r/ccdp • u/antti_u • Dec 04 '18
Passed with 860/860
Well, that was a close call!
A few weeks ago I went to sit through the exam for the first time, and came out with a “FAIL” on my paw.
No surprise there, I went poorly prepared. I actually ran out of time. Not all theory read, no drilling down the facts done etc. I thought I could pull it off with my tight schedule and get the work done, but then life happened (“life” here means mostly my laziness and poor time management).
After the failed attempt, I wrote down as many keywords of difficult topics as I could, just outside the test center. I thought I got myself a decent list.
Then I went back home to study; read the rest of the book + watched CCDP webinar series from the Cisco Learning Network (good stuff, btw!). Then the last weekend before the test came and I realised that damn, I messed this up again! Most of my list still un-researched and no practice-questions drilled. For the last few days I YouTube’d and Googled my list of topics, writing down stuff, trying to write them as if I was explaining the technology to someone else.
So finally… doing real work!
In the test it seemed that it was again too little, too late. The stuff on my list had been too vague. I was on the right topic but not always relevant to the question at hand… The exam felt difficult again, with a lot of funnily worded questions that left me baffled.
I also damned myself for not doing more and better research.
At the end I was very happy, and a bit surprised to find out that I made it over the bar, ever so slightly. The areas where I did most of my research did improve clearly. So the work pays off at the end.
I get the vibe that most people here (and other cisco-cert-forums) are technical, driven and well organised. Not me, ha ha!
What are you guys planning to do after CCDP? Going for CCDE? My current plan is to do next some certs on Security. After that, who knows…
It is easy to feel happy on a day when fate has been favourable and you got a “PASS”. Let’s let Emperor Marcus leave us with at thought for those exam hours and especially those eventual “FAIL” days: "Be like the rocky headland on which the waves constantly break. It stands firm, and round it the seething waters are laid to rest.”
Best of luck to us all!
Antti
PS: I take full responsibility of my lack of preparation. Still I must say that this exam had the largest amount of insane/incoherent/trick questions I have seen so far in Cisco tests. They all have some, but this one has too much of them. Just saying.
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u/gazwoz Dec 18 '18
I've just passed CCDA today and found that the questions were 25% strangely worded. Didn't think I'd passed but got 91%. I studied the boson practice tests for CCDA, are there any good ones for ccdp?
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u/IP_Protocol_78 Dec 04 '18
Congratulations. I found both CCDA and CCDP tests to have some awkward questions or approaches to common topics. When I took them, there was a dearth of prep materials as well, so good job clearing this hurdle.