By Ed Tittel and James Michael Stewart

As veterans of certification exams too numerous to recount, and authors of more than 70 titles on various certification exam topics, we've learned through experience and analysis that an organized program of study is the best approach to tackling any certification exam, including those from Cisco Systems. What we explain to you here are some time-honored methods to help you prepare.

Before covering those methods and reviewing their inner workings, we must strongly recommend the value of delay in taking any new certification exam. That is, we've learned that those who can wait three months or more after the introduction of a new exam are able to benefit more from study guides, practice tests, exam reviews and other related information than those who must take the exam sooner than that. Those who must take beta versions, or commercial exams soon after their release-such as developers, researchers, writers or instructors-must often climb the learning curve without the benefit of helpful preparation tools. It's not that it can't be done-rather, it's more difficult, time-consuming and labor-intensive that way.

Here's why waiting to take an exam as long as possible makes sense:

• Because courseware developers and even exam reviewers need time to do their work-and then it takes even more time to produce or publish such materials-it's unlikely that those who must take an exam 12 or fewer weeks after its initial release will benefit from such materials. Even less comprehensive exam reports from magazines or Web sites like "TCP Magazine" or Cramsession (both of which do a good job of honoring Cisco's NDA requirements) don't usually produce their reports sooner than eight or nine weeks after the exam's release.

• Regular study guides or Exam Crams normally don't reach the bookstores until 12 or 13 weeks after an exam is officially released. Even Cisco Press titles seldom hit the streets less than a month or two after the exam goes live, and they clearly have an inside track! Kudos to them for their excellent work on updating the CCNA Study Guide for #640-607, which appeared one month after the exam's release.

• It's highly unusual to find any practice tests available any sooner than four or five weeks after an exam goes live, and sometimes it can be as long as 12 or 13 weeks before they appear. As we write this piece, now nearly two months after #640-607 was released, more than half the practice tests listed online still reference the old exam, #640-507 instead of the new one.

Early Exam Takers

The one-sentence version of this approach is that it relies entirely on Cisco and Cisco-recommended materials. This means following the Cisco Exam Blueprints and other online reference and study materials to guide your preparation activities. If you must use this approach, it's probably smart to plan to take your chosen Cicso exam twice. Use the first try for reconnaissance-that is, to nail down exam topics, the level of detail and other special requirements. If you get lucky and are able to obtain a Cisco Press (or some other third-party) certification guide as you're getting ready, you can improve the odds of getting through on a single try. If not, you can use what you learn on your first try to make the second try your last shot at the exam (because you'll know what you need to learn to pass).

Step 1: Review and Analyze Exam Blueprint
The Cisco exam blueprints map out topics, technologies, tools, commands and troubleshooting skills at a high level. These help you identify and research the information you must master to do well on the exam. You'll use this information to decide what additional materials you must obtain to help your prepare.

Step 2: Map the Blueprint to Resources and Reading Lists
For this and other following steps, access to materials in Cisco's recommended reading lists is essential. (Most Cisco exams include such lists as part of their materials, except for the #640-607 CCNA exam.) Another useful source of information is the classroom materials and student or instructor guides for related official Cisco courses (identified on Cisco exam Web pages). Those who can't afford to take the training in the classroom or online may, however, have to beg or borrow access to such materials. You must identify any technical materials that relate to specific exam topics and lay hands on as many references from the recommended reading lists as possible. If necessary, you may be able to use online syllabi from related college classes to help fill out your reading lists. (We find this to be a useful technique in our own research; you may as well.)

Step 3: Identify Hands-on Activities Relevant to Exam Topics
You'll need to perform this work while you complete Step 2. This work requires taking a different slant when mapping topics, software and system coverage (and recognizing what's covered in the materials you collate) to objectives. Here, you must capture those installation and configuration tasks on which you'll be questioned, as well as identifying those specific tools, consoles, commands and utilities relevant to exam objectives that you can be reasonably sure will appear on the exam.

Step 4: Work Through Reading Materials and Hands-on Activities
At this point you'll use the outlining and identification you've done in the first three steps to guide the real work, as you read your way around and deeply into the exam topics and practice important hands-on skills and activities. Put simply, it sounds like a lot less work than will be required to get yourself ready. Because Cisco exams lean heavily toward simulators and consequent operation of routers, switches and other pieces of gear, obtaining access to a real or virtual lab where you can get hands-on with related equipment, tools and so forth, is absolutely essential. See Ed Tittel's Learning Tools column in the February 2002 issue of Certification Magazine, which covers Cisco preparation materials, for more help (www.certmag.com/issues/feb02/dept_learntools.cfm).

Step 5: Take the Exam
We assume you can follow the instructions once you get to the testing center and work you way through the actual exam itself. Note also that Steps 6 through 8 apply only to those who don't pass the exam on their first attempt.

Step 6: Identify Weak Areas for Additional Preparation
If you don't pass the exam on your first try, don't sweat it-at some point or another, this happens to everybody. You have to learn from your mistakes, so it's essential for you to pay attention while you're taking the exam, and do your best to memorize those topics, items or exercises that you didn't understand, hadn't studied or weren't prepared for adequately. If you can, mark any questions during the exam that you are less than completely sure about. If you scan those marked questions just before you submit the exam for scoring, you can do your best to memorize as much of that material as possible to help guide your next try. In fact, for those who plan to take an exam twice, this strategy represents the whole reason for their first try!

