Congratulations! You made it through the book, and now it’s time to finish getting ready for the exam. This chapter helps you get ready to take and pass the exam in two ways.
This chapter begins by talking about the exam itself. You know the content and topics. Now you need to think about what happens during the exam, and what you need to do in these last few weeks before taking the exam. At this point, everything you do should be focused on getting you ready to pass so that you can finish up this hefty task.
The second section of this chapter gives you some exam review tasks as your final preparation for your ENARSI 300-410 exam.
Now that you have finished the bulk of this book, you could just register for your ENARSI 300-410 exam; show up; and take the exam. However, if you spend a little time thinking about the exam event itself, learning more about the user interface of the real Cisco exams, and the environment at the Vue testing centers, you will be better prepared, particularly if this is your first Cisco exam. As a note, typically ENARSI would not be your first Cisco exam as you would usually take CCNA or CCNP ENCOR first; however, since Cisco has removed all pre-requisites there is nothing stopping you from making this your first exam. The first of three major sections in this chapter gives some advice about the Cisco exams and the exam event itself.
On exam day, you need to keep an eye on your speed. Going too slowly hurts you because you might not have time to answer all the questions. Going too fast can be hurtful, if your fast speed is because you are rushing and not taking the time to fully understand the questions. So, you need to be able to somehow know whether you are moving quickly enough to answer all the questions, while not rushing.
The exam user interface shows some useful information, namely a countdown timer as well as upward question counter. The question counter shows a question number for the question you are answering, and it shows the total number of questions on your exam.
Unfortunately, some questions require a lot more time than others, and for this and other reasons, time estimating can be a challenge.
First, before you show up to take the exam, you only know a range of the number of questions for the exam - for example, the Cisco website might list the ENARSI exam as having from 55 to 65 questions. But you do not know how many questions are on your exam until the exam begins, when you go through the screens that lead up to the point where you click “Start exam” which starts your timed exam.
Next, some questions (call them time burners) clearly take a lot more time to answer:
Normal-time questions: Multichoice and drag-and-drop, approximately 1 minute each
Time burners: Sims, Simlets, and Testlets, approximately 6–8 minutes each
Finally, in the count of 55–65 questions on a single exam, even though Testlet and Simlet questions contain several multichoice questions, the exam software counts each Testlet and Simlet question as one question in the question counter. For example, if a Testlet question has four embedded multiple-choice questions, in the exam software’s question counter, that counts as one question. So when you start the exam, you might see that you will have 55 questions, but you don’t know how many of those are time burners.
Note
While Cisco does not tell us why you might get 55 questions, while someone else taking the same exam might get 65 questions, it seems reasonable to think that the person with 55 questions might have a few more of the time burners, making the two exams equivalent.
You need a plan for how you will check your time, a plan that does not distract you from the exam. You can ponder the facts listed above and come up with your own plan. For those of you who want a little more guidance, the next topic shows one way to check your time that uses some simple math so it does not take much time away from the test.
The following math can be used to do your time check in a way that weights the time based on those time-burner questions. You do not have to use this method. But this math uses only addition of whole numbers, to keep it simple. It gives you a pretty close time estimate, in my opinion.
The concept is simple. Just do a simple calculation that estimates the time you should have used so far. Here’s the math:
Number of Questions Answered So Far + 7 Per Time Burner answered so far
Then, you check the timer to figure out how much time you have spent:
• You have used exactly that much time, or a little more time: Your timing is perfect.
• You have used less time: You are ahead of schedule.
• You have used noticeably more time: You are behind schedule.
For example, if you have already finished 17 questions, 2 of which were time burners, your time estimate is 17 + 7 + 7 = 31 minutes. If your actual time is also 31 minutes, or maybe 32 or 33 minutes, you are right on schedule. If you have spent less than 31 minutes, you are ahead of schedule.
So, the math is pretty easy: Questions answered, plus 7 per time burner, is the guesstimate of how long you should have taken so far if you are right on time.
