I
decided to book it at http://www.vue.com (that's also when I realised that
this week would be my last opportunity to sit the exam, as I'm expecting a
baby in three weeks' time - I wonder if I'm the most pregnant MCP? :). But I
gave myself two weeks to revise, using the following resources:

- A final read-through of Kalani's book. If you skip all the exercises, it
doesn't take that long to read (though I'd recommend re-reading some of the
exercises too, as some of them contain information not mentioned in the rest
of the text!).

- MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com). Whatever study guide you use, there's no
substitute for reading the details straight from the horse's mouth, as it
were. Kalani's book taught me the concepts, but MSDN has all the nitty
gritty of the methods and properties that the classes use; although I don't
think you have to learn these by rote, it does help if you know whether a
given method/property/directive actually exists!

- Miscellaneous web sites that came up when searching for "ASP.NET C#" in
http://www.google.com. This mostly gave me a general understanding of C#,
which is good background, though not vital material for the exam itself.

- Some tips and suggestions found when searching for "70-315" in
Google Groups (http://groups.google.com). In fact, as I said at the
beginning of this post, just reading about people who had passed the exam
gave me great hope! :)

I also did as much poking around Visual Studio .NET as I could whenever a
question in a practice exam or a code sample in MSDN made me want to see
something for myself. But Kalani's book is really excellent in this regard,
as his exercises give you plenty of productive poking around to really learn
that environment.

Anyway, I hope that was useful to anyone who is planning to take this exam!

Emma Burrows

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