OCPJP/SCJP - A good way to learn JAVA

    Phew !! After lot of postponing, I finally went for the OCPJP Exam (formerly SCJP) and luckily I got through it. Yes I was quite lucky enough to pass the exam, though the percentage I scored is pretty low compared to most of the people out there. But still I am quite happy with what I have.

Scads of tips to score well in the exam will be easily accessible on doing some search in Google, so I am not going for anything like that. This is mostly about how I went for it and finally came out with flying colors. I thought to write this blog just to give a boost to all those people who are planning to write the exam and also those who scored less and are in the notion that they ruined it completely.

If you have passed the exam, then you are good. Oracle and previously Sun made it pretty sure that only if you know the basics of the language, you will pass the exam. But nowadays you can get hold of so many dumps which will fetch you more than 95% easily. The question remains to you. Do you want a good score and know less or know a lot and score as per you potential? I am in no way against the dumps, but referring only dumps for the exam will make you a dumb in JAVA. You need to know the language well and then you can keep the dumps to refresh and revise. In that way you will score and learn together. I was bold enough to not try dumps at all. All I did was to read the SCJP book and a little practice and then I went for the exam. As a result I scored less. But then again the certificate doesn't reflect your score. In fact that's kept confidential. So where's the harm in scoring less. You still is Certified and get the same certificate which the person scoring 100% gets. Nice isn't it !!

Oracle's main motive behind the exam is to make people learn the language well, not to create a competition out there. To be very honest, the questions are not at all easy for anyone to pass it. You really need to have a very strong hold on the basics of Core Java to get through it. Let me rather put it in a different way. "The Questions were quite easy as all were from the topics which you will be brushing up so many times preparing for the exam. But the answers were really tough as you will be completely bewildered with so much similarity between all the choices". Finding the right answer becomes a challenge sometimes. And the multiple choice questions are the worse.You will have around 5 -6 options out of which 3-4 will be correct. And you have to mark all the correct answers. The worse part is that even if you marked 3 out of 4 options correctly and the last option as wrong, your whole question will get wrong. You wont score in that question.

You will be given a total of 60 questions in which you have to score 61% to get a PASS certificate from Oracle. Don't even dare to skip a section for the exam as you will for sure get questions from all parts of the course. This is not an Undergraduate exam dear !!

If you are preparing full time (not like me going to office and then preparing for 1 - 1.5 hrs a day in the night), it will take you around 2-3 months to prepare well. It again depends how intelligent you are to grab the language. So no hard and fast rule for the time. Prepare as long as you want and just the time when you feel comfortable with your preparation, GO FOR IT. Now how do you know whether you are prepared ?? Interesting Question (I know you are thinking that how intelligent I am. Its just my decency that I don't show off :D). Go for some mock exams. At least 4 of them with time. Then you will know how well prepared you are for the exam.

Plan at least two weeks before and book the slot. This will keep you tensed for whole two weeks which in turn will get you prepared well. Its just like we normally like to do our work when the deadline comes and interestingly we do well in the end. Just the same logic goes here as well. 

So if you are planning to write the exam, Just Go For It. It will surely help you in future. 

If you have already given it and passed with low score, just chill. Have a glass of water and get back to work. You are doing good.

Some information regarding the Exam: 

  1. One and only one book for the exam is SCJP by Kathy Sierra

               

 

  2. Oracle Page for OCPJP 6 exam. Link

  3. Google for some of the mock exams and Dumps. My advice will be use them after reading the book   completely.

Thats it !! Show ends here. Do share your experiences as well if you find this post useful. 

Finally, All the Best to you fellas.