Note
This math is an estimate; I make no guarantees that the math will be an accurate predictor on every exam.
Here are just a few more suggestions for things to think about before exam day arrives:
• Get some earplugs. Testing centers often have some, but if you do not want to chance it, come prepared with your own. (They will not let you bring your own noise-canceling headphones into the room if they follow the rules disallowing any user electronic devices in the room, so think low-tech.) The testing center is typically a room inside the space of a company that does something else as well, oftentimes a training center, and almost certainly you will share the room with other test takers coming and going. So, there are people talking in nearby rooms and others office noises. Earplugs can help.
• Some people like to spend the first minute of the exam writing down some notes for reference, before actually starting the exam. For example, maybe you want to write down the table of magic numbers for finding IPv4 subnet IDs. If you plan to do that, practice making those notes. Before each practice exam, transcribe those lists, just like you expect to do at the real exam.
• Plan your travel to the testing center with enough time so that you will not be rushing to make it just in time.
• If you tend to be nervous before exams, practice your favorite relaxation techniques for a few minutes before each practice exam, just to be ready to use them.
I hope the exam goes well for you. Certainly, the better prepared you are, the better chances you have on the exam. But these small tips can help you do your best on exam day:
• Rest the night before the exam, rather than staying up late to study. Clarity of thought is more important than one extra fact, especially because the exam requires so much analysis and thinking rather than just remembering facts.
• If you did not bring earplugs, ask the testing center for some, even if you cannot imagine you would use them. You never know whether it might help.
• You can bring personal effects into the building and testing company’s space, but not into the actual room in which you take the exam. So, save a little stress and bring as little extra stuff with you as possible. If you have a safe place to leave briefcases, purses, electronics, and so on, leave them there. However, the testing center should have a place to store your things as well. Simply put, the less you bring, the less you have to worry about storing. (For example, I have been asked to remove even my analog wristwatch on more than one occasion.)
• The exam center will give you a laminated sheet and pen, as a place to take notes. (Test center personnel typically do not let you bring paper and pen into the room, even if supplied by the testing center.) I always ask for a second pen as well.
• If available, grab a few tissues from the box in the room, for two reasons. One: avoid having to get up in the middle of the exam. Two: if you need to erase your laminated sheet, doing that with a tissue paper helps prevent the oil from your hand making the pen stop working well. (Yes, that’s often why pens seem to not work, and then later work, on dry erase boards!)
• Leave for the testing center with extra time, so you do not have to rush.
• Plan on finding a restroom before going into the testing center. If you cannot find one, of course you can use one in the testing center, and test personnel will direct you and give you time before your exam starts.
• Do not drink a 64-ounce caffeinated drink on the trip to the testing center. After the exam starts, the exam timer will not stop while you go to the restroom.
• On exam day, use any relaxation techniques that you have practiced to help get your mind focused while you wait for the exam.
Some people pass these exams on the first attempt, and some do not. The exams are not easy. If you fail to pass the exam that day, you will likely be disappointed. And that is understandable. But is not a reason to give up. In fact, I added this short topic to give you a big advantage in case you do fail.
The most important study hour for your next exam attempt is the hour just after your failed attempt.
Prepare to fail before you take the exam. That is, prepare your schedule to give yourself an hour, or at least a half an hour, immediately after the exam attempt, in case you fail. Then follow these suggestions:
• Bring pen and paper, preferably a notebook you can write in if you have to write standing up or sitting somewhere inconvenient.
Make sure you know where pen and paper are, so that you can take notes immediately after the exam. Keep it in your backpack if using the train or bus, or on the car seat in the car.
• Install and practice with an audio recording app on your phone, and be prepared to start talking into your app when you leave the testing center.
• Before the exam, scout the testing center, and plan the place where you will sit and take your notes, preferably somewhere quiet.
• Write down anything in particular that you can recall from any question.
