If you've completed 70-536

[johnny_q]

Hi guys

I have been developing using.NET for close to two years. Around 5 days ago I started studying for the 70-536 exam using the MCTS 70-536 Application Development Foundation second edition book.

I am around 250 pages in to it. I plan on going through it twice and then practising using mock exams.

I am curious to know how long roughly measured in weeks did you guys take to study for the exam from start to when you first sat the exam. I know it all depends of the amount of effort you put in but just as a guideline I would like to know. For example were you ready in 3 weeks or 6 weeks?

Thanks

[dmarsh]

Everybodies prep time will be different. You would need a large sample of people who are 'similar' to you to derive any use from the information.

I was on a break between contracts and It took me about a months fulltime study for the 70-536.

Since I'd cut my teeth on Win16, MFC, Win32, Visual C++, Java etc. Many of the concepts were familiar to me just the classes and API's were different in subtle ways. I'd also played with .Net when it first came out in beta and had done a couple of small projects in it since.

If you haven't written a lot of different types of apps over time you will probably find a lot of areas of the API you have never seen before and therefore it could take you considerably longer.


For example many people may not have studied encryption/security or concurrency/threads, such people would have to stop their 70-536 studies and go off and learn another topic before comming back to their 70-536. Theres are many topics like that in the 70-536.

[johnny_q]

Thanks for your reply dmarsh.

I understand what you're saying. From when I've started .NET I have been involved in quite a few projects and have experience of multithreading and serialization. But I am not familiar with .NET security and so I will find some things easier to cover and this will mean that my approach and experience of studying will be different to others. The reason that I ask is just for some sort of indication for settling my curiosity of how long I should take and to make me feel more confident about how much time I allocate before jumping in.

As it happens I'll be able to spend working days over the next month or so to this. I hope to dedicate at least 5 - 6 hours a day covering the reading in the book and the excersises it contains. I just hope that I could cover it well and be ready for the exam by the end of July or sometime in August as I would like to get one cert under my belt before I return to university in September.

Thanks