Best Practices for SUN SCJP Certification Exam Preparation

Preparing for any Sun SCJP Certification is about STUDYING and PRACTICING (practicing code snippets). The two together gives sure shot success in the exam.

For Studying
There are some excellent books for SCJP 5 and SCJP 6 Certification, to get start. In addition to books, explore numerous other resources on the Web.

To begin with:

• Make yourself familiar with Sun's exam process, objectives, registration etc. See Sun's SCJP page for details.
• Enrol to a SCJP forum to post questions, and reinforce your own understanding by answering other people's questions.
• Take as many mock exams as possible. Use these to determine where additional study is needed, and as a guide to when you are ready.

Practice, Practice, and Practice

After you've prepared with appropriate books, browsed through the specifications, read tutorials, articles, and notes, all that's left to do is practice both sample exam questions and codes. Choose programming exercises that help you focus on the exam objectives, and don't avoid the stuff you're afraid of. Better to make mistakes on your own time than in the exam itself.

Discussion forums

Another important piece in the SCJP certification preparation game is to belong to a study-group by enrolling in an online discussion forum. Several broad-based Java forums maintain threads about certification issues, and some are devoted solely to certification. In a forum, you can quiz your peers about their study techniques, learn about some of the lesser-known certification resources, get support when you're stressed about the upcoming exam, and find out how others have fared in the effort to get certified.

Resources

• Khalid Mughal and Rolf Rasmussen's A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification is a great reference for structured learning format.
• SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 6 Exam 310-065 by Katherine Sierra, Bert Bates
• Head First Servlets and JSP: Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam by Bryan Basham, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates
• Java Concurrency in Practice by Brian Goetz
• Discussion forum – Java Ranch, Java Beats, Whizlabs Ask n Answer

Do you have any tips you want to share?