Looking for some MCSE advice:

[Cheetah8799]

Greetings everyone, I'm considering working on getting my MCSE certification in the near future and am hoping some people here can give me some advice.

Currently I have a 4-year Computer Science degree, and have only done one formal tech/training class for MS SQL 2000 Server. My employer probably won't want to pay for me to get MCSE, but I'd like it anyway. I have about 3 years of professional computer tech experience, another 2 years of professional programming experience, and now I just started a new job as a "System Administrator / Programmer". I'm hoping the MCSE certification will help me move down the System / Network Administrator path in the future.

I'd like to simply buy some books, study, and take the tests one at a time. Have any of you done this? How did it go? Did you have troubles, fail any tests, etc.? Are there any specific tests that you would suggest as being better (not necessarily easier) than others?

Personally I am not a big Microsoft fan, but I think MCSE and other certifications definately help when looking for a job. If anyone thinks maybe I'd be wasting my time and money on the MCSE certification, I'd be interested in hearing why.

Also, I have access to plenty of equipment and software to practice on. Do you think this will help prior to takin the tests, or would simply going head-on into the tests be ok. I personally think practice would be best, but maybe the tests aren't as hard as I imagine they would be...

thanks.
-Josh

 

[Nitemare]

It gets your foot in the door, nothing else

Did my MCSE from books and self study

 

[aircooled]

Originally posted by: Nitemare
It gets your foot in the door, nothing else

Did my MCSE from books and self study

Agreed. I did it the NT4 one back in the day to get started. Haven't done any of the updated ones.

 

[DWW]

I have my W2K MCSE certification. I took a course offered to high school students that was a year long here for continuing education (since I was under 21 it was free).

General thoughts:
classmates were, for the most part, asshats and gamed all class (who can blame them I did at lunch time 😉

after school I'd come home and try things out on my home LAN (even though we had a LAN setup in the class with each 2 computers...) so a home network is the best bet. Go find some el cheapo 166 to 300 MHz range machines with 128 RAM and setup a wide variety of systems so you can try interacting with OTHER systems (this extends MCSE buts its more life like). Setup NT4 on one, 2K on another, 98 on something and 2003 on your servers and just muck around. Sure MCSE 2003 will teach you the latest and greatest but no environment I've seen only has whats in the books 🙂 Hell even get your hands on some Netware, OS/2, Linux, BSD boxes... These computers are -cheap- so its a good idea IMO.

I failed the third exam, networking, forget its exact name. I loved that area the most but failed it. Why? Microsoft, because the testing is lame and people cheat, tries to trick you with lots of things. When I took it, I had a -ton- of WINS questions and the like. Not things you'd expect like DNS management and propagation, DHCP, TCP/IP and so forth... I wasn't expecting some freebie questions like subnetting, but I didn't expect it to focus so much on "other" areas

finally, if this is your desired career I'd say go for the certifications. Perhaps MCSA first though. That is what I did. Its a newer certification that requries only four exams (so cheaper). Then I used those same four towards my MCSE (so I only took 3 more).

 

[Nitemare]

Originally posted by: aircooled

Originally posted by: Nitemare
It gets your foot in the door, nothing else

Did my MCSE from books and self study

Agreed. I did it the NT4 one back in the day to get started. Haven't done any of the updated ones.

As did I. I know more about Win2K and XP then I do NT 4 yet am not certified in them.

 

[poopaskoopa]

Well, I don't think it's worthless, but not too far from it. I've been recruited several times partly because I have it, and I've benefited from having it, so I don't think it's worthless. I got my previous employer to shoulder some of the exam costs, so it wasn't that bad. I bought 3 Sybex books, for 70-210, 215, and 216, but after taking those 3 exams I found the MCSE exams to be so easy I stopped buying books to prepare for the exams. I borrowed some books from friends, took practice exams online, and took the rest(4 remaining exams). I took:

70-210(workstation)
70-215(server)
70-216(network)
70-217(AD)
70-218(kind of like 4 of the above in one, and this and the first 3 will get you MCSA, IIRC).
70-219(AD design)
70-221(network design)

IMO, this isn't the most educational path, but it was the easiest/quickest for me because I didn't really have to learn anything beyond what I was doing at my previous job. If you know the first 4, then you can pretty much do the last 3 without learning anything more. To answer your questions, yes, I bought some books(for the first 3) and took one test a week. They all went well. I didn't fail any, but if I were to choose the most difficult exams, I'd say 216/221/210, in that order. 216/221 because I guess my weakness is in TCP/IP, and 210 because that exam will ask you the most obscure VPN stuff on Win2k workstations. I've only taken those 7, and only 3 are available as electives(218, 219, 221), and I can't tell you if they are any better than other exams. My guess is that they aren't.

 

[Cheetah8799]

Wow, thanks for the great responses guys. It definately helps. I already have plenty of experience with NT4, Win2k, and XP. I probably don't need the MCSA certification, but if it is basically included in MCSE than I'll probably go for it.

Like poopaskoopa said, it's more for the resume then anything. It'll help get my foot in the door.

Also, how long typically are the exams? 50 questions, 100 questions, more? 1 hour, 2 hours?

thanks.
-Josh

 

[Hoober]

I'm one test away from my MCDBA on SQL 2000. If you're looking for great practice tests and have some money to throw at it, I'd recommend the Transcender series. I've used them to prepare for all of my tests.

 

[poopaskoopa]

Originally posted by: Cheetah8799
Wow, thanks for the great responses guys. It definately helps. I already have plenty of experience with NT4, Win2k, and XP. I probably don't need the MCSA certification, but if it is basically included in MCSE than I'll probably go for it.

Like poopaskoopa said, it's more for the resume then anything. It'll help get my foot in the door.

Also, how long typically are the exams? 50 questions, 100 questions, more? 1 hour, 2 hours?

thanks.
-Josh

IIRC, out of the 7 I took, all but 221 & 219 had about 40, 50 questions, and all 7 exams will give you 200 minutes or something. I doubt you'll run out of time while taking these exams. 221&219 had only 20, 30 questions, but I think those took me the longest to complete. Probably somewhere around 1 hour and 30 mins.

 

[aircooled]

Originally posted by: Nitemare

Originally posted by: aircooled

Originally posted by: Nitemare
It gets your foot in the door, nothing else

Did my MCSE from books and self study

Agreed. I did it the NT4 one back in the day to get started. Haven't done any of the updated ones.

As did I. I know more about Win2K and XP then I do NT 4 yet am not certified in them.

Me too. I've learned more being in the field than taking any classes.
I felt I was just learning how to pass a test rather than learning how to be a network admin.

 

[mrCide]

Best advice I can give you is to self study, it's tedious/slightly difficult but NOT that hard. Please don't waste too much money on things either specially if you can get resources online, or even books online. It will definitely help and you've got the experience to back it up, slap it on your resume as icing. Shouldn't cost you more than $1000 🙂 (just for tests)

 

[Nitemare]

One of the cheapest places for text books is Bookpool for new books and check out half.com for used books.

 

[lowtech1]

I did NT4 & Netware, but I got my first job is because I have a bachelor. And, now my company is paying for my time & tuition ($9000 USD ++ my wage ++ books) for 2 years DBA ++ .NET & Java at the local University here in Canada.

Work hard & get the company to pay for your certs & education.