70-290 or 70-291 Advice

[Lockdown]

Hello All

Anyone got any good advice on how to pass these two exams, I'm upgrading my NT4 MCSE and have been working with AD for the past year. Im founding the MS exams that come with the offical books hard and the questions seem longer then the old NT4 style.

 

[Wishdiak]

Lockdown,

I took both of these exams twice (and failed both, once each).

While it's not the quickest way to prepare, the Readiness Review CD that comes with the MS Press books will prepare you for the kind of wordy and tricky questions that you will likely see on the actual exams.

Wishdiak
A+, Network+, MCSA 2003 certified

http://www.wishdiak.com

 

[jrbarnett]

My strategy for learning (I passed both of these earlier this year) was to read the chapter in the official MS book, try out the recommended practises for that chapter, go back and modify it slightly (for example, if the question says "how would you create an account for Bill Jones using DSADD?" I would go and create one for Fred Bloggs.
This way, I would understand the why and how rather than just following the book.

After I'd done all the chapters, I went back and redid all the practicals and made notes on the key points, effectively summarising the whole book in 20 sides of paper.
I looked for other training material as well (MS web site and Google are good places to start) and looked at that, and saw how it fitted into the syllabus.
I used the readiness review suite, transcenders and

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/assessment/

which has some free tests using questions of a similar nature to the real exam.

John

 

[Wishdiak]

jrbarnett,

That's some good advice, practice is very important to passing the exams.

While the questions in the book may be as simple as "how would you create an account for Bill Jones using DSADD?", the questions on the exam will never be that straightforward (unless the choices are all very, very similar).

I found that the key to the multiple choice questions is to eliminate the incorrect answers, rather than focussing on choosing the correct one. Just my own opinion, though.

Wishdiak
A+, Network+, MCSA 2003 certified

http://www.wishdiak.com

 

[Lockdown]

Thank you all for your advice, I have narrowly missed out on both of these once before so know what to expect. I'm not making excuses, but I think the questions are far too long and dont give you the time you would normally have in the real world to do the same task. But at the end of the day, if the exam is hard then it makes it a good qualification to have I guess.

I'll let you all know if I pass and add my own advice later.