• Write down details of questions you know you got right as well, because doing so may help trigger a memory of another question
• Draw the figures that you can remember
• Most importantly, write down any tidbit that might have confused you: terms, config commands, show commands, scenarios, topology drawings, anything.
• Take at least three passes at remembering. That is, you will hit a wall where you do not remember more. So, start on your way back to the next place, and then find a place to pause and take more notes. And do it again.
• When you have sucked your memory dry, take one more pass while thinking of the major topics in the book, to see if that triggers any other memory of a question.
Once collected, you cannot share the information with anyone, because doing so would break Cisco’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Cisco is serious about cheating, and they would consider the fact that you would share this kind of info publicly. But you can use your information to study for your next attempt. Remember, anything that uncovers what you do not know related to the exam is valuable, so your notes will be very valuable to you. See the section “Study Suggestions after a Failed Attempt” for the rest of the story.
One day soon, you need to pass a real Cisco exam at a Vue testing center. So, it’s time to practice the real event as much as possible.
A practice exam using the Pearson IT Certification Practice Test (PCPT) exam software lets you experience many of the same issues as when taking a real Cisco exam. The software gives you a number of questions, with a countdown timer shown in the window. After you answer a question, you cannot go back to it (yes, that’s true on Cisco exams). If you run out of time, the questions you did not answer count as incorrect.
The process of taking the timed practice exams helps you prepare in three key ways:
• To practice the exam event itself, including time pressure, the need to read carefully, with a need to concentrate for long periods
• To build your analysis and critical thinking skills when examining the network scenario built into many questions
• To discover the gaps in your networking knowledge so that you can study those topics before the real exam
As much as possible, treat the practice exam events as if you were taking the real Cisco exam at a Vue testing center. The following list gives some advice on how to make your practice exam more meaningful, rather than just one more thing to do before exam day rolls around:
• Set aside two hours for taking the 90-minute timed practice exam.
• Make a list of what you expect to do for the ten minutes before the real exam event. Then visualize yourself doing those things. Before taking each practice exam, practice those final ten minutes before your exam timer starts. (The earlier section “Exam-Day Advice” lists some suggestions about what to do in those last ten minutes.)
• You cannot bring anything with you into the Vue exam room, so remove all notes and help materials from your work area before taking a practice exam. You can use blank paper, a pen, and your brain only. Do not use calculators, notes, web browsers, or any other app on your computer.
• Real life can get in the way, but if at all possible, ask anyone around you to leave you alone for the time you will practice. If you must do your practice exam in a distracting environment, wear headphones or earplugs to reduce distractions.
• Do not guess, hoping to improve your score. Answer only when you have confidence in the answer. Then, if you get the question wrong, you can go back and think more about the question in a later study session.
Open a web browser. Yes, take a break and open a web browser on any device. Do a quick search on a fun topic. Then, before you click a link, get ready to think where your eyes go for the first 5–10 seconds after you click the link. Now, click a link and look at the page. Where did your eyes go?
Interestingly, web browsers, and the content on those web pages, have trained us all to scan. Web page designers actually design content expecting certain scan patterns. Regardless of the pattern, when reading a web page, almost no one reads sequentially, and no one reads entire sentences. They scan for the interesting graphics and the big words, and then scan the space around those noticeable items.
Other parts of our electronic culture have also changed how the average person reads. For example, many of you grew up using texting and social media, sifting through hundreds or thousands of messages—but each message barely fills an entire sentence. (In fact, that previous sentence would not fit in a tweet, being longer than 140 characters.)
Those everyday habits have changed how we all read and think in front of a screen. Unfortunately, those same habits often hurt our scores when taking computer-based exams.
If you scan exam questions like you read web pages, texts, and tweets, you will probably make some mistakes because you missed a key fact in the question, answer, or exhibits. It helps to start at the beginning, and read all the words—a process that is amazingly unnatural for many people today.
