Pool of questions

greenbrucelee · #1 19-Apr-2008, 08:20 AM

When taking certs exams the questions come from a pool of questions, how big is this pool? It was something that crossed my mind as if two people take an exam each exam will be different.

Is it just the exam sofware that generates random question relating to the cert being studied or is it actually figured out by people who then create the exam?

**derkit** · #2 19-Apr-2008, 09:07 AM

I don't think MS/Comptia etc. would release that information - so this is just guesswork/supposition.

For the "smaller" or newer qualifications - maybe the Vista or Server 2008 certs - I would imagine the pool to be relatively small - perhaps for 50 questions, maybe a pool of 100. But some of the oldies - 70-291 could reach into the 100s of questions. I don't believe that MS et al would continuously add questions to the pool because it would quite a bit of work continuously amending older pools - especially with the other post this morning about the number of cert holders, there were a whole load of certs on there, some made up of multiple exams - seems to big a challenge to be honest.

I guess someone from Prometric/Pearson would know how their pool are updated ie, over the net, CD sent in the post to be put onto a server locally etc. and also how often it happens.

**Sparky** · #3 19-Apr-2008, 09:29 AM

When I took the 70-291 again some of the sims were the same and also some of the same questions appeared as well.

I would be surprised if the pool of questions is constantly updated, perhaps after a major release such as a service pack as I noticed there was a few SP2 related questions in the 70-270.