Written Exam Review
Posted by jrensink78 on February 10, 2009
I had good intentions of getting this up earlier. But time seems to pass so quickly. For those of you who didn’t read my last post, I passed my written exam on February 5. This is a review of the test. I’ll talk about preparation suggestions on another post.
The test was still under the old format when I took it. Scoring range was on a scale from 0-100 with 70 being the passing mark. The test is 120 minutes. I had 105 questions given to me. The scoring method of the test is changing soon. But I believe the number of questions and time length will remain the same. I’m pretty sure the new passing score will keep the test around the same difficulty level. I also don’t believe the question pool is changing.
Obviously, I can’t say what I saw on the test in terms of technologies or subjects. But I’ll try to be as helpful as I can in giving people direction on what to expect. First off, this is different than CCNA/CCNP tests. It is a purely written test, so there are not simulations on the exam. No sense in having those when there is the 8-hour lab to test that kind of stuff. Also, for those people who have taken some of the practice exams out there, you’ll often see them tell you to “select all that apply” for the multiple choice questions as opposed to telling you to select a specific number of answers. You don’t need to worry about seeing that on the exam. They will always tell you how many answers to select in the multiple choice questions.
The test is not a breeze. There are a few things that made the test hard for me. First, the range of topics covered in the exam is pretty wide. You need to be knowledgeable about a lot of topics. I did have a few topics that I wasn’t all that prepared on. It showed in my score report. I ran into questions that I just had no clue about. Second, the questions needlessly turn themselves into trivia at times. This was frustrating to me, because even though I often knew how the technologies worked, the trivia aspect of things complicated the questions. Personally, I don’t think that’s a very effective method of testing. I would elaborate, but I don’t want to break the NDA. CCIE Pursuit touched on the most annoying part in his review if you want to read that.
The other thing that made the test harder was Cisco’s method of trying to determine if you understand a technology. They don’t always just ask you a straight forward question to test your knowledge, they have to put a spin on it. It then becomes a question of not only knowing the technology, but understanding what the question is looking for. This can be done in an effective way that causes you to use critical thinking skills. But it can also be done poorly using vague or weird scenarios. I saw both.
On the positive side of things, you really shouldn’t experience time issues on this test. I didn’t hit many questions that took a lot of analysis. Most questions are pretty straight forward. I believe I finished with about 25 minutes to spare. As long as you are answering about 1 question per minute, you’re doing just fine. Since you really don’t have to worry about any monster time wasting questions, it’s really easy to track how you are doing in that department. I would say that the most detailed of questions shouldn’t take more than around 2-3 minutes to figure out. This is nice because it allows you to keep a pretty consistent flow going.
Also, you will run into the easy questions. Questions that a CCNA should be able to answer most of the time. You probably won’t need to use the available marker board and marker very much. I only used it on one question. Very few of the questions I had required much computation or had a large number of things to keep straight.
At the end of the test, you get your immediate results. Just like any other CCNx test. Once you pass, and Cisco certifies the results, you’ll then have access to schedule your CCIE exam. Be sure to hold on to your score report, because you’ll need info from that to get logged in to the CCIE site. If you do lose it, you can get the info elsewhere. But it’s nice to have it all in one place.
In the end, the test can be tricky at times, but definitely passable. I know I could have prepared better. But I wanted to give it a crack before the new format change coming up in a few weeks. If you are comfortable with the material in the exam blueprint, you should do fine.