Step 7: Gear Up for the Retake
Use the list of weak areas to guide what you study as you repeat steps 2 through 4 again. Bang away at those topics, tools and tasks until you are comfortable with them (and your practice test scores verify your confidence level). Only then should you advance to the next step.

Step 8: Retake the Exam
Repeat steps 6 through 8 until you pass! If supplementary study materials become available at any point along the way, switch to the Supporting Materials Strategy, covered in the next section.

Supporting Materials Strategy

When supporting materials are available to help you prepare for an exam, the odds of passing in a single attempt are pretty good. Most supporting materials handle steps 1 through 3 in the preceding approach on your behalf and give you the benefit of learning from experienced certification professionals who've not only taken the exam in question, but who also have lots of exam preparation experience to share with you in general. Hopefully, this added value helps to explain why we recommend this approach over the preceding one (except, of course, for those who-like us-have no choice in the matter).

To make this strategy work, you'll want to obtain all of the following materials to help you prepare for your exam:

• Two or more practice exams, so you can use one for self-assessment (to help you identify where you should invest your most serious study effort) and additional exams for measuring your level of "exam readiness."

• One or more certification guides for the exam. (We've been impressed with the Cisco Press materials, but Todd Lammle's Sybex study guides are also worth obtaining.) Those who like to learn, then summarize what they've learned to help them prepare may benefit from a shorter, more focused book like an Exam Cram-those who already know the material may only need an Exam Cram to get ready.

• As many exam reviews or analyses as you can find, along with the Cisco exam blueprint and the recommended reading list, to find out what you're most likely to encounter on the exam. By comparing coverage from as many resources as possible and identifying a "common core," you can usually determine which areas are most heavily covered on any certification exam.

• The Cisco materials listed in Step 2 of the preceding strategy will complete your technical resources and give you insight into the "official view" on exam topics, concepts and terminology.

It's true that the study guides and Exam Crams do overlap with the Cisco study materials, but we think it's wiser to err on the side of caution and complete coverage when preparing for a certification exam than to rely on any single preparation tool to help you get ready. The Cisco exam blueprint, reading lists and other ancillary materials are especially helpful in this regard because they can help you identify topics that may not be covered completely in third-party materials (or at all). Because question banks change all the time, it's better to learn a topic and not need it when you take an exam than to omit a topic covered on the exam that's not covered in your prep guide.

The supporting materials strategy is much shorter than its predecessor and includes only five steps, as follows:

Step 1: Review and Analyze Exam Blueprint
The exam blueprint should drive your studies, no matter what exam you're taking. Use it to identify all of the topics, tools and technologies that might appear on the exam, and make sure you obtain background materials, study guides, courseware, exercises or lab access to help you investigate them thoroughly.

Step 2: Test Your Readiness
Unless this is your first Cisco exam, you probably know at least some of the material on the exam already. You can use a practice test early in your preparation process as a way to inventory what you know, and what you don't know, then concentrate your efforts where they're most needed. Such a self-assessment will also give you an excellent idea of how much work you must do-be it reading or hands-on practical experience-gathering-to get ready for the "real thing."

Step 3: Absorb the Study Materials
Self-assessment lets you skip those topics where you're already sufficiently prepared. Instead, you can focus your efforts and activities on those topics where you need more learning or experience as you work your way through study materials. Don't forget to turn to the Cisco materials to supplement your studies on more obscure (or newer) topics that published study guides or Exam Crams might not cover. If you make a point of performing all the exercises and hands-on labs in the materials you use, you'll have created an organized way to gain necessary experience as an integral part of the preparation process.

With Cisco exams leaning toward simulators and consequent operation of routers, switches and other pieces of gear, obtaining access to a real or virtual lab where you can get hands-on with related equipment, tools and so forth is absolutely essential.

Step 4: Retest Exam Readiness
Because practice tests report on questions you miss and sometimes even display results to indicate objectives where your knowledge or skills might be weak, you can use this data to focus additional study. This lets you build your strength in weak areas and should help you boost your scores. We strongly urge you to continue this process (even if it means buying more practice exams) until you are comfortable with all topics in the exam blueprint and are achieving scores at least 10 percent above the real passing score consistently.

Step 5: Take the Cisco Exam
We hope you pass. The more seriously you take our advice in step 4, the more likely this outcome will be. But if you should fail, repeat steps 6 , 7 and 8 from the preceding strategy, along with step 4 from this strategy, to get ready for your next try. Repeat as needed!

Practice, Practice, Practice

Even if you follow our advice slavishly, you may still take an exam that you just can't pass. Be philosophical and remember the old maxim: "You can't win 'em all!" If you use our strategies to identify your weaknesses (including an inventory of what you remember from the exam you fail and the more recordable information you can get from subsequent practice exams), you can figure out what you need to study to get ready for the next try. Some of the smartest people I know have taken the CCIE lab exam three times before they've passed, through no particular fault of their own. Don't be afraid of the extra work a retake involves-make use of all the resources you can find to get yourself ready for another try, and you'll be sure to succeed at some point.

If you can't get across the finish line through a self-study program, raise the money to take a class on the subject. In fact, if your employer is willing to cover a class (or help you by splitting the cost), it's never a bad idea to take a class as part of your preparation process. An informed, experienced instructor can help you figure out topics that might continue to puzzle you forever if left entirely on your own. That's why we think classroom training is such a wonderful learning opportunity for those seeking certification (if not wisdom).

Remember too, that since more than 400,000 Cisco professionals have been certified, a multitude of other people have somehow gotten past these exams. Persistence will pay off, and the more you learn, the easier the exams will seem. You can do it!