Note
I have talked to many college professors, in multiple disciplines, and Cisco Networking Academy instructors, and they consistently tell me that the number-one test-taking issue today is that people do not read the question well enough to understand the details.
When taking the practice exams, and answering individual questions, let me make two suggestions. First, before the practice exam, think about your own personal strategy for how you will read a question. Make your approach to multiple-choice questions in particular be a conscious decision on your part. Second, if you want some suggestions on how to read an exam question, use the following strategy:
Step 1. Read the question itself, thoroughly, from start to finish.
Step 2. Scan any exhibit (usually command output) or figure.
Step 3. Scan the answers to look for the types of information. (Numeric? Terms? Single words? Phrases?)
Step 4. Reread the question thoroughly, from start to finish, to make sure that you understand it.
Step 5. Read each answer thoroughly, while referring to the figure/exhibit as needed. After reading each answer, before reading the next answer:
A. If correct, select as correct.
B. If for sure it is incorrect, mentally rule it out.
C. If unsure, mentally note it as a possible correct answer.
Note
Cisco exams will tell you the number of correct answers. The exam software also helps you finish the question with the right number of answers noted. For example, the software prevents you from selecting too many answers. Also, if you try to move on to the next question, but have too few answers noted, the exam software asks if you truly want to move on. And you should guess when unsure on the actual exam – there is no penalty for guessing.
Use the practice exams as a place to practice your approach to reading. Every time you click to the next question, try to read the question following your approach. If you are feeling time pressure, that is the perfect time to keep practicing your approach, to reduce and eliminate questions you miss because of scanning the question instead of reading thoroughly.
When you take a practice exam with PCPT, PCPT gives you a score, on a scale from 300 to 1000. Why? Cisco tells us they give a score of between 300 and 1000 as well. But the similarities end there.
With PCPT, the score is a basic percentage, but expressed as a number from 0 to 1000. For example, answer 80% correct, and the score is 800; get 90% correct, and the score is 900. If you start a practice exam and click through it without answering a single question, you get a 0.
However, Cisco does not score their exams in the same way. The following is what we do know about Cisco exam scoring:
• The use a scoring scale from 300 to 1000
• They tell us that they give partial credit, but with no further details
So, what does an 800 or a 900 mean? Many people think those scores mean 80% or 90%, but we do not know. Cisco does not reveal the details of scoring to us. They do not reveal the details of partial credit. It seems reasonable to expect a Sim question to be worth more points than a multi-choice single-answer question, but we do not know.
The reason I mention all these facts to you is this:
Do not rely too much on your PCPT practice exam scores to assess whether you are ready to pass. Those scores are a general indicated, in that if you make a 700 one time, and a 900 a week later, you are probably now better prepared. But your 900 on your PCPT practice exam does not mean you will likely make a 900 on the actual exam – because we do not know how Cisco scores the exam.
So, what can you use as a way to assess whether you are ready to pass? Unfortunately, the answer requires some extra effort, and the answer will not be some nice convenient number that looks like an exam score. But you can self-assess your skills, as follows:
1. When you do take an exam with PCPT, you should understand the terms used in the questions and answers.
2. You should be able to look at the list of key topics from each chapter, and explain a sentence or two about each topic to a friend.
3. You should be able to do all the Config Labs, or labs or similar challenge level, and get them right consistently.
4. For chapters with show commands, you should understand the fields highlighted in gray in the examples spread about the book, and when looking at those examples, know which values show configuration settings and which show status information.
5. For the key topics that list various troubleshooting root causes, when you review those lists, you should remember and understand the concept behind each item in the list without needing to look further at the chapter.
None of us wants to take and fail any exam. However, you cannot think about Cisco exams like you think of exams in school. Lots of people take and fail Cisco exams. I personally have studied hard for some Cisco exams and failed the exam multiple times. I want you to pass, but we also need to be ready to complete the task if you do fail.
When you fail, you can keep studying the exact same way, but you can also benefit from some small changes in tactics. So this short section is a summary of the kinds of advice I’ve given people for years who reach out in frustration after failing.
First, study the notes you took about your failed attempt. (See earlier section “Reserve the Hour after Your Exam in Case You Fail”.) Do not share that information with others, but use it to study. You should be able to answer every actual exam question you can remember, or at least understand everything you remember that confused you, before showing up for the next attempt. Even if you never see the exact same question again, you will get a good return for your effort.
Second, spend more time on activities that uncover your weaknesses. When doing that, you have to slow down and be more self-aware. For instance, answer practice questions in study mode, and do not guess. Do not click on to the next question, but pause and ask yourself if you are really sure about both the wrong and correct answers. If unsure, fantastic! You just discovered a topic to go back and dig in to learn it more deeply. Or when you do a lab, you may refer to your notes without thinking – so now think about it. That might be a reminder that you have not mastered those commands yet.
Third, think about your time spent on the exam. Did you run out of time? Go too fast? Too slow? If too slow, were you slow on subnetting, or Sims, or something else? Then make a written plan as to how you will approach time on the next attempt, and how you will track time use. And if you ran out of time, practice for the things that slowed you down.
Lastly, change your mindset. Cisco exams are not like high school or college exams where your failing grade matters. Instead, it is more like a major event on the road to completing an impressive major accomplishment, one that most people have to try a few times to achieve.
For instance, it is more like training to run a marathon in under four hours. The first time running a marathon, you may not even finish, or you may finish at 4:15 rather than under 4:00. But finishing a marathon in 4:15 is not a failure by any means. Or maybe it is more like training to complete an obstacle course (any Ninja Warrior fans out there? www.nbc.com/american-ninja-warrior). Maybe you got past the first three obstacles today, but you couldn’t climb over the 14 foot high warped wall. That just means you need to practice on that wall a little more.
So change your mindset. You’re a marathon runner looking to improve their time, or a Ninja Warrior looking to complete the obstacle course. And you are getting better skills every time you study, which helps you compete in the market.
If you get to this point, and still feel the need to prepare some more, this last topic gives you suggestions.
First, the Chapter Review and Part Review sections give you some useful study tasks.
Second, use more exam questions from other sources. You can always get more questions in the Cisco Press Premium Edition eBook and Practice Test products, which include an eBook copy of this book plus additional questions in additional PCPT exam banks. However, you can search the Internet for questions from many sources, and review those questions as well.
Note
Some vendors claim to sell practice exams that contain the literal exam questions from the exam. These exams, called “brain dumps,” are against the Cisco testing policies. Cisco strongly discourages using any such tools for study.
Third, reading is not enough, and any network engineer will tell you that to fully understand a technology you have to implement it. It is encouraged that you re-create the topologies and technologies and follow the examples in this book.
A variety of resources are available that will allow you to practice the same concepts. Look online for the following:
Cisco VIRL (Virtual Internet Routing Lab) provides a scalable, extensible network design and simulation environment. More information about VIRL can be found at http://virl.cisco.com.
Cisco dCloud provides a huge catalog of demos, training, and sandboxes for every Cisco architecture. It operates with customizable environments and is free. More information can be found at http://dcloud.cisco.com.
Cisco Devnet provides a large amount of resources on programming and programmability with free labs. More information can be found at http://developer.cisco.com
Finally, join in the discussions on the Cisco Learning Network. Try to answer questions asked by other learners; the process of answering makes you think much harder about the topic. When someone posts an answer with which you disagree, think about why and talk about it online. This is a great way to both learn more and build confidence.
You have studied quite a bit, worked hard, and sacrificed time and money to be ready for the exam. I hope your exam goes well, that you pass, and that you pass because you really know your stuff and will do well in your IT and networking career.
I would encourage you to celebrate when you pass, and ask advice when you do not. The Cisco Learning Network is a great place to make posts to celebrate and to ask advice for the next time around. I wish you well, all the success, and congratulations for working through the entire book!