I know I’m late to the party here, but I thought that I would share my take on the recent announcements.
On the written test, I can understand why they are making the changes. Now it’ll match up with the rest of the Cisco certification exams out there. It doesn’t sound like they are changing the questions. But the grading will become nebulous with the large score range. I would also assume the questions will be weighted when it comes to scoring. Also, you can no longer skip questions and come back to them. Overall, this will raise the difficulty a little bit. So I’ll definitely be trying to get my written test in before the change happens in February.
The interview on the Lab exam is an interesting change. I think Cisco could have done a better job of explaining it though. Obviously, this sends a bit of anxiety to the CCIE candidates out there (myself included). From the sound of things, it won’t do anything to increase your chances of passing the lab. So it becomes just one more thing that could cause to you spend $1400 on a mediocre lunch. Plus there is the issue of subjectivity along with language problems where English is not the candidates primary language.
I think Cisco could do a lot to ease our worries by just giving a few examples of the questions along with acceptable answers. Not knowing is really what the problem is right now. It’s hard to prepare or be confident when going into the unknown. In the end, I’m guessing that this won’t be a big deal for the candidates who aren’t trying to pass the lab though brain dumps or brute force.
I guess as long as the changes accomplish their goals, it’s a good thing. I definitely want to keep the riff raff out of the CCIE club. It’ll be interesting to hear reports from candidates once they start encountering the new changes.
