Study Smarter not Harder
One of the key aspects for studying for a exam is making sure that you have the correct materials to hand. It might sound like an obvious statement but it’s not always an easy thing to do.
One approach I’ve heard of people using is just to gather as many different sources of information as possible and plough through them all, but this does have some substantial disadvantages. Not least of all this method assumes you have unlimited financial resources, and in these leaner times even the largest of companies is looking to rein in their expenditure. A second, and not insignificant, disadvantage is that of information fatigue. No matter how much interest you have in a subject you can only read the same piece of information a set number of times before your brain decides to down tools and go on strike.
So where does this leave us? The answer is to study smarter not harder. The vast majority of people will seem to spend between 1 and 3 month preparing for an exam, this is a not inconsiderable amount of time. My solution is to take the first few days or weeks out of this study time in order to really research the exam and the available study materials. Go to the community sites and find out what sources people are using to study for the exam, review the skills measured by the exam in the Microsoft Learning catalogue and try and locate the best and most directly targeted resources both on and off line.
Another important tip is to spend some time figuring out just how much you already know about the subject. Try and be realistic about this, while you may have an excellent working knowledge of the subject you’re studying there are by nature some activities you just don’t do on a regular basis. Sure you can recite the default Active Directory schema to 3 levels of depth and maybe you do know every setting in the Group Policy, but how many times have you had to perform a system migration between Windows 2000 and Server 2008? How many times have you put one way forest trusts in place to facilitate a company merger? These are important and uncommon topics and as such Microsoft love to test you on them. Check out the description provided by the Microsoft Learning Catalogue for your exam and see just how many of the sections you feel you can answer already. One good approach is to use each item as a heading and try and compose a brief passage describing each one, if you struggle or are unable to write anything for one of them then make sure you pay more attention to it in your studies.
One final tip for success, go with quality. There are a lot of excellent study books out there and at £45/$60 mark you have a right to expect quality from them. Select books from publishers you know and trust, some good names are – Microsoft Press, Sybex, Exam Cram. If your subject isn’t covered by a publisher you recognise then try and get to a book shop or library that stocks them and have a quick skim through to see if the writing style suits your method of study. If a book doesn’t meet your expectations then don’t be afraid to complain, I recently had to return a copy of The Real MCITP: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Administrator (70-647) after I found that much of the text still had editorial notes in it (nothing puts you off your flow quite as much as – “this paragraph is incomplete please finish it…” half way through the text) and a number of other errors. Also don’t forget, you don’t have to use study books to study… there is a lot of excellent information for day to day tasks in the resource kits, TechNet and general manuals. While it may not be specifically phrased the same way as the exams, it can be an excellent way of getting a good in depth knowledge of the subject.
If you have any particular tips on study methods then do feel free to leave comments with them, also don’t forget about the various online seminars going on at the moment these are a unique opportunity go get really excellent tuition on exams free of charge. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a study book to get back to… enjoy.
By: Edward Laverick
2010-01-12
