Prerequisit for MCTS

[Shwetha]

Hi,

I am planning to self study C# and take up MCTS 70-536 exam. I have no experience in C#. So, I wanted to know are there any prerequisits to take up this exam like in minimum work experience or any other of the kind.

Also, what are the certifications paths to go through to attain MCPD certification.

Thanks
Shwetha

[dmarsh]

You can take the exam without experience no one will stop you but in reality it's designed for someone who's been coding pretty much fulltime for a couple of years and has knowledge of windows development, C#, the .NET framework and Visual Studio.

The framework is so big thats it's unlikely you will be exposed to enough of it in a shorter time period or have gained the prerequisite knowledge.

Heres Microsofts official guidance :-

Candidates for this exam work on a team in a medium-sized or large development environment that uses Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Enterprise Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, or Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Candidates should have at least two to three years of experience developing Web-based, Windows-based, or distributed applications by using the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0, the .NET Framework 1.1, the .NET Framework 2.0, or the .NET Framework 3.5. Candidates should have a working knowledge of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008.

[Shwetha]

Thanks for the reply. It was quite helpful.

But, the whole reason for me to take up the certification is to get back to job as C# programmer. I do not have enough experience even to apply for junior developer position. So, I wanted to take up the certifcation to get in depth understanding of the language and as a boosting factor in my CV.

It would be great if you could suggest me the ways of getting through the certification. I am planning to study C# on my own. Are there any other things I need to do to get through the certification.

Thanks
Shwetha

[dmarsh]

Ok but some questions for you :-

1. What is your experience level with Windows Development ?

2. How many versions of Visual Studio have you used and to what extent ?

3. How many libraries or frameworks have you used, which ones ?

4. Are you familiar with Object Orientated development ?

5. Are you familiar with any modern object orientated imperative languages like C++, Java, C# ?

6. Are you familiar with Virtual Machines and Garbage Collectors ?

7. How long can you study for fulltime ?

What do you mean you do not have enough experience to apply for a junior development position ? What do you mean as 'back to', were you a C# programmer before ? If not what type of programmer were you and what experience do you already have ?

You can get an indepth understanding of the language without certification, I would reccomend doing this first.

The 70-536 covers the .NET framework, it does not really test on C# fundamentals, you should know these first.

The MS training kit for 70-536 does a reasonable job as you can do in around 1000 pages, study this fulltime, work through MeasureUp test, add in some releavant experience and reading around MSDN and you might just scrape a pass.

70-536 is a TS exam, but even if you pass it you will not be MCTS, you will need to pass an additional exam. Generally people take either the Windows or Web developer tracks, the 70-536 exam is also on some other MCTS tracks.

If you have no relevant experience you should not attempt certification, its not an entry level certification, you need the pre-requisite knowledge to even stand a chance of understanding the objectives and passing the exam.

Companies want experience and recruiters will filter your CV out based on years of experience, a certifiction is unlikely to make much difference without the experience to back it up.

Why not learn C# from a good book and use that and your exisiting skills to apply for new positions and emphasize you are keen to learn?

Its all explained here :-

Visual Studio Tracks
Visual Studio 2005 / .NET 2.0 Tracks poster
Visual Studio 2008 / .NET 3.5 Tracks poster - VSMap.pdf
Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 Tracks poster
Developer 2008 Tracks poster

Best of luck!

[Shwetha]

Well, I am not new to C# or OOP languages. I have C# and ASP.NET before but worked on it for a very short period of time. After that I moved on to working on Siebel - CRM.

I have been looking out for Siebel jobs, but most of the Siebel roles require at least 4 years of experience. I have been out of work for over an year and half now. So I am widening area of job applications. I am focusing on the technologies I have already learnt and worked on. C# being one of the area and also coz it has more job opportunities (even at junior level), I wanted to get back brushing up the skills.

I am focusig on certifications coz, any agent I speak to regarding C# job opportunities, they ask how have I been using it recently (since my last job). Saying that I have been practicing it doesn't seem quite convincing to them to forward my CV to their client. So, I thougt if I focus on certification then they will have a proof that I have been using C# lately.

I am trying to find ways to get an job interview, but gap in my work and less work experience (2 years in Siebel and 3 months in C#) are the negative factors.

What do tou reckon? Is this the better way to go about?

Thanks
Shwetha

[dmarsh]

Its just a tough market at the moment, anything you can do to make yourself attractive could help.

Under 6 months experience in a tech is generally not going to register with a recruiter, they generally want 1-2 years minimum.

Three months experience is not really going to be enough to pass the exam, you need to know about all types of Windows development, I/O, encryption, threads, security, collections/datastructures, configuration, installation, events, processes, debugging, tracing, iterators, serialization, XML, binary, SOAP, compression, auditing, namespaces, libraries, interop, marshalling, Mail/SMTP, i18n, Graphics/GDI, RegEx, File Formats / Encoding, plus a few more...

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en...id=70-536#tab2

It could take you many months to get enough experience to pass by self study, at this point you don't meet the prerequisites so I'd not attempt the cert until you have more experience writing windows apps.

Spend your time applying for jobs, in spare time write as many windows apps as you can, consider entering the Google Summer of Code etc.