Doing a MCP...

[Ben_UK]

Hello,

Right i need to get some more qualifications to my name to increase my chances of getting a job.

I am looking at doing one of theses MCP's in either Win2000 or WinXP.

I am hoping theres someone out there thats done one

How does it work ? is it just a case of buying the book and reading it ?

What are the best books to get ?

How much am i looking at for theses books ?

How much do the exams cost ?

Where do u do the exmas ?

Any other information would be great

Cheers

[Mart]

The exams cost £88 +VAT and you can take them at lots of test centres throughout the UK. The two companies that administer the exams for microsoft are www.vue.com and www.prometric.com. You can take the exams whenever you want by picking a date from either website.

You can pay lots to go on a training course or you can just buy a book, read it and practise. Depends how disciplined/motivated you are. First I would pick the subject you wish to study by looking at the certification section on Microsofts web site. Then search for the exam number on amazon and read the reviews of people who the books to give you an idea.

Don't know how seriously employers take MCP/MCSE's etc but it can't hurt your chances.

I chose to do an MCSD as a way to get up to speed on C# and .NET.

Mart

[BlackTower]

I find having an MCSE or MCSA tends to get me more interviews than without but that all depends on the level of the job. When it comes to the interview most are interested in what you have done and not your certification so dont think it's some kind of guarantee.
Just make sure you learn your stuff well as I did courses at a centre and after the core modules when we went back to do the electives the trainer went over a load of stuff and I could answer nearly all the questions and the others were clueless. I was thinking how the hell did they pass all the exams they dont know anything!
Anyway not all the stuff in the exams is actually on the course books so you need to do plenty of further reading as well. I would suggest a good course book and get yourself a copy of mastering windows server 2003 by Mark Minasi for some more indepth reading.
Most of all dont use these "braindumps" to pass the exams as these teach you nothing and it will come back to haunt you later. It's because of things like these why the certification isnt as highly regarded any more.
The best way to run the labs is to use a product like http://www.vmware.com which alows you to run multiple OS on top of your normal OS. With a gig of memory I can run 2 windows 2000 servers and an XP client on top of my normal OS.

[Jiff Lemon]

Just to add my 2p.....

Go for the XP exams over the 2k ones - Most of the XP stuff is 2k with bells and whistles. If you are going to self study (which is the way I did it), DO NOT just get one book - I got a three for each of the modules. That way, if your reading one and just don't quite grasp it, You've 2 other books that may explain it a different way.

Braindumps are a cardinal sin - Practice exams are good but DO NOT rely on brain dumps. Our tech support interviews try you with scenarios; We recently rejected a guy who had a MCSE - he was asked to bring along his pass dates and once they'd discovered he'd obtained his entire MCSE (7 exams) in a 2 week period, the interviewers grilled him. They asked him to explain his thought process for choosing such answers and why it wouldn't be others. As soon as he couldn't explain why - "it just is that" - it was obvious he'd just brain dumped his exams. Needless to say he wasn't offered the job.

[DaBeeeenster]

It's not saying a lot about Microsoft that they have not changed their exams to prevent this, really, is it?

[Jiff Lemon]

They have changed the exams, Its a more adaptive exam. Asks you a question - answer correctly, asks you a tougher one on the same subject. Answer correctly it'll ask you a really tough one. Answer correctly, changes subject repeats process.

The problem is, there's only SO many questions you can ask, and some people would happily try to remember the answers to 500 hundred questions than understand the theory.

[atifds9]

I'm also about to start doing my mcse, but i have a BSc(hons) in comp science and 2 years experiance as a network adminstrator/consultant, but mostly with NT, is it a big step up to 2000, I have advanced knowledge of win200pro and xp, only server and AD worry me.

[BlackTower]

You can tranfer alot of NT knowledge to 2000 but at the same time there is a lot more good stuff in there as well after you start playing with 2000 though you wont wanna go back to those horrid little NT 4 boxes

[atifds9]

can't wait , breaks out the old laptop to set up as a win 2000 server