Bootcamp recommendation 4

[rburke]

Hello everyone,

I am looking around for a good boot camp to get my MCSE 2003. I have experience in a 2000 network (no certs though)and curently have my CCNA, working on my CCNP. I've self-studied through the Cisco certs but since there are 7 test for the MCSE it seems like it would be better to set aside 2-3 weeks and then just blast through them instead of spending 3-4 weeks self-studying per test. If anyone has been to or knows of a good boot camp I would appreciate it if you would let me know.

Thanks!

 

[UKHicks]

I went to wavetech bootcamps in Moorgate, London. Don't know where your from but they have offices in the USA too. Absolutely excellent, i can't recommend them enough. They give you all the study materials and say you should do 80 hours before you attend the bootcamp which takes about a month (you can break it down). They also had a website with a special login and hosted chats every night on different subjects. Possibly the most useful thing i found was that they assigned me a mentor. Someone i could call with questions about my study on any day of the week. Wavetech is more expensive than most bootcamps, but my employers wanted me to go because they teach you how to do your job, not just how to pass your test.

Just my thoughts....

 

[jtb]

some people have great success with these things; but we must emphasize they are not for people with no experience... and they are quite intense...

JTB
Have Certs, Will Travel
"A knight without armour in a [cyber] land."

 

[rburke]

UKHicks and jtb,

Thanks for your recommendations and thoughts. I am looking for a place in Texas, perferably. I do have some experience with Microsoft products and server lines so I think I could handle it. Anyone else have any suggestions?

 

[jtb]

I heard there were good places in Houston and Dallas... no direct experience... look around and ask for references...

JTB
Have Certs, Will Travel
"A knight without armour in a [cyber] land."

 

[MCSE2003]

I took night classes, will it took me 9 months to get my MCSE 2000, we held class 3 times a week, M from 6-10 pm , W from 6-10 pm and Sat from 9am-4pm for 9 straight months and I must say, I EVERY LEARN ALOT! we went through everything very slowly, we went through DNS and spent 6 to 7 weeks on just DNS, learn it inside and outside and had no problems passing the exam the first time around, keeping the cost down. I passed my last MCSE 2000 back in DEC of 2003 and started right on 2003 and it was a brezzes getting MCSA 2003, but the 70-296 was bit of a problem failed it once , but 90 days later passed it!

 

[atua]

http://www.globalnettraining.com/mcsamcsemcdba.asp

They have training sites in Austin/Dallas/San Antonio

 

[NickFerrar]

I did a bootcamp in May with The Training Camp (

http://www.trainingcamp.co.uk

the US site is

http://www.trainingcamp.net)

I looked at Wave's camp to but it seemed basically a "here's all the stuff now go and study on your own then come back for a week to take the exams". This wasn't what I wanted as my main problem was lack of motivation to self-study.

Training Camp have a different approach - basically no real pre-camp study is needed but they do emphasise you need experience (1-2 years) before you should attend if you want a good chance of passing.

It was a tough course, 14 days straight (you don't get a break on weekends!). The first week was tougher than the second week IMO as you were cramming stuff in that you could re-use for the second week exams.

My average day for the first week was:
5:30am wake up and continue homework from previous night
7:00am shower/get ready
7:30-8:00am breakfast
8:00am-9:00am continue with homework
9am-9pm instructor led class (90% lectures, not much labs) 30mins for lunch and dinner and a few 10 minute breaks
9pm-1:30am homework (basically a lot of reading + Self-Test exams)

So we were doing 20 hour days (I settled down to around 16 hour days for the second week ). It sounds a crazy amount of work, which it was but it's also weird how fast you get used to it.

The homework set was basically read a book everynight (sometimes 2...) and answer some questions which is why it took so long, by the second week thoguh I'd learned to be a lot more picky about what I read (basically I focused on the areas I knew I was weak on rather than waste time skim reading stuff I was confident on).

They provided a laptop for the course with Self-Test software on it which I thought was good (a few students complained it was poor though). Unfortunately only having one laptop and without VMWare or Virtual PC doing some of the labs was impossible outside of class hours which were generally taken up with lectures.

The course started with 12 people but I think only 9 were doing the full MCSE, only 2 of us passed all 7 exams and it wasn't a coincidence we both had the most real-world experience with Windows 2000/2003. I can't see how anyone can pass all 7 without extensive experience, the lectures just don't go into enough detail in some areas IMO.

I've attended several 'normal' Microsoft 3 and 5 days course in the past and they're generaly 9am-4:30pm at a fairly relaxed pace where you get a lot of time to ask the instructor about how a certain thing would fit into your own company environment or to discuss a particulr issue you've had in the past. Forget all that when you go on a bootcamp - asking questions because you didn't understand something is fine but everything else is deemed wasting the instructor's time and frowned upon. 9am-9pm sounds like a lot of time each day for the instructor to do some lectures then have a casual review/chat session after - it isn't, the volume of information conveyed in the course is huge.

Reading the above might be enough to put most people off - that's not my intention, I think bootcamps are great for people in my situation (real-world experience and too lazy/unfocused to self-study etc). But I wouldn't recommend it to people without real-world experience and preferrably some previous Microsoft exam experience (some people on my course had never taken an MS exam before and it was much harder for them because of it as they also had to get used to the question format).

Personally I have 7 years experience of MS server O/S's and have done NT and Win2000 MCP's in the past. The 2003 MCSE was a step up in difficulty from those and I struggled on the course, it's amazing how much you don't know even when using the product every day At the end of the day though I passed and have a great stress lifted from me - I don't think I could have done it without attending the Training Camp...

 

[Terpsfan]

Nick, I think you make a great point regarding having real world experience. Even if you create your own labs per se, it's still a test tub (in vitro) environment. However Microsoft always seems to like throwing in some questions about stuff that you have never encountered.

I find it interesting that a lot of these training centers don't really care if you have any real world experience, they just want your bucks. For the MCSD for .NET, the Microsoft certification site recommends that you not take the tests unless you have approx. 2 years hands on experience. But whenever I inquired about taking a cert track at a tech school, they never bothered to mention it.

Personally I am not sure whether these boot camps or cramming in general fosters long term memory. I have found the combination of hands on with some good books do it for me. Different people have their own way they can learn the material best.

 

[rburke]

Wow!! Thank you all for your input, especially Nick. It does sound like the bootcamp would be a stresful experience, but I would still like to do it to get me though these tests. Thank you again to all that have replied and if there is anyone else that would like to chip in then please do.

Thanks,
Burke