Asbestos Supply

2009-08-18 MCTS Test Information

I passed the MCTS last week and figured people might want to know a little about the test and what I did to pass.

First of all, I used the Microsoft Press Self Paced study guide for the 70-562 test (available on Amazon).  It is a BIG book, but a lot of it is fluff (like lesson reviews and such), and there's plenty you can skip if you feel comfortable with the material.  The book comes with a 15% off test voucher making the test $106 or so (down from $125).

It's not a bad idea to take tons of practice tests from different places -- I saw a link from MS that says they'll pay for your second test if you fail the first time, but why take them up on the offer?

Regarding the test itself, it's pretty straight forward save for a couple things.  For the most part, it's multiple choice with 4 choices (though some questions have a bunch of checkboxes and you might have to choose 2 or 3 options out of the lot).  Now on every multiple-choice question there are 2 answers that if you aren't completely brand new to ASP.NET you can throw out right away; that leaves 2 possible choices for each question.

Sometimes they are kind of tricky like if they ask something where you have 2 code snippets that look EXACTLY the same except one reads has something about "DataSource=" and one has "DataSourceID=".  When there's a lot of filler above and below that line it's hard to see that line though.  That kind of stuff is what I mean by tricky.  Especially because the test is kind of new, that kind of thing made me think "wait, is there a mistake here?  these two answers are exactly the same!" until I re-read and re-read and re-read.

One of my biggest complaints about the practice tests I took was in regards to the questions that ask you to choose multiple answers.  The test tells you how many to choose (e.g. there are 7 options, choose 2), but some practice tests don't do this.

Also, there was definitely 1 question on the test that was easy.  I mean really easy.  Too easy actually.  And having 4 choices I was very tempted to double-guess myself because it was just too easy.  You figure MS is tricking you.  But the test in that regard is pretty straight forward.  I got that one right by not over analyzing, so just keep that in mind.  If it's the answer, it's the answer.