CCIE written study tips- part 3.1

As I was going over my last few posts, I realized that I missed one fairly important aspect of the written preparation.  So I thought that I would do one little post addressing that.

So how do you know when you are ready to take the written exam?  I would say that you should go through all of the sections of the written exam blueprint using the study methods that I talked about in my other posts.  Once you get through everything once, do a reassessment of each major topic area to see how much you remember.  Take note of any topics that you aren’t doing so well at and make a new plan to review those.

As you go back over topics that you need to study more, you can change up your study method a bit.  You probably don’t need to follow the exact same plan as you did before.  Definitely do some reading, whether it’s in a book or the Cisco online documentation.  Maybe review some videos if you have them.  Then come up with your own short labs to practice on the specific areas that you need some extra help with.

Also, as I’m in my final review preparation, I typically will be taking a lot of practice tests.  Not that I expect to see the practice test questions on the actual exam.  Although every once in a while I’ll see maybe 1 or 2 on the actual exam.  But it helps to keep things fresher in your memory.

Once you’re feeling pretty good on most all topics, schedule the test and go for it.  Try to avoid being a perpetual preparer.  Due to the large amount of subject matter in the CCIE, it can be pretty easy to never feel quite prepared.  But the good news is that you don’t have to know the nitty gritty of every topic.  At some point, you just have to bite the bullet and see what happens.  If you do happen to fail on the first try, be sure to use it as a learning opportunity.  As you take the exam, try to identify some areas where you have knowledge gaps and make mental notes of what things might be good to review in case you don’t pass.  If you can identify some more specific things, it will help.  For instance, your score report might show that you did poorly in BGP, which is a fairly large topic.  But if you can remember that you specifically had issues with route reflectors and confederations, it’ll let you focus your follow-up studies.  That’ll save you some time