CCIE R&S Written – Epic Fail (Again)
Yes, I failed. I think it’s pretty typical when you’re at Cisco Live, you stay out drinking and smoking cigars until 01:00, then you sit the exam at 08:00 the next morning. Considering the situation I put myself in, I wasn’t very optimistic about passing, but I figured I had maybe a 40% chance to pass since I didn’t really even study. Are you sensing a theme of ill-preparedness and self-sabotage? Yeah, me, too.
The big surprise of the morning was the quality of the exam. For the very first time, I took a Cisco exam and didn’t feel like throwing the monitor across the room. There were no blurry images. The questions were in proper English with verbs and everything. There were no spelling errors. There were no questions which referred to routers as switches. There were no questions outside the scope of the blueprint. As a matter of fact, I can only remember one question that I even thought about questioning. A VAST, VAST improvement over the last time I tried that exam. It seems that Cisco’s exam quality is finally approaching that of Juniper; that really helps me stay motivated to take it again.
What’s next? Well, I obviously have more to actually study before taking it again. I’m going to go back through the cert guide and my Boson practice exams to get back on track. No fancy strategy.
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Welcome to the club…
Kinda similar I didnt take the written as serious as I should have and I bought into all the hype about how simple of an exam it is.
I ended up setting the test aside and just pushed forward with my lab prep. When Im ready for the written Ill go band it out.
Also keeps the 18 month stress off of the first attempt.
Best of luck with your studies!!
that1guy15: The written isn’t a joke by any means. It still has the usual trickery for which Cisco exams are famous. Best of luck to you, too!
you are really… very very strange guy…
Good news regarding the exam quality. I recall taking the R&S written a few years back (also at Cisco Live) and being astounded by the terrible quality of the figures and questions: Thrice re-rendered JPEGs and a mishmash of copy-pasted text resulting from continued revisions with no return to zero. Glad to hear things are getting cleaned up.
stretch: I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a great reset to a terrible setup. Does this support the rumor that R&S 5.0 is just over the horizon? 🙂