Kristian Kristensen’s Blog

As part of the Next Generation program I’m getting certified on Microsoft technology. This includes a number of MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) exams with development and IT Pro content. For the development track you need to pass exam 70-536: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation to get an MCTS in WinForms Development or ASP.NET. Since I have go through the material anyway, I thought I might as well get an early start. So I borrowed a self-paced training kit from Henrik WH, and started reading the book for 536 last week.
At Microsoft we have an internal test center, which means that to take an exam you just go downstairs. So easy, and so convenient. The local administrator is in my department, so signing up for an exam is pretty easy. I had arranged to take the exam this morning at 9, which meant I more or less had a deadline for finishing the book. My plan was to read the book, and take the exam. I didn’t really expect to pass, but wanted to give it a try. Mainly to see what it was all about.  I finished the last couple of chapters last night on the way home in a plane from Aalborg, so i guess my plan stood up.

I took the test this morning. It consists of 45 questions of varying format, most of which are multiple choice. I spend about 45 minutes on the exam. I worked through the questions in one pass, marking the ones I had doubts about. After answering all the questions I worked through the marked questions once again, and ended the test. I was pretty surpriced when I got the score back: 876 out of 1000 possible, and you need 700 to pass. Very nice indeed

My strategy for this exam and the following is going to be something like written at Henrik’s blog. Read the book, and do some of the lesson reviews and practice tests on the accompanying CD in the training kit. When erroring in the practice tests, read up on the material and try again. When sufficiently confident that I can pass the test I’ll take a live one. If I pass it’s great, otherwise I’ll get a feel for what the exam consists of and use this for further cramming.

In summary I must say that the format of these exams is pretty much what I expected. There is a lot of memorizing involved, and a lot of "you just need to know it to pass". On the other hand I think you that you can deduce some of the questions by logic and experience.
Anyway, with the foundation exam out of the way I can start on the Winforms and ASP.NET exam so I can achieve MCTS status on both technologies.

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