Study Strategy for 70-316 (C# Windows Development)

  • Thread starter Thread starter orekinbck
  • Start date Start date
O

orekinbck

Hi There

What are the best value practice exam engines for 70-316?

How does this strategy sound:
* First iteration - Go through Kalani's training guide + MSDN +
http://www.codeclinic.com/70-316skills.htm + Any other online resources
* Second Iteration - Go through the ExamCram book and questions
* Third Iteration - Take a practice exam or two

Cheers
Bill
 
Iteration Zero - write some actual code and get familiar with C#; look at
others' code (http://www.thecodeproject.com is a good resource) and see how
they do what they do, and why they do what they do

Third Iteration - keep taking practice exams until you consistently score at
a certain level on them. For instance, set a goal of 90% for two practice
exams in a row, and kept taking practice exams until you hit that level.

Probably the most important step:

Fourth Iteration - go back to #1 and study the areas you missed on the
practice exams; repeat.
 
Hi There

What are the best value practice exam engines for 70-316?
Click to expand...

I've found a good value in CD's packaged with study guides I was going to
buy anyway. Exam Cram has a set of books that comes with a complete set of
practice exams on CD, all at a slight discount from buying the books
individually. You might be able to find even better deals on their books if
you shop around...

BTW - There's a series of books called "All-in-One Exam Guides" by
McGraw-Hill Osborne (NOT to be confused with Michael Meyers' books!) These
books have red and gold covers. The two I bought (MCDBA and MCSA/MCSD) were
full of errors, contained a ton of irrelevant information, were very poorly
written, and to top it off the Practice Exams on CD had the wrong answers!
(There was only one set of answers for two different tests!) I don't know
if they've fixed any of this since then, but I would advise anyone to stay
far, far away from these books.
 
I've been through this with an entire study group. We assessed the books and
prep guides and practice exams. Here's what we found...

** QUE publishes the best MCAD books. Amit Kahlani (sp) is an excellent
author and QUE has done an excellent job on the two books he authored.
70-315 and 70-320. I don't know anything about the author of 70-320 but
again, QUE has done an excellent job with their MCAD Training Guides.

**Transcender publishes the best practice exams and is worth every cent of
their fee.

Everything else was either light-weight or not comprehensive noting with the
exception of me our study group was comprised of highly skilled developers
with more than 10 years of actual workplace experience. The Exam Cram
materials are ludicrous for example and simplistic. Prep exams from other
vendors can be and all too often are crapware, i.e. the application used to
conduct the testing and reviews are good for sh!t.

Buy QUE. Buy Transcender.

The real exams are very challenging and require the analysis of A LOT OF
CODE so any hands-on experience actually writing code is going to help and
even then the different tasks involved make passing difficult even for those
with experience. Finally, make sure you really really really prepare
yourself to manage your time well as all the analysis of the code can and
will cause your time to run out when taking the exams.

<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://metromilwaukee.com/
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/
 
Back